Would you rather be right or have a relationship?

This last week has been pretty hectic.  We have been searching for a new car for Tina and out to get the best deal for the money.  We have test driven several and came close to buying on the weekend.   But the dealership and I couldn't come to an agreement on the price.  

I explored the idea of going back to school to finish my degree.   If I was to continue I would need 7 classes left to graduate.   I feel like it is a good time to finish it only because I have not found a job as of yet.   However is sure isn't a good time for it financially though.    I still have not made up my mind as of yet but today I am leaning on not continuing though.

On Sunday we went to church that we are thinking may be our new church home.   When we were in the new member’s inquiry class, the pastor made an interesting comment that really hit home for me.

She was explaining about how the UCC churches when through a time of struggle were some churches didn't want to be all inclusive like some were.   The two sides couldn't really come to term with each other.  At one of their yearly meetings one of the ministers gave a sermon entitled “Would you rather be right or have a relationship”.    

I really find this to be really true in my life.  In the past I always would rather be right and didn't care if a relationship would suffer.    But I am finding now that I am becoming more interested in a relationship then being right.    I have a few toxic relationships in my life currently and am wondering about maybe focusing in on just the relationship and not being right.   I think partially on my side of the relationship I have been not so open because I was more worried about being right on a few issues that I clearly believed to be wronged.    So I am thinking that maybe I will try a new approach to these relationships.

New Soccer Mom on the loose!

Life’s changes have really hit our family in the last few weeks.  Christa has started her new school and is really enjoying it.  They have no bus services though so it is requiring us to take her to and from school.   Brenna has started her college career at Winthrop as well, when looking for a place to live we had originally wanted to live close to the university so that she could just walk to school.  But unfortunately we did not and we are a ways away from the school so we have to work her into the schedule of getting to school as well.    Tina also has changes as well, she just recently got offered a new job and will be starting this week J   Congrats to her for sure, I think this will be her dream job finally.

 So my point to all this rambling is that I have gone from a being a sole income provider and traveling mom to Soccer Mom in a month’s time.  The only thing I need is a SUV or wagon, the Jetta doesn't fit in with the image though.

 It has been a huge adjustment to say the least, and I have to laugh because it is the last thing I ever expected in life.   I really do enjoy the time that I get to spend with our family though.   We are getting ready to purchase another car so maybe we should get a car so I can truly fit in as a Soccer Mom.

Out with the old and in with the new

Well I feel a little stressed today.   It may be self imposed stress though, but I have a big list of things to get done before I leave for work tomorrow.  I cleaned the house yesterday and really focused on getting things like cleaning the stove and scrubbing off all the hard water marks in the showers.   I want it to be a little easier to clean when we move out to your new home next month.    One of the things that I have been worried about was getting rid of our old couches and glider chair that we have had in our sun room for a while not knowing what to do with.  As I was cleaning the house I had a idea of what to do with them, I vacuumed them and spayed some Fabreze on then and moved them out to the front yard with a sign that said FREE.   We live on a major road so there are a lot of people driving by all the time.  In the first 15 minutes someone had picked up the glider rocker.  It took a few hours and someone took the sofa and loveseat.  I’m happy that they went to someone’s house and will get some more use.    We still have a refrigerator and a ping pong table to sell and 2 window air conditioners to sell before we move yet.  I think that I will try to sell them on Craig’s list.

We have moved countless times across country, so our family is not new to the stresses of moving.  It still doesn’t make it any easier though.   This move we have really involved everyone much more than in the past moves.  In the house hunting everyone has been involved in choosing our place to live.  For me the real stress is to come though.  The packing and moving part doesn’t really bother me too much.  I think the most stressful part is getting adjusted to the new town.  Finding a new church, making new friends, finding new doctors, making new friends is what bothers me the most in moves.  It is also a great opportunity to look at areas in our life that we want to improve on, and make those changes.

I am very excited for the fresh start for our family.  

The hunt is over finally

In my last post I was pretty positive that we have found the right home for us.  I was pretty excited but in the end it didn’t end up working out for us.  I was really bummed because I seemed to fit all of our needs except it turned out that they didn't like cats.  Brenna has had her cat for 10 years, and we just were not going to give her up.

This week was stressful once again in that I felt like I was starting from scratch looking for a place to live.   Brenna and I started to take trips up to Rock Hill and started looking again, between Craig’s list and local rental companies.  Each time we go up there it is such a long day, it is a 2 ½ hour drive each way and after the week before taking 3 trips up there I really was not interested in doing a trip on Monday in any way.  Monday we didn’t find much that interested us, Wednesday we found 2 houses that interested us but we couldn’t look at the inside but I called and made appointments to look at them on Friday. 

Brenna and I drove up Friday and got to the 1^st house to look at and as we were looking in the windows waiting for the person to come and show us the house I got a email from her that she was sorry for the short notice but she had rented it this morning.   We went and got the new listings from the few local rental companies and sat and had lunch feeling pretty low that we were having such a hard time finding home.   After lunch we took a drive by a few homes on the lists killing time before seeing the last house at 6pm.  We met the person at the house just before 6pm, she seemed like such a nice lady.  She opened up the house and we took a walk around it.  The last renter had just moved out and had left it so clean.   We had seen this house from outside and really like it, and the inside was just as nice.  So we decide to rent this one.  It is funny it really doesn’t fit all our needs like some of the other houses that we have looked out.  It is  not close to Brenna’s school, and is not in the school that we thought we wanted for Christa.  But it works for the animals and is in a great area to live and really quiet.  It sits on 7 acres of land.  It yard makes our current yard tiny, I’m so glad we have a riding mower! I will be putting it to a good use now.   It turns out that this house is really opposite of what we were looking for but it turned out to be perfect match for our needs.  Our struggle for find the right place to live is finally over, now the next struggle of getting packed and moved is yet to come.