feeling unsettled

This morning I am feeling a little bummed, so I have to apologize in advance for the following complaint post. Monday afternoon, I got a call from our leasing agent letting us know that our landlord had decided to sell the home we are living in. She went over what the law requires as far as us making the home available for showings and apologized that this change in plan happened after such a short time leasing the property (3 1/2 months to be exact). I informed her that we are expecting twins and that we were sad because we had planned to stay here for another 2 years, but also went over my concerns with showing the house under the current circumstances. I was calm and reasonable and she was going to talk with the owner and discuss possibly extending the lease or the option of letting us out of our lease so that we wouldn't be responsible for showing the home.

Then, my brain started going 500 miles a minute. The more I thought about it, the madder I got. It is no small feat to move a family of 6 + a dog. Sure it will be a local move, but it is still a big job and a lot of work. Plus, moving is expensive...not just the cost of the movers/moving truck, but there are deposits and fees, cleaning costs, packing supplies, utility start up charges...having done this 3 times in less than a year and a half, I am acutely aware of the expense of moving and it is not cheap. Then there is the money that we have put into this house to make it work for us: the fence we installed around the pool, the pool cover, the plants and furniture we have had to purchase to make the home work for our needs...again, a rather expensive endeavor. Not to mention I am pregnant with twins and taking a shower, feeding the kids and having a plan for dinner is a very good day at this point. I am healthy, the babies are doing great, and there are no complications, yet I am exhausted 24/7, I have heartburn 24/7, I haven't been able to sleep very well, the aches and pains I am experiencing are similar to what I normally feel during the last month of my pregnancies, and to top it off I spend a few hours every week at the doctors office for check ups and ultrasounds. So, with all of that in mind and the thought that at any point it could get worse and I could be on bedrest...showing the house didn't seem like a good option. I have done the showing a house with kids + dog thing and it is miserable. In fact avoiding having to show a house is probably the primary reason we have chosen to rent while we are here instead of buying a home again, because I pretty much never want to deal with that again. In fact I was so stressed about it that I started having painful contractions and had to leave the dinner table and go lie down for the rest of the evening.

The next morning (Tuesday) by 10:30, I was driving myself insane with the stress of not knowing what was going to happen, so I called the leasing agent to check in. The owner definitely wants to sell right now, but was willing to let us out of our lease and even offered to make right with the pool fence we installed. The dates are still up in the air, but it sounded like they would be pretty flexible in accommodating our needs. After hanging up the phone, I felt much better about the whole situation. There is just something about not-knowing that is so unsettling and even when you know that the path is going to be a hard one...it feels better to know which path it is. Of course, that doesn't mean that all my stress was gone, in fact far from it. Now knowing that we were going to be moving, the professional mover in me started knocking tasks off the list. I pulled up craigslist and the realtor.com app to look for rentals, called on a few of them, made an appointment to see one, figured out how to make room in our budget for another deposit and another set of move in fees, started thinking about where to get boxes, made a mental list of what I could start packing immediately and what we could avoid packing and leave in drawers and bins since this would be a local move, talked to some friends about rentals they knew about and even drove around to look at some areas.

Which brings me to today. There is a total of 1 house that fits within our space requirements, pool requirement (and yes, we feel like that is a reasonable requirement. Remember how I am having twins and we live in Arizona and it will be hot and my kids will not be able to go anywhere this summer because I will be busy feeding and changing babies...the poor little darlings need something fun to do), the geographical requirements for school and work, and our budget (which we have been pretty generous with in our search). ONE house. I am looking at it tomorrow, but there is a chance it could already be leased by then. I am so discouraged and don't know whether it makes sense to move forward with the house if it is still available and we can make it work even though it is quite a bit more a month than we pay now, and in a different ward, and too close to the school to have a bus route, but too far to be a really quick walk for a giant pregnant lady) or if we should wait for something better. The market for rentals here is slim pickings, so there just isn't a whole lot of new stuff opening up and we are kind of on a deadline so we can settle in before the babies come.

I go back and forth between bursting into tears because I feel so overwhelmed and going 500 miles a minute checking tasks off my list. I have moments when I try to see the good in the situation and get a little excited about a bigger house, closer to the school with no bubble glass and more windows and moments when I can't possibly believe this is happening right now. Even in the bad moments, I remind myself that Heavenly Father has a plan for me and for our family. Even though I can't see why right now, I am certain that there is somewhere He needs us to be, and I am trying to have faith that we will find it and maybe be able to stick around for a while. I am heartbroken at the thought of moving our kids again...to a new neighborhood and new friends and a new bus (or maybe no bus at all, which would devastate them), and possibly even a new ward. We will definitely keep them in the same school, because I just can't bear the thought of making them switch schools. This school transition was harder than the last, and it would be horrible to make them go through it again. We will miss our little cul de sac, the neighbor friends who always want to play and our park across the street. They are being champs about it, though...not a single complaint from them when we broke the news...though there were a few requests that we just move back to Utah. :) Oh how I wish my little babies. I crave that feeling of being settled somewhere and knowing that we will be there for more than one of any given season. Of having friends whose babies have grown up with mine so much so that I feel like they are my own. Of having a home that I feel excited to decorate and improve because I know I will be there to enjoy it for at least a few years. Of not having to use a separate page to write down our housing history for the past 5 years. Yes, I crave the consistency of being settled. Yet here we are once again, looking out at the great unknown and wondering where the next few months will take us and praying for the best.