The Story of Us, part two

(To read part one, click here.)

Soon after our first child was born, we realized our little house was becoming far too crowded.  And so, we began the hunt for our next home.

I really wanted a clean, brand new home.  A home that we did not have to work on at all, like our last one.  A home that was ready for my sweet, new baby.

Alas.  Sometimes I do not always get what I want.

I remember it well, the day I got the phone call from David.

David:  Hon!  I found it!  Our next house!

Me:  Really?!?

David:  Yep.  It’s a DUMP.  It’s completely falling apart.  And it is cheap.

Me:  Oh.  Why do you want it?

David:  Location, location, location!

(Darn  you, Dave Ramsey)

Me:  huh?

David:  This house is in a prime spot downtown.  This house will make us money.

I don’t know how David does it, but he always, always, talks me into doing these sorts of things.

Darn him.

Darn him and his swooning ways.

So, we made an offer on that nasty house that reeked of cat pee.  We offered $17,000 less than what they were asking.  I was sure they would scoff at our offer and I would soon be able to find that brand new home I always wanted.

They accepted our offer immediately.

One must wonder if we had been duped, no?

So, the house was ours.  It was certainly not livable, so we had to plead of my parents to allow us, our darling daughter, and our two ginormous dogs to move in with them.

We told them two months, tops.

Every day after work, David and his brother, Jason, would head to the house and work on tearing out all the stuff that needed to get replaced.

Remember Jason?

Sure you do.

(More on Jason later)

Jason was a huge help to us during that time, and we will be forever grateful to him for his help.

And, so, they ripped out the carpet.  Soon they discovered that this house was not just a dump, but a colossal dump.

The entire house needed to be gutted.

Soon after we moved into my parents’ house, I found out I was pregnant with baby #2.  This came as quite the shock, seeing as how I was told that no one could ever get pregnant whilst breastfeeding.

I found out I was pregnant when Sweet Pea was 6 months old.  I’ve shared this before, but at first the doctors told me that this little baby would not survive.

Thankfully, they were wrong.  And after several stressful weeks, we found out we were having another, healthy girl.

This was a hard season in our lives.  David was working long hours during the day as an electrical apprentice, and long hours at night to work on this house.  Money was tight.  Since he was still an apprentice, he was not making much money.  We were dumping money into this fixer upper like crazy.  We had a baby and another on the way, and I was still working two days a week at the sweet hair net job to keep insurance. 

My parents deserve parents of the year award for that saga.  I don’t think they minded David, Sweet Pea, and I living in their basement.  But they did mind Jack and Mabel, our dogs.

Jack and Mabel were huge, smelly, naughty, and destroying my parents’ backyard.

They even dug up the remains of my childhood dog and had themselves a little snack.

Poor Joey.  How I loved him.

Our two months turned into eleven months.  Around the 8th month, my dad’s patience with the dogs was shot and we were told the dogs were evicted.

David’s sister, Lisa, and her husband, Jack, took in our two monsters.

Then Daisy Mae was born.

When Daisy Mae was 8 weeks old, we finally moved into our new/old house.

The house was certainly not finished.  But it was finally livable.  We figured it would take us about a year or so to finish it up.

Alas.  We were wrong again.

But, we began to slowly work on it, trying to not spend too much money at one time.  David had finally become a Journeyman Electrician and money was not as tight as it had been.  But still, we were spending so much money to fix up the house that we needed to be careful.

For the most part, we just began to enjoy being our own family again, together in our house.

Here are some random pictures from those days:

Daisy Mae

(Our house was just a few blocks from the lake)

The girls

Sweet Pea

Fishing with Daddy.

Making applesauce.

***

Alright that’s all for today.  Of course there is more to the story  . . .

Happy Wednesday!