Homeschool and selling a house

I've been pretty quiet online lately and it's mainly been due to the fact that we seem to have so much going on over here! We have been searching for a bigger house that walks that fine line between bigger, but not too big, and bigger but not crazy expensive. Since we live in a lake town it's extremely hard to find houses that are a bit bigger but NOT on a lake. It seems that if someone can afford something bigger they forego it to spend the money on getting on the lake. While my family would LOVE to be on the lake, that price point is so high I don't even feel comfortable DREAMING about it! Over the past 5 years we have been looking and searching. We have found a few houses that would work, put in offers on them, but ultimately always lose them since we have a home to sell. About 6 months ago we decided to just give up the search, and about a month ago a house came on the market that's been off and on for 4 years and we finally just decided to check it out. Well, we check it out, liked the size and price and offered on it after walking through it for about a half hour. We have never done that! It felt completely uncomfortable and spontaneous.

That being said, we also needed to get our house market ready, all cleaned up and ready! Let me tell you, it's only been on the market for about a month and I AM SICK of it! Keeping it clean and ready for people to look at has been exhausting. It seems that people always want to come look right in the middle of the day and so our homeschool day just isn't happening. Thus, these past few weeks the kids have been doing something that I personally don't love. They have been using online school. They actually love Time4learning and have been using that for the past few weeks so that we are at least getting the basics done. We have also been reading more together. This week we started Matilda! Z and B ADORE it! 

I don't talk about it much online, but since this summer we have also been working with a natural health practitioner on our health. Jason and I have had many chronic health issues and it just seems like we haven't been getting the help we feel we need. Jason has a rare type of arthritis and a myriad of other health issues. I have been dealing with gall bladder and IBS type symptoms since I've been young. I also have battled depression from a very young age, from around the age of 10, and since Nova has been born, extreme anxiety and panic attacks.

This just to say that working a natural angle of trying to get well isn't just taking a pill and hoping it'll work. It's overhauling your whole lifestyle. What you eat, every product you use around and on your body, examining your air quality everywhere you go, examining your water quality everywhere you go. Through this journey we have found out that both Jason and I have quite a few genetic mutations that are playing a huge part in our health and the issues we face every day. Detoxing our life is taking a large part of our time right now. The good part is that we can see the positive health changes in our kids, the bad part is that it's so darn hard and time consuming and these changes aren't something that we can see overnight.

Why do I mention it here? Because everywhere we go, everything we do I have to be prepared with snacks, water, packed lunches or suppers. Twice a week we head an hour and a half south to bring Z to gymnastics and I need to make sure to pack suppers for all five of us (and then we drive the hour and a half home). This, too, has been taking up my time.

So, that's been our past few weeks. Nothing really fun to report about. No great projects, fun insightful thoughts or inspiration. We've just been trying to get the basics covered. I've been trying to keep the house spotless, and been spending my time camping out in the kitchen.

Good news is...we got an offer on the house today! I can't decide if I'm excited or heartbroken. I am excited that I can stop trying to keep everything absolutely perfect. I am also excited that the kids and I can get back to full days of homeschool and that art is back in the rotation! The kids would like to keep Time4Learning in the rotation though as they really do love the fun lessons. I think a bit of fun computer lesson time may be alright to keep in as long as I limit their computer time. :)