There’s no sign in the front yard yet. But I imagine it every time I pull in the driveway.

Six months, George and I sigh. Next March.

We’ve decided to stop letting the housing market run the show: we’re putting our house up for sale next year, for better or for worse. The market in our area has made small, steady improvements, and we hope that by next year, things will be looking up a bit more. It’s clear that there will be no profit; if we can break even or just end up less than $5K in the hole, we’ll be THRILLED.

We had a real estate agent take a look at the house in January, but at the time–especially because we had a not-quite-3-month old baby who wasn’t sleeping through the night yet!–we just weren’t ready to deal with house showings and counter offers and apartment hunting and packing. Now… now we are. There are just a few things left to cross off our list: The basement needs organized. The master bedroom is the only room left to paint. The yard/landscaping will need spruced up after the winter. A few other minor items (new knobs for kitchen cupboards, new faucet in master bathroom upstairs, a fresh coat of stain on the deck), and then–we’ll call the real estate agent back.

Oliver loves his preschool so much that we’ve decided to stay in this area for the following year (assuming that he will need a second year of preschool before starting Kindergarten). After that, we’ll have to finalize a few decisions which will determine whether we stay in Ohio or move to Boston. We’ve already found a few fantastic 3-bedroom apartments/townhouses around here to consider in the meantime.

One way or the other, we feel good about moving forward. It’s exciting. And as much as we love this little house, the home we’ve made with each other and our two little boys, it’s time to make a new home elsewhere. Ridding ourselves of the high property taxes and the cost of maintenance and repairs will save us a LOT of money (and time!) so we’re able to DO MORE (various activities for the kids, save up for their college years, take vacations, etc).

Six months from now, the sign in the front yard won’t be imaginary anymore.

“Once you make a decision, the Universe conspires to make it happen.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson

About a week ago, George and I were sitting on the couch with our computers; he was working and I was editing some photos. No TV on, both kids in bed, everything was quiet. And then suddenly—

“AAAHHHH!” George yelled as he jumped off the couch. So of course I followed suit, at a slightly higher pitch and in the opposite direction.

“WHAT?!?” I asked in a panic.

“There was a spider on my arm!” he exclaimed, going back to the couch to find it.

I started laughing. “A spider? That’s IT?”

“What do you mean, ‘that’s IT’? It was a big black one, and it was ON MY ARM,” he protested.

“Well, geez, I thought there was a MOUSE or something, from the way you screamed and flew into the air,” I joked.

And oh, do I rue that comment now. Fast forward a few days to Sunday night.

I was upstairs putting Andrew to bed when I heard George yell, and when I came downstairs to see what was going on, he informed me that there was a mouse in the house.

I started laughing. “Uh huh. Was it a tiny black one with eight legs again?”

He shook his head. “No, I’m SERIOUS. There is a MOUSE in here.”

I stopped laughing.

Our two cats were intently guarding the piano—yes, the PIANO—in our living room, one at each end. The side of the piano by the wall has a cracked/bent corner at the bottom in the back, which it acquired when we moved it into the house (oops), and that’s where the mouse got in. So George went out and bought two traps, putting one by the piano and one down in the basement. Apparently mice like peanut butter because that’s what it instructed us to use for bait. (George actually did this part down in the basement since I’m allergic to peanut butter.) We checked the kids rooms and went to bed nervously.

The next morning, the traps were still empty. But the cats were still VERY interested in the piano. And the trap by the piano had definitely been visited—the mouse had EATEN THE PEANUT BUTTER AND ESCAPED. Nice trap, huh? Here you go, mouse, have a nice little snack! It’s on the house!

Now, I don’t know about you, but the thought of a mouse in my house… possibly on my kitchen counters… is enough to make me want to vomit. I went over the kitchen floor with a Lysol cleanser (twice) and scoured the counters with Lysol disinfectant (three times) and I was still completely skeeved. I realize that we live in an area where there are animals around; it’s not uncommon to see deer, raccoons, and possums in our neighborhood. I also realize that mice can get into the cleanest of houses, and while our house may be cluttered in places (i.e. the basement), it is certainly still CLEAN. But having a mouse made it FEEL dirty. Especially because we have a 3-year old and a 4-month old baby, and—OMG GETITOUUUUUT!

