More House con't.

This is the detached garage. 3 car, plus office. This is where 'Max' was confined. Didn't get a good look at the backside of it.

Front porch. 2 of the 3 little Loops.

This is the other secondary bedroom. It's larger than the other.

Kids bath. Also the only tub in the house. I actually really like this room. The floor is neat little tile, and the bead board is cute. This could be in a hundred year old house.

This is the master bedroom from the retreat. I would like to split this into 2 rooms, in order to have 4 bedrooms.

I think this may be the only room they completely redid. It's the powder bath downstairs. Cute. Wish the tile floor were not dark green though... Let's hope that little 'orb' in the picture isn't a ghost. Yeah.


Laundry room. Door leads to patio/deck. Door to the right is to the hallway just outside the kitchen.

Umm. Yuck. It needs help. It really needs some love.

Again, thanks for reading this far. I love reading this kind of stuff on other people's blogs. Guess I'm just nosey like that!

I think I killed the Facebook 'add an image' application..

I thought I'd add a few (dozen) more pictures of the house. This is the entry. Family room is to the left, dining room to the right. Straight down the hall is the (really bad) laundry room that leads out the the back deck. Kitchen is to the right just before the laundry room.

Can you visualize it looking more like this:

This door leads into the kitchen from the wrap around porch.

One of the 3 bedrooms.


Door swings the wrong way (grrr...) into the room. The people who design houses must not ever live in them. Of course, had they put the door on the other way, then it blocks the switches. These are functionality things, people.

Can you picture it looking like this:
This is the other side of the family room. Too bad they didn't build the bookcases all the way to the ceiling.

This is the kitchen. Some of the upper interiors are completely bead boarded, so I'd leave them open. The others will need glass doors. We did find the cabinet fronts out in the garage. Recessed can lighting and trim work is not finished. Cosmetic things really.

This is looking into the kitchen from the nook. Greg likes the wine chiller. I like the 3 month old bottle of Cabernet that is on the counter (gag).

I love white cabinets and wood floors. The granite is pretty in that it isn't really busy, or black.

Looks like it won't let me add any more photos to this post. So, I'll take the hint for now!

It's no "Sierra Real" but it's pretty close!

Okay, 'Sierra Real' is the street name of the house I posted pictures of a few posts back. The beautiful house and the glass of wine... remember? Well, someone nabbed it up while we were distracted with a sick kid and end of the school year and birthday parties and such. In other words... we're moving on from Sierra Real. Beautiful, but it was a little out of our price range, and no room for critters.

So now we're thinking more along the lines of 'Blue Sky Road' and here are some pictures of it.

It is a short sale =(

Greg and I drove out to look at it while my Mom was here and left the the twirps at home. Turns out that was a good thing, as the owners have vacated the property, but left "Max" a 200 lb rottweiler penned up by the garage. He 'appeared' to be friendly. The fence was waist height and I'm pretty sure if he were motivated enough he could have gotten over it.

This house is overgrown. Seriously overgrown. That sidewalk is probably about 4 feet wide. It looks like they were in the process of updating when they moved out. It has a big wrap around porch, and a country kitty that followed us all around.

This is the view from the kitchen window. Yes, that is a chicken coop, *with* a chicken. I think that is my very favorite part of the whole house. I could look out my kitchen window, across my huge cottage garden, into the chicken coop! I just heard some of you gasp! LOL! (amy...)

The cabinet doors and drawer fronts are all off (think glass doors), and they have put bead board up everywhere in the kitchen. It needs trim work, and majorly cleaned.

This is looking back at the house from the chicken coop. The area on the other side of the white picket fence was supposed to the lawn, it's all dried up and dead. The ladder is next to the kitchen windows and the master retreat is the bay window upstairs. The staircase goes up to the master bath. Complete with a urinal. Greg was in love.

This is into the dining room from the entrance of the kitchen. The wallpaper freaked me out at first, but I'm getting used to it. I think they had a red thing going on in here.

This is the family room.

View from the master retreat. When we went back yesterday with our realtor, there was a sweet little deer laying under one of the oak trees. Yes, I realize that deer love cottage gardens. And I realize I won't think Bambi is so sweet after destroying the fruits of our labor. That's why we have a Mossberg. **JUST KIDDING** sort of.

I think living in the country will bring all kinds of critters, and packing heat may be a necessity. Funny thing. I live in the burbs with a huge concentration of people, some of which intend to do harm. But I'm skeered in the country??? Bobcats, coyotes, skunks, raccoons, deer (hey, they can get vicious), mice, and who knows what else could be living out there.

Thanks for reading this far. We don't have any idea how it will turn out with this house, but it sure is fun!

Just a little more for today...

I mentioned in my last post that the day that Declan ended up in the hospital, we had planned on going to Lowe's. Well, Greg went ahead and went, and ordered these beauties! All but the refrigerator were installed before I even got home from the hosptial one day. We can turn the dishwasher on anytime, it's so quiet we don't have to wait until we are going to bed. The oven actually works (anyone who has ever attempted to use my oven can attest to that). The microwave is purty... but that fridge. It's amazing!

I've got lot's more to post, it's just a slow going around here.....

I'm a 10:00 - 2:00 Kinda Gal...

I am not a morning person. I'm not really an night owl either. I'm a 10:00 to 2:00 kinda gal I guess.

The evening of the last post I made to this blog seems like 100 years ago. That night Declan woke up burning up with fever, and had trouble breathing. I gave him a breathing treatment and Motrin and put him in bed with me. Hindsight is 20/20 for sure. He was exhibiting at leat 8 symptoms of distressed breathing, none of which alarmed me as much as it should have (and definitely will in the future...). We decided to wait and see how he was feeling in the morning, figuring that lying down was partly the cause of his congestion.

