The Way They Should Go

Well, it’s been absolutely forever since I’ve written to this site.  My mother actually mentioned it a few weeks ago asking when I would be writing here again.   So I’m finally back.

What’s been going on in the almost year since I’ve written?  Ugh.  The big thing is that we moved last October.  That nationwide housing slump actually hit Northern Virginia and we jumped at the chance to buy a house - after renting here for almost 6 years.  We’ve watched the prices - which we thought were so outlandish when we moved here in 2001 - as they DOUBLED by the end of 2005.  Craziness!  Then this slow down hit and finally people weren’t forced to put in an asking-price-bid-with-an-escalation-clause on the first day a house was on the market in order to buy a house.  There was once again negociation, and we were able to leap.

We worked with a great realtor and found our house on the first day we did a realtor-house visit day, as opposed to our usual wander from open-house to open-house on weekends.  We still looked several more times in the same area before realizing we were still comparing everything to this house, so we put in a bid.  There was haggling, but we got it. 

So now, we have a privacy-fenced 1/3 of an acre!!  For those of you not living on/near the DC Beltway system, 1/3 acre is really nice!  Of course we moved to an area still in Fairfax County, but described most succinctly by a beltway friend as, “oh yeah, isn’t that just before the edge of the Earth??”  :-/  It’s really not far!

The people who owned the house before us did lots of landscaping - in fact had a landscaping company come regularly for upkeep.  We have 5 flowering trees around the house as well as a few evergreens, a japanese maple, and lots of other things I can’t identify.  It’s Cherry-blossom time as I write and we have one flowering in our front yard.  It looks really beautiful.  In fact hubby was commenting on how beautiful all the trees were the other day, and what a shame it will be when he is forced, in a fit of allergy-induced hysteria, to burn them all to the ground. 

We both have TERRIBLE allergies.

I decided (at the direction of a friend who knows such things) to cut down the dead decorative grass in our front yard so the new patch can grow this spring.  I had a rash up both arms for hours.  Yes, that’s with taking a Claritin.  Hehe.  This is going to be interesting.

However, it has been SO NICE to have days where School is done by lunch and afterward the girls go out and play in the back yard for 4 hours!!  They are stinkin filthy when they come in, but they have a blast and I like that so much better than cooping them up all day - or waiting til I’m done with whatever else I’m trying to accomplish so they can walk down to the little park for an hour on a good day.

There’s more, but it will have to wait for another day.  It’s time to go sit on the couch with hubby.  Later all!