Let’s recap

So I mentioned briefly the other day about what all has gone on the past two weeks. As a matter of fact, I still haven’t recovered. The past two weeks have been a major but kicker, full of many blessings (like getting an offer on our house), but still a major but kicker. So how about we recap what all has happened? That way every one will be caught up. Good. Let’s get going…

Two weeks ago-ish, we got an offer on the house, as you know. We weren’t completely happy with their offer, so we countered. And waited. Then they countered, and we accepted. Happy Day! Celebration was short-lived because we had 9 days to move and find a place to live.

Step 1 in How to move in a week – PACK! We skipped church Sunday to pack (don’t get upset Mom), and I actually had a lot of peace about it. Looking back I am so glad we packed all day Sunday because Monday morning I woke up bright and early with a stomach bug. What a great day to start the week, right??

Step 2 – Find a place to live. You guys have seen pictures of the New-Old House. Technically, we could live there if we really wanted to. There is water. There is a roof. There is electricity in some parts. There is a working toilet. Originally, we thought we would have time to finish the bedroom downstairs so we could live there while we renovate…but then it was ripped to shreds because of termite damage. There went that plan! We also thought we would have 4-6 months to complete at least one room and bathroom as opposed to six weeks. So living at the new-old house was not an option.

Next thought was, “How about a tiny apartment and a storage unit?” So we started calling apartments close to our new neighborhood in hopes of finding a dog friendly, three month lease. Negative. None. I think someone even laughed at me when I called….

“What if we rent a small house? That way we can just move our stuff into one place instead of two places? We can cut out the extra storage unit all together.” Then we started calling on a few houses available. While they were more open to pets, they were not open to a short lease. Most wouldn’t even consider a 6 month. Moving on…

“What if we rent from Mr. Wilson?” I don’t think I have told you about Mr. Wilson yet. Well, Mr. Wilson owns about 40 properties in our neighborhood that he rents out. This wouldn’t be a problem if he screened his tenants or had any interest at all in who lives there…but he doesn’t. He’s pretty much the Voldemort slum lord of Merrimack Village. I went to his office because I was desperate (this was post stomach bug – we now had 6 days find a place to live). I walk into this 4 foot by 4 foot “entry” and there is a wall to my right, door directly in front of me saying “Do Not Enter” and a window on my left covered in BARS with a small slit to pass things through. I imagine this is what prison looks like. It was scary (and very dirty). I took a flyer and bolted as fast as my dehydrated legs could carry me. I did learn on my visit to prison his office that Mr. Wilson doesn’t do credit checks. No need to see a pay stub either. All he needs is two months rent and a driver’s license and you have yourself a place to live. We both agreed we did not want to support Voldemort Mr. Wilson if we didn’t have, too.

Our next option was to ask a friend of ours if he thought there was any chance his parents would let us rent their empty house (key is rent). We knew they had built a lovely new home in a different part of town and had still not sold their previous house. While we knew we couldn’t pay their mortgage, a little something has to be better than nothing, right?! So, we called up our buddy’s parents, ba-da-bing ba-da-boom- we are now temporarily living in a pretty snazzy large house in the south part of town. We actually have two extra floors at the moment (yes, floors, not rooms). Since the home is still on the market, we do maintain all of the yard work and keep the inside looking prestine nice at all times. It’s a pretty sweet deal. We offered to pay rent, but they said if we would just keep everything up we could live here for FREE (well, we pay utilities, but still, it’s pretty much free). Talk about awesome!!

Now, there is the chance it could sell while we live here and we have to move again. The house actually showed three times over the weekend. Who knows. If it does sell, we are going to start a new profession as live in home stagers!! Ha! I’m not too worried about it at the moment. God will provide if we need to move.

I will say that not knowing where you are going to sleep in 5 days is really stressful, as is packing boxes and having no clue where the boxes will be going. It was such a huge relief when we got housing lined up. HUGE!!

Now, let’s catch up on the dog situation. You guys have seen our inspector, Bella. She very much likes to make her presence known.

We also have a black lab puppy (my baby), Tori.