The next morning, he seemed tired, but okayish. Until he came upstairs to find me panicking that he could not breathe. I gave him another breathing treatment which I didn't think helped much and decided to take him to Urgent Care. The plan for our morning was to take D to Urgent care, get lunch at Chipotle and go to Lowes before Maren's nap (LOL!). After waiting at Urgent care for about 30 minutes, Greg decided to go to Lowe's anyway. After about 1 1/2 hrs wait time, the receptionist decided to mention to a nurse that D was 'having trouble breathing' and a nurse came out to the waiting room to take Declan's air oxygenation (90%) ummmm. Yeah, on room air, this child could not breathe. They immediately rush us into a room and put him on oxygen and start a breathing treatment. Then the Doctor decides he should be at the emergency room and calls an ambulance (which, by the way, came with lights and sirens for him).

I call Greg to let him know, and he thinks I'm kidding.

It's is moments like these that I realize I am not equipped to do this job. That my 'wait and see' approach to life could really bite me some day. I also realize that right now is not the time for *me* to cry, but no matter how hard I tried not to, I just could not help it. I told Declan how sorry I was that he had suffered and I had not taken more immediate action. He, on the other hand, is very brave. I know he is looking to me for clues about what is going on, and I'm sitting over there doing the ugly cry. Nice. Anywhoo, the paramedics get him all hooked up to their oxygen, load my tiny little guy onto the huge stretcher and out to the ambulance we go.

Our ride of maybe 1 1/2 - 2 miles was thankfully uneventful, the paramedic told me that no one will ever judge me for taking my child directly to the emergency room if he can't breathe. He was a 'code 2 respiratory distress' and a bunch of things I've since forgotten. The emergency room was waiting for us. This is where another experience happened for me... my cell phone would not put a call thru, so I had to *text* Greg what was happening. My text took me about 10 minutes to do, and each word was completely spelled out. Since I don't think I even have texting on my plan, I can't wait to see what that is going to cost. Really, I wonder what this whole thing is going to cost (shudders).



Long story shorter by a few paragraphs, Declan had asthma exacerbated pnuemonia, and had to be admitted into the hospital for 5 days. I think he liked the special attention he got, and that I stayed there every night with him. Greg and I would switch off during the days and I could go home to shower and take care of things only I knew existed. Thankfully during this time, my Mom came to help out. Thank GOD!

Declan was released from the hospital just in time for us to get to Teagan's last day of school party at preschool. Declan went one more week and was done the first week of June.

The first week of June was also when we laid our sweet Milo to rest. He declined rather drastically the week that Declan was in the hospital. Once we were back home and attempting to get back into the swing of things, is we began to notice how poorly Milo was doing.

Things have begun to settle down for us around here. Thankfully. I'm glad to have my boring old routine back, that is for sure! Hope you are all well!

So take a look at this beauty!

Every Sunday for the past 3 months or so, we take a 'Sunday Drive." Greg and I try to have a plan of where to go, looking at different areas to possibly move to. The kids crab and complain and ask if we are going home yet. Occassionaly Declan asks me pull over so he can puke. It's good fun =) And since we are all confined in Maxivan, it counts as family time in my book. Well, this morning was no different. We headed out the door around 11:30 and spent the day tooling around the country hills.

I've posted on my Facebook page some of the houses we've come across. Most of them are either short sales or foreclosed. The past 2 foreclosed houses have been left unlocked, and we take a peek around. Well, today we didn't get lucky in that aspect, but we did gain entry to 2 gated communities that we would have wasted a trip out to the country for otherwise. Imagine my surprise when this is the house we pulled up to....

Hello LOVER!

Declan informed me it was 17 steps up to the front door.

I honestly could not decide which porch I would rather drink my glass of wine on.

I think it's been waiting for me to find it. It's totally the house I have in my mind. The only possible snag is that we don't think they allow any livestock animals... and since we would like to be as 'off the grid' as possible, we believe the house is not on a well or septic system. I've contacted our realtor to see what he can find out, he'll let me know Tuesday morning....

I think anyone that knows me would say this house is screaming my name!

Now, back to which porch for that much needed glass of wine...

The Country Life is for Me!

Declan's kindergarten class had a field trip to the Sacramento County Fair yesterday. I took the girls separate since I don't have my fingerprints on file with the school district. So, really we crashed the field trip... Any how, it was a perfect morning weather wise to be at the fair. I think it was open yesterday for all of the schools to have their field trip there, as there was about 2.7 million kids there - good times!

I hung around with the Mom who Declan rode there with, as she was assigned to 4 kids. Another Mom who chaperoned gladly came with us as well. She only has 1 child and being assigned to 4 kids at the county fair was enough to put her over the edge! LOL! I told her that is how I feel at any given moment - she turned white!

When we went into the pavilion with the goats, sheep, cows, pigs and chickens it became obvious right away that Maren did not like the animals! She was terrified in fact. So, we closed the canopy on the stroller and all was good! The country life is not for her....

The other two enjoyed themselves and touched any/all of the animals that we could.

Maren's new stroller has a small platform for another child to stand on, this was a big hit with the kids. They all took turns getting a 'ride' on the stroller. Can't you see how much fun I was having too? Botox anyone? Maybe I should add that to my Facebook quiz as a good gift to give me.... I wonder if I always look like I'm telling kids what not to do?

My brave boy even tried to rope, and he did good. Maybe the country life is for him.

I had been holding kids up to look in the horse pens, yeah, me!

Little Miss, being unimpressed...