The boys are sleeping and so is Josh. I should be sleeping too, but it's only 9:30 and I'm not tired enough to sleep. Too much on my mind tonight. I still have so much to get done and only 3 weeks to do it in.

Today Josh decided that he wanted to move into our new house tonight. It was the only day that his buddy Ash could help him with all the big stuff. So he's exhausted from moving all evening. ...I can hear him snoring now...

I'm sitting on our couch in the middle of our new living room. I'm surrounded by boxes that I'm dying to unpack... I'm holding off on that because I don't want to wake anyone up. We don't have cable yet (or even the DVD player hooked up).  I don't know where anything is at yet... and we still have a lot sitting at our old apartment. So I'm bored with nothing else to do.

I've decided that I hate moving. I guess not so much the packing or the unpacking... more like all the little junk that gets left behind at the old place and it never seems to end. That and the cleaning of the old place. I already know they're going to charge a ridiculous amount of money to clean it. When they were going over the checklist of what we could get changed with, it sounded like their minds we already made up...

Automatic $120 if the cleaning crew has to come in to clean one spot off the wall.
$175 if the place needs to be cleaned all over.
$50 if they have to touch up paint at all. (Unfortunately for us I know they're going to have to... our baby gate took a chunk of paint right off. That's what happens when you put 50 coats of paint on one wall...)
$200 if they have to paint the whole apartment.

$50 if the carpets need to be cleaned.

...and the list goes on...

I'll be headed over to the apartment almost every night after the kids go to bed. I don't wanna, but I'd rather keep our charges at a minimum.

Anyway, enough about me. I think I'll go catch up on my blog reading. :) Something I haven't been able to do for awhile. I'll update this with pictures of the new place soon!

A few weeks ago Josh went on a trip to Saint Louis, MO. He was there for a job interview... and unfortunately he didn't get the job.

No biggie...

We've decided that with the economy the way that it is and with the HVAC industry being in it's slow time of year we're going to be putting our St. Louis plans on hold. Just for the time being. This Summer when business starts picking back up we'll try again.

So for now we'll be staying in San Diego. I'm not really complaining though. Beach, mountains, desert, nice weather, sea world, zoo... Could be worse. ;)

We are moving though.... down the street and around the corner into a house with a garage, washer/dryer hookups and a yard. The bedrooms are a bit smaller than where we're at, but we'll have a yard to play in to make up for it! Moving day is next weekend, the 27th!

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In other news, my ex-husband returned from Japan sometime this month. I got a text from him the other day and we talked briefly on the phone... Apparently he and New Wife aren't hitting it off so well and they're getting a divorce. (Can I just shout out a BIG, "I TOLD YOU SO!"???) Does everyone else see the pattern now? Get them pregnant, marry them and leave them before the baby is even a year old. (For the record, our marriage was actually planned, babies were planned... and some how I managed to last 6+ years before I got cut. Wife #1 and #3, not so lucky.)

Now I'm just feeling really sorry for the guy. It's sort of hard to explain. I guess I'm feeling sorry because he just seems so lost. He's 28 years old, married 3 times and has 4 boys that he'll probably never get to know.

I wrote this in a letter to him just over a year ago... (December 2008)

"I really hope you've thought long and hard about all of this before you decided to give up your chance at being a family with us. It would be incredibly sad if you decided a month or 6 months or a year from now that you've made a huge mistake... because by then the damage will have been done and the 3 of us will have moved on with our lives without you."

Wow.

The job search isn't going too well. Josh heard back from several companies, but they weren't offering him the pay and benefits he'd like. He makes pretty good money here (with some awesome benefits) in San Diego and they're offering him jobs for $12 and $15 per hour with little to no benefits. That's a huge pay cut and I can understand why he doesn't want to do it.... Even if it all balances out in the end. Less pay, less cost of living and less rent. We'd be almost as well off as we are here. However, we're moving to Saint Louis in hopes of being be one step up from where we are here. We don't want to be stuck in a little apartment forever.

It's looking more and more like we'll be staying here in SD for the time being and saving every penny we have. At least until Josh gets a good job offer. He's applied to and contacted (via me) almost 200 different companies in Saint Louis County. So we're still crossing our fingers that he hears back from a good one.

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In other news, I heard from the Ex yesterday. I guess we screwed up our 2008 taxes and we're being audited. :( He said we owe them quite a chunk of change. I'm worried that since Josh and I haven't received our return yet that they're going to take the money straight out of there. (Darn you EX... and doing your taxes in mid January! He already got his back...) We'll still have money left over, but it would definitely affect our plans to move. Less money back on the return = more money we are going to have to save up... If we have to stay here for a bit longer I'm gonna want to move out of this apartment which probably means having to sign another lease. We'd stay where we're at, but I'm really not liking this apartment any more. There's so much awful going on here that I just don't have the energy to list it all. (Just to name a few: Leaky fixtures that they don't seem to know how to fix. Neighbors that party and smoke RIGHT outside our door. Dog poop every where you look - and step! Never any hot water - We take luke warm showers. Washing machines that only do half loads -Sick of paying $60+/month to do our laundry!) The only real upsides to living where we are is that it's only a 5-10 minute drive to work for Josh AND we have central heat and air.

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I'm still on my mini blogging break. I just felt like updating. Not sure if I'll ever get back into blogging as much as I was. It was taking up a lot of my time and I'd much rather be spending that time with my kids and Josh. :)

*By the way, weight loss is going pretty well!! Lost about 6lbs so far!*

Kind of.

I think I'll be taking a little mini-blogging break for awhile. I'm sure I'll be back, but for now almost all of my free time is being spent preparing for our move to Saint Louis.

Right now Josh and I are sending out his resume to HVAC companies in the area. So far we're not having much luck... As soon as he can land a good job then we're outta here! We were approved for the townhouse that we applied for as long as he can prove that he has a job set up out there prior to moving.

I'm thinking that the actual move itself will be taking place in about March or April. Wish us luck! I have so much to do before we leave San Diego!

I know I've been a bit MIA from the blogsphere this past week... That's only because I've been super busy doing some research on what we will be calling our new home. Remember when I mentioned moving to Saint Louis, Missouri awhile back? (No? Ok, well I did... lol) Josh and I have been talking about moving to Saint Louis for awhile now....

And now, it's actually starting to become a reality!

Our good friends who just moved back there were finally able to get their own place in these cute lil townhomes. We took a look at them online... liked the location, loved the pictures, loved the surroundings... so we decided to go for it.

On Tuesday I e-mailed the property and told them our situation and let them know that we couldn't be out there until July. I mainly wanted to know if our dogs were going to be accepted. I know out here it can be hard to find any where that will take a dog over 30 pounds... and even harder, one that will take two dogs! (Not to mention that Harley is still a puppy...) Anyway, I got an e-mail back telling me that we can apply for a townhouse as early as that day! I talked things over with Josh and we applied online last night.

This morning I e-mailed them all the necessary documents and now I'm playing the waiting game. We should be able to find out today if we're approved or not. If we are then we can be put on a waiting list for a 3 bedroom. They don't come up often so we're able to get first dibs if one pops up around the time we'll be moving. If there's none open we'll just move into a 2 bedroom. Both have washer/dryer hook-ups in the units. (Very excited about that!)

Once we have this place secured Josh can start looking for a job in the surrounding area. We might be doing things a little backwards, but I will feel better knowing we have a place to move into... Now he has about 5 and a half months to figure out where he'll be working.

Oh my gosh, we're really doing this... Starting to feel a little bit more real now... I'm so ready though.