So we called Orkin. The guy checked every nook and cranny of our house and garage (including the crawl space in the basement) and didn’t even end up charging us for the visit. He found zero mouse droppings anywhere (THANK GOD) and said most likely the mouse had JUST gotten into the house the night before. It probably entered somehow through the garage into the basement or crawl space, and then when it came upstairs to explore, that’s when George saw the cats chase it into the piano. He told us either the traps or the cats would get it, and to make sure we keep the garage door closed as soon as it gets dark from now on.

George went out and bought a different kind of trap. And THAT one worked. (Sorry, mouse.) (But not really. Because EW.)

We left the other two traps out in the basement, just in case. And we were so relieved, we even bought the cats a special fancy treat for their assistance—although I’m sure they were disappointed to get fancy cat food instead of the actual MOUSE… heh.

Please do not send us any more pests, Mother Nature. The kids are enough. Really.

P.S. If this wasn’t $400, I would totally buy it for George and hide it in the basement or something. He needs more excitement in his life, don’t you think? (Much thanks to Samantha at Craftastrophe for finding something MORE disturbing than our pests this week! lol)

What’s that saying? The more things change, the more they stay the same?

We had a real estate agent come out on Thursday afternoon to look around our house and discuss selling. Good news: The house is pretty much ready to sell as it is. The only advice the agent gave us was to “de-clutter the kitchen a bit”—at which point I had to hide a smile, because Lady, we have a newborn and a 3-year old, and we were up cleaning the house until 2am the night before—this IS de-cluttered. Bad news: The selling market in our area is (STILL) pretty crappy, especially for 3-bedroom houses (which came as a surprise to us—apparently more people look for 4-bedroom houses, even as “starter homes,” these days?). If we tried to sell right now, we would have to list the house for about $5-6K less than the price for which we bought it, and it would probably sell for another $4-5K under that. So we would be looking at a $10K loss right off the bat, with another $10K between various fees and the agent’s commission. Meaning we’d end up over $20K in the hole. And that is a BIG HOLE. Plus, we’d need all that money up front when closing. Uhhh.

The entire point of selling the house was to SAVE money, wasn’t it? And if we HAD over $20K just lying around, we wouldn’t be selling the house in the first place!

So. We’re staying for now. It’s disappointing and frustrating because we really have no choice. Hopefully the market will pick up in our area by next year so we can finally move.

I’m also going back to my old job tomorrow (*headdesk*). I called my supervisor last week; she said she’d check with the boss and call me back, and two minutes later, my phone rang. (What can I say? I’m loved! heh) It’s not ideal—my Mom is driving an hour here and an hour back to babysit two days a week, which I didn’t want her to do—but it’s a paycheck until I can find something else. Hopefully soon.

As for George, some of you may have seen my Tweets a while back about a new job role/opportunity we were hoping he would get. Somehow the idea came about that he could work with his current company’s outside consultant to do some work on the side that is related to health care laws and any potential changes that may affect the company’s clients. He was given a project in December as sort of a “trial run,” and apparently they liked his work and feel they can utilize both his law degree as well as his experience with health care data/programming, because he was just given two more projects! He is REALLY excited about this opportunity. It’s not a “lawyer job,” per se, but in the end (based on what he’s seen while job hunting) this may actually make him MORE marketable than having experience as an attorney alone.

Oh, and also? The consultant George is helping? Works out of BOSTON. They told George relocation was unnecessary, even as this part of his job becomes more involved, but we want to go there anyway… so I told him, “This is a sign!”

*sigh* It’s going to take a bit longer than we expected, but things are in progress. We printed out a picture of Boston to hang on our fridge as motivation, we’re planning a trip out there this year (slightly postponed—instead of May, now waiting until Aug or Sept), and in the meantime we’re doing what we can here. Each day is one day closer to getting where we want to go.

