Life is all aflutter these days as we've been preparing to put our Virginia home on the market and determine where precisely we'll be next. A few weeks ago, we decided to pull the kids out of school for a few days, prior to their spring break, so the family could accompany me on a business trip to the great state of Texas and check things out. If you follow the "minutiae of our daily life" via Twitter, you know that over the span of two weeks, we drove more than 3,000-miles, transversed 13 states (including what were 10 of the 11 Confederate States of America), crossed the Mississippi twice, and had an overall great time.
Because the children were out of school, during our daily drives, I read aloud 147 pages of our fourth graders' Social Studies book and ensured that our route included several historically relevant landmarks like Jamestown, Yorktown, Monticello, and the Cumberland Gap. Pictures to follow soon!
It was a totally awesome trip, and my dream of homeschooling our clan for a year (or more), while traveling the country in an RV was ignited. Of course my enthusiasm put Charlie in a semi-state of panic that I'm going to suddenly resign from my profession and buy a camper (and National Park Pass), but he needn't worry. At least not THIS year.
Because we're getting our home ready for sale, we had our (never before finished) hardwood floors refinished during our trip...
And the preparation and aftermath of that activity has nearly paralyzed us. According to the children, it seems like our house is a snow globe that someone picked up and SHOOK. Everything from our upstairs was moved to our downstairs, where it still largely remains while we paint the house and update our baseboards ... and I'm certain the upcoming move will be far less painful.
Later this month, after Charlie finishes the second bathroom that he started in September; we're redoing our third bathroom, and gutting our kitchen to the studs because we have a six-inch hole in the floor that needs to be repaired and if we're going to fix the floor, we might as well do the whole thing. You know what they say about mice and cookies, right?
I've maintained that our kitchen has been like GLORIFIED camping, but according to multiple realtors, most people aren't too keen on glorified camping in their home kitchen.
It's a shame.
We'd held off on doing these big ticket item upgrades because after watching our children run down the hall with crayons in their hands, marking up the walls as they went; we decided having money in our pocket was the best possible investment (for our dollars and our sanity). But now, with the encouragement of several realtors who have convinced us that these improvements are well worth our effort, we're squeezing in to four weeks, what we might have done in four years.
It makes sense to me.
Then again, I did recently suffer a head injury.
