But it's just so hard!

Searching for a house is a pressure filled task filled with quick decisions that could affect your financial future, suck your energy and your sanity dry. Seriously. I'm exhaustimacated.

Things in my house have been tense. Very tense, to say the least. The boys, Brody (14) & Goop (11) have been sharing a room for the past year and they're miserable. When they're miserable, everyone is miserable. I can totally sympathize. Everyone needs their own space and I'm doing the best that I can to make it happen as quickly as I can.

I've been spending time everyday looking at Craig's List rentals and to tell you the truth, nothing really changes. Also our rental season starts in May for leases to start in August. If you're not the first one to look at an opening rental, you're seriously out of luck. I've fallen in love with so many places just to realize we weren't the first to look or circumstances have changed. It's heart breaking. We need a 4 bedroom, 2+ bath and we need it like yesterday.

Another problem is that we live in a college town. It's awesome until you have to rent a place. Most rental houses we've looked at have been destroyed by the college students that have previously occupied the space. Or it's in a college neighborhood filled with college students, not kid friendly.

Last week Goop & I looked at 104 year old house for rent in the country. It had plus sides and negative sides but the biggest negatives of all was the 20 miles away from Bunky's school, the extra mileage away from my work, and the one single bathroom. There are five of us and two of us are girls. A single bathroom is not an option.

Yesterday I looked at a 4 bedroom, 1.5 bath house in town & it was nice enough, needed some work, needed more windows but probably would have worked for the 6 month lease we would have to sign. That was until I looked at the garage, or smelled it rather. Obviously the kids living there couldn't handle their beer pong very well & used the garage as a vomitory. Ewwww.

Also yesterday by pure coincidence, Hawks found the house pictured above with a FOR RENT sign out front that is literally two blocks out of town. He walked around it, peeking in windows, and talking my ear off on the phone telling me how much he loved it and that this could be *it*. I think by now we've learned not to get our hopes up, right? He came home & drove me back out there to resume the crazy house stalkish routine he started by himself of peeking into the windows, accessing the acreage, yard, and visioning potential uses of area. He called the number & we're still waiting to hear back.

I'm scared to say how perfect this house would suit us due the the fear of jinxing it... but yea. There are no neighbors even remotely close, there are 2 mini grain silos, a small stable area, the remnants of an old chicken coop, 2-3 outbuildings, what appeared to be a garden area that hasn't been used for awhile, huge corn fields in back & on the right side, the left side is open front yard filled with mature (hammock) trees and a creek that is about 4-5 feet wide running along the edge of the yard.

The house itself has a porch swing, what appears to be a balcony/deck coming off the master? bedroom, has a basement/storm shelter,  finished attic, nice kitchen, good size livingroom, awesome country views, etc etc. Of course we need to get in to actually check out the rooms upstairs, etc.

Anyways, that is where we stand right now.
Cross your fingers and wish us luck.
I'm so tired of looking.