The Adventures of the Johnson Clan: So we still haven't moved.... annnddd I quit!

Last Sunday we drove over to the new house to drop another load off and we marveled at the home thinking to ourselves, "by this time next week we will just drive here after church and actually be home." On Monday we made it a big moving day; we borrowed our neighbor's racing trailer and friends to help load our piano and take a load of our larger items to the house. We took all our toys, the bed frames, clothes, etc. I had the groceries planned to the day. The wash done to the day. We celebrated with four hours of Ultimate Frisbee and a farewell bbq with all our wonderful neighbors (they are the BEST). Tuesday was spent moving things and cleaning, and Addie having the time of her life at a friend's home. Travis had me call first thing in the morning to square away all our closing processes.... and in the words of Toby Keith, this is when the "Fit hit the shan!" This was the moment I realized our Loan officer was an incompetent and corrupt businessman. Oh and Lazy, let's not forget his great talent for orchestrating a mole hill to morph into a mountain. Ugh.. I don't want to hate this post in the future by coming back and re-reading the nitty gritty details of the many hours of phone calls and stern borderline threats I've had to make, so I'll just give the nutshell version. Apparently a closing date to this clown, jokester, loser, moron,.... ahem... I mean, incompetent ~~MORON,~~ sorry businessman (if you can really call him that) is more like a pregnancy due date: it's something to shoot for but isn't contractually binding................. weird, seeing as it's a contract!!!

Sorry, I don't know that I'm going to get this post without cursing

Let me try again, essentially his knowing the due date did nothing to motivate him to get any of his paperwork done. He gave me a bunch of b.s. about not being able to make the closing date, and I told him, "absolutely not. Do your job." After hours of back and forth convos like this, he called me "already to get this done..." (which I now know was a lie), but had bad news. Even though we'd paid for and done all the proper work to have the appraisal done four weeks ago now, they'd forgotten to order it. Oh but they'd remembered to charge us for it. And they'd lied to the realtor and told him the appraisal had been done and the paperwork had come back...... HELLO CAN YOU SAY FRAUD?!

More back and forth about how to fix this MAJOR mistake on their end and we ended up getting a rush ordered appraisal done the next day.... but then it could take a few weeks to get the forms back from the appraiser. NOPE! Not O.K.! So I pressured him more and they were able to get the forms back by Friday, at which point they were "sent in the wrong format." Then they were. Then he couldn't continue because of blah blah blah. And he stopped answering my calls and switched to texting. And then he ignored my texts and disappeared into the weekend, even though he said he'd work on Saturday; surprise, surprise he lied, again. So there is no end in sight. He's screwed us out of renting our house out in Sept. I've had to move a ton of our stuff BACK to our current house. We're sleeping on mattresses on the floor. The toys are still gone. Addie is losing her mind during this limbo state. And I'm just disgusted with the injustice of this whole process. But I've done my part. I've shaken the trees. I've been stern. I've been on him each step of the way. And now it's out of my hands and will be what it's going to be.

And I quit

Now that it is what it is, I've decided I can't think about something I have no control over anymore. So I quit. I quit watering the plants at the new house. I quit deep cleaning my current house. Packing. Preparing for renting. Etc. And believe it or not (I'm not even sure after writing the angry post), I'm at peace with this. We don't know why things happen, but maybe this is preparing us for better renters. Maybe we needed to take some more time to enjoy our neighbors and current home. Maybe we needed to just focus on enjoying the last of the warm weather... I don't know, but I'm doing all of the above. I've been spending every minute I can with the girls. We start each morning with a walk. We play out front. Read books on a blanket in the grass. Watch the clouds. Find all the birds. Eat outside. Talk to all our neighbors. And each day the boys come home from school, Aaron grabs a popsicle for he and Addie and they go eat it outside together. Some days we stay and play at the school with friends. Other times we snuggle and watch a movie. And honestly, it's been relaxing to just focus on enjoying my children. OH, and during the overlap on the girls' naps, I shower and relax for like an hour... it's awesome.

We've had lots of football. YM/Scouts on Wednesdays. Travis has basketball once a week. A half day midweek from work. He took a biking trip Fri-Sat and went with a friend up to Cuyuna, MN for a 30 mile mountain biking trip; he had a blast. The pictures looked beautiful. And he's surprisingly un-injured! :D Meanwhile I took the four kids to four hours of football on Saturday... let's just say, Travis was VERY kind to me and brought me ice cream when he got home that night. Never do I want to do THAT much football with Addie ever again. Avery on the other hand was the best behaved little thing.

And then the other weird thing of our week, I took the girls to Zerble trail here in town and planned on having this beautiful morning walk with them. The weather was perfect. The sun was shining through the lush greenery. There was a slight fall nip in the air. I turned on some piano guys to set the mood and we began this beautiful morning walk. 10 minutes. That's all we got in before it was all ruined. I got this weird feeling and I looked ahead to see a VERY strange man staggering toward us. He was taking ragged staggers, ragged puffs on his cigarette, and was wearing a short polk-a-dot dress... We made eye contact and I just had a feeling not to break it. He stared at me all the way he passed us, and then I just stood still not sure what to do. I didn't want to walk further into the woods, alone, and I didn't want to be close to this man. So I pulled up 911, just in case, waited until he was barely insight and I headed back towards the road (thankful I had the dog!). When I got back to the entrance, he was sitting his truck with his cigarette hanging from him mouth, but also nursing a beer). Once again we stared each other down, and I refused to look away until he finally drove away. Then I got shaky, loaded the girl, and went home! Nala seemed put out at such a short walk, but unfortunately there are weirdos no matter where you live, apparently!!!

So here we are, about to start another week. I'm now in denial that we'll ever move. I'm not looking forward to having all the calling start back up in the morning, and I'm bummed because it's supposed to be raining a lot this week... which I wouldn't mind at all if I were busy setting up my new house, not trying to buy time and entertain a crazed toddler in "boring" house. And this morning when I was showering and someone ran in to use the bathroom... like three times, I just kept thinking, "If we'd been able to move, I'd now be getting ready in a stink free master bathroom while this child would be doing his business in the OTHER bathroom...." AH! I'm getting worked up again.

* Breath