This is our last Christmas in our house.

We’ve stretched out our stay here a year or two more than we originally intended, mainly because the exact time we wanted to move was the exact time the housing market (especially here in Ohio) went PPBBLLTTT. I talked about our struggles back in 2008: “We can afford the mortgage and the cost of living, but we CANNOT afford thousands more dollars each year in [house] repairs. That’s what is killing us. And honestly, we’re tired of not being able to do anything ELSE but repairs. We just can’t get ahead.”

That was before the additional expenses incurred for two miscarriages, one requiring a d&c for which we are still making monthly payments a year later, a new roof this summer, and now, a new baby.

And that is all ON TOP OF George’s tens of thousands of dollars in law school loans and the additional chunk of credit card debt we amassed because of all the OTHER stuff we had to pay for that I mentioned above.

We’ve made as many sacrifices as we can, but it’s just not enough (at least not while I can only work part time). We’re getting by, but it’s not getting better.

We want to move out of Ohio (probably to Boston). We want to put more money away for our kids and our retirement. We want to travel. So we need to start by getting back on our feet, and the only way to do that is to sell this house, rent a smaller place, and throw all the extra money at our debt.

Ideally, we’d love to just make one big move, but Big City housing is a weeee bit more expensive than here in Small Town Ohio! heh. Even now we may only break even when we sell our house because property values have dropped so much since we bought it in 2003. So our plan is to sell our house next summer, rent a townhouse/large apartment for a year, pay off as much debt as we can (obviously the law school loans will take longer), and THEN make the big out-of-state move.

In some ways it’s very exciting. Moving has been a dream of ours for—well, basically since we graduated college. There are much better opportunities outside Ohio. But I’m glad both of our children were born here, near where I grew up, and I’m glad both of them celebrated their first Christmases here in this house. We’ll be leaving behind many happy memories; we’ll be making many new ones wherever we go.

For one more Christmas, though, we are still here. It is blessing enough that there are four of us this year. We may have a hand-me-down tree with mismatched light strings and very few gifts underneath, but on Christmas Eve we’ll sing Silent Night and our tree will be beautiful because of who is standing together around it.

From our family to yours, we wish you happy holidays.

George and I have been talking about moving out of state for many years, and I think we’re finally going to do it. 2010 or 2011. Seriously.

And now, after endless debate and reading city-data.com and changing his mind, he wants to move to… the Boston area. I know it seems sudden, but we’ve been quietly discussing this all year, and I’ve never known him to be so invested before. He already checked into finding a real estate agent for selling our house next year—and for George, that is basically like a down payment on a new house.

So yeah. Boston!

While Denver would be great in many ways, Boston is equally great with the added advantage of being closer to my family as well as staying more of a reasonable flying distance to George’s family in Hungary. It has great schools/colleges, the job market is good, and oh yeah, IT’S NEAR THE OCEAN. If there’s anything that tops my dream of living out west, it’s living near the ocean!

The only reason for staying in Ohio is that my family is here—and it’s becoming increasingly apparent that this is not enough. We don’t want to be stuck in a place with high taxes, bad economy, mediocre jobs, and suffering schools. Most of all we want better opportunities for our KIDS.

We know that we’ll still have to deal with humidity and snow. We know that we won’t get to have a bigger house with a bigger yard. We know it will upset my parents if we move anywhere at all. These are all sacrifices we’re willing to make.

If everything goes as planned, we’ll be preparing our house for selling next spring (fingers crossed that the housing market, which is also crappy here, improves by then). George would even be able to work remotely for his current job (they already have 4 other employees in Boston!), so finding an attorney position right away is not a necessity. We just want to make the move before Oliver starts school and gets attached to friends, etc.

We’re going to try a road trip to Boston with the kids next May or June (the baby will be 6-7 months old by then) and check things out.

I’m excited and scared and, at the same time, totally cool with the idea. This could get interesting.