Bella is two years old and Tori is one, so they are both still puppies with puppy like tendancies….ya know…like breaking out of fences….yea….which leads us to the next story…I’ll get there.

Once we had the situation figured out where Ryan and I would live, next was figuring out where our babies puppies would live (part of the deal with living in the large for sale house was no dogs). After lots and lots of talking, we decided to let the dogs live at the Merrimack House. We had already been taking them with us in the afternoons when we worked and even dropping them off in the morning and letting them stay all day while we were both at work. Our dogs already slept outside, so we figured it wouldn’t be too big of an adjustment. I wish we could have had more time to transition the dogs to their new home, but with 9 days, you have to do what you have to do.

So after packing up all of the Wade house, we moved ourselves into our temporary home. We actually slept with the mattresses on the floor the first three nights.

After moving ourselves, we moved Tori and Bella’s dog house to Merrimack and tried our best to block off all escape routes.

The fence is an old chain link fence, not in a great shape by any means. The first week went really well. Ryan would go check on them and feed them in the morning, and I would go check on them at lunch. After work, we stop by the house and play with them some, if we weren’t there working already. We both thought we had a good thing going….sigh…

Then last Friday… my world came crashing down something bad happened. Ryan went to check on the puppies around 8 pm and found the front gate wide open and dogs gone. He looked around for half an hour before calling to tell me. I hung up the phone and just started crying. MY BABIES WERE GONE. Our dogs are like our children. For. Real. We feed them. We take them to the doctor. We cuddle. We talk about them to everyone. We have pictures of them on our phones. We tell embarrassing stories about how they can’t walk up stairs. We love our dogs, plain and simple.

Alright, back to the story. I hang up my phone, grab my purse, and run over to the other house to help Ryan look. We talk to our neighbor Joe and find out the dogs had been out since around 4. Joe had caught them out earlier, but was able to round them up and put them back in the fence. Joe also said he had to run a group of kids off the past two days because they were picking on the dogs. My immediate thought was that the kids got mad or thought it would be funny to let the dogs out. I also want to clarify that the fence they did get out of is really the only gate they can’t break open. It has to be opened by a person. Or at least some kind of animal with thumbs. Maybe it was bigfoot. Who knows. Someone or something let them out.

We drive and walk around the neighborhood for almost 2 hours looking and yelling for the dogs. No luck. I made Ryan leave the porch light on and gate open in case they came back. I kept staring down the street waiting for a scene from Homeward Bound with our dogs running down the street in slow motion. Didn’t happen. I just sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. I cried the whole way driving back home (or the place we are sleeping for now). I cried when we got home. Ryan hugged me. I cried more. All I could think about was the terrible things that could have happened to them. I won’t even go into all of them. Just know my mind is pretty creative. I barely slept. Ryan and I both had nightmares about the dogs. We both also had good dreams where they came back. I woke up at 6 Saturday morning only to start crying again.

Ryan went over to the Merrimack House around 6:30 to look for them again. About fifteen minutes later, Ryan sends me this picture –

I cried again. Shocker. Our puppies were just hanging out in the yard when Ryan got there!! Turns out another one of our neighbors saw them walking down the street earlier that morning and put them back in the fence. He had no idea the dogs had missing all night. Needless to say, we were SO HAPPY they returned. Friday confirmed how much we love our dogs. Imagine if they were actually, like, real, human children (don’t tell Tori and Bella I refer to them as dogs or puppies- they think they are humans too). Oh my gosh. I can’t imagine!

So, after that scary incident, the dogs now sleep inside in what will be the master bedroom on their new giant dog bed. With a fan. And a night-light. True story. Maybe we went a little over board…

Anyways, that’s what has been happening around here. We are set to close on the sell of our old house TOMORROW (Thursday). Wahoo!! Pretty darn excited. I thought I would be sad because it was our first home, ya know? But so far I haven’t been sad at all. Maybe because I’m too tired or haven’t had time to be sad. Not sure. Maybe tomorrow.

What have you guys been up to? Ever lose a dog and cry for 12 hours? I hope not!