NEXT!

 right now I am sitting in my living room coughing and trying to breathe better.. Kids are at school husband and youngest are napping.. it is peaceful and quiet and is about to end because in about 20 minutes I have to wake them to get going to Dr appointments.

So what has happened.. what has not happened! so lets start on a peaceful freezing Tuesday evening right before bedtime...OUR Darn stove pipe on our basement wood stove falls off! Of course it has a roaring fire in it, as we were getting ready for bed.. My husband is down there trying to put the thing back on, smoke is filling the house, i am rushing around opening doors and windows, getting the kids up and locked in my room with towels under the door, they actually ended up in my closet with rags on their faces..
I go down stairs to try to get the dam pipe on, to find out it is rusted and broken off! again smoke is still pouring out no place to take logs as their is no external exit from this basement... we had to toss water on the fire to get it out to get the smoke out of the house! OF course even more smoke and it is billowing everywhere, Joe and I can not see to get out of basement... youngest is crying because his eyes hurt, they are too afraid to go outside by themselves, and they were already in Pj's, thank the Lord it was not worse.... NO fans to be found to push smoke out, only a very small natural gas heater on the far wall of the living room to attempt to keep a 4 bedroom 2 story home warm. we slept in the living room all smashed together on the floor with all the blankets.. some how they slept, I meanwhile was staying up to be sure everyone was ok and no more smoke appeared...

Of course we all had massive headaches, congestion and dizziness come to find out that we all got carbon monoxide poisoning  OOHHH I am pissed. of course our lovely landlord comes at 9 am the next day to attempt to fix the issue. Raised a fit because he had to purchase a new stove pipe.. and it took him till 1pm to get it attached because he is a "man" and would not take direction from anyone... Ya I gave him a piece of my mind about him being a slum lord and having to take care of things.. blah blah blah...
so I finally get the fire back and working thank heaven because Wednesday night brought the ice storm.
NO school on Thursday or Friday, I am  guessing with all the partial melt off we had 3 inches of ice not counting all the snow. ccoold!
Kids fought like crazy all weekend, mainly because we are all still sick, and the huge boredom factor of being stuck inside because it is to cold to do anything.

church was peaceful on Sunday, ended up being a substitute for the 3-4yr old children's class. I loved it even if they did end up taking turns playing Mr Potato head on my phone. We came home changed our clothing and went to our friends for dinner, and to pick up another donation to our family. Which means we took the trailer with us.. First thing that happens is Joe overshoots a driveway to turn around in and gets our van stuck in a ditch, not just a little, NOOO because he is a "man" and can not listen to anyone when they suggest stop so it is not worse, nooo they know how to freaking drive! ya ya ya, we were stuck up to the running board on the back end!
Kids and I went into the house and left it to the "men" to get unstuck, I had enough for one day.. dinner was nice, LOVE her homemade wheat rolls! and the chair we picked up is comfy too..
OH and Joe has a job. not a perfect job but  job enough to help make the ends meet a bit closer in the middle.. thank the Lord for that...
So we are still here, ready and waiting for whatever comes at us....
NEXT

2 weeks later.....

So today is the 2 week in Missouri mark.. What a hectic two weeks! The house is cleaned up and organized as much as I can get it organized. However every time i think it is done enough, I find or acquire some new shelf or thingy that makes things better. Hooray for that but booger cause I am the one re arranging so our life it better. Seems like these past two weeks I have put things away at least 3 times..both good and annoying as Hockey sticks cause it seems the work is never done..

 Any way.....The person who owns the home we are in kept telling us about his other home and how much we will love it, kept mentioning big fire place white picket fence in the country. Talking all about the basement, big kitchen blah blah blah.. So finally we consented to "looking" at the home and I spoke with the woman who lived there with her 4 kids.. she had nothing nice to say about the house, saying the landlord would not fix anything.. giant rats in all the walls and cockroaches.. all I saw was her garbage all over the yard.
Our landlord kept up badgering us with looking so we looked at it with him what were we thinking...

HOLY COW! The stink slams you in the face the second you enter the front door. Filth and garbage and left over food all over the place.Some sort of nasty looking stuff on most of the walls.. Black mold in kitchen, laundry and part of living room. layers of grime and filth on counter and stove, which was missing several knobs. We are literally stepping over and around piles of just  unbelievable stuff, while he goes on and on about how nice this place is and he is going to fix it up before we move in...

I am thinking to myself this guy is nuts and the home is a dump.. I am politely looking around I finally get to the bedrooms.. One is half full of believe it or not CLEAN laundry. The other had 4 twin mattresses in it. They were clean unstained and not holed up or anything.
What a strange thing to find in all the other examples of what kind of people they were..
I could go on and on with details, but if you have ever seen what bad people leave behind you know what I am talking about..the point is that we were welcome to the beds and clothing IF we helped clean it all up..
It took us 2 hours just to clean up the filth in the house, mind you this is with  4 people helping!
We ended up with 3 twin beds(no box springs for 2) a couple of shelves/stands and an awesome family sized crock pot. OH and the bonus gift the nasty kitchen stove!

Beds cleaned up with out an issue, disinfectant and febreeze and they are like new spring air mattresses . Kids are happy because they had been sleeping on futons on the floor.. So re arranging the home AGAIN. the stands cleaned up well and went to the kids rooms ( did I mention they are upstairs) for their things.

drug the futon cushions down, went outside and considered the "stove"
After about an hour of trying to get the pans clean and the top with the knobs, the land lord comes to get us new pans! I was a bit pissed cause he had not mentioned that when we picked it up. he came back with knobs and pans. so I was glad..
It took about 3 more hours to get is where it was usable .. literally 3 hours. It was if no one had cleaned it in years....but finally we have a working stove! now this seems silly to be happy about, but I have literally not had a working stove for nearly 2 years. I have used an electric skillet, a medium sized crock pot and 2 plug in burners to cook all our meals...
My list of "to bake" is near a mile long! LOL but I am thankful that we have one that works..

As far as the clothing goes,, we found several shirts and a few shorts and jeans for my youngest.. A couple T shirts for my 9 year old and shorts. 2 t shirts for my daughter even a skirt for myself. Not to bad for sorting it and passing it forward..

the list of small blessings that have come into our life here is amazing. Everything has been free or near free, near meaning we work in exchange for somethings..
I never thought we would end up like this, but even though I was scared as hell ( shoot I said hell :) when things went south, I think I am glad we landed here. Now if only we can find work...
I promise I will get the "family" tab filled out soon..Thanks for reading.

Even the best made plans CRASH

GRRRRR AAAAHHHHH bleepinn bleep bleep!
Ok so if you could not tell I am VERY angry, but trying hard to get over it...
Lets start at the beginning of your travels.  IT took a bit longer than I expected... I had more stuff than I thought, so things got left behind..and we were still smashed in the van and the trailer was full, well sort of.. I do not know why Joe did not stack things as I suggested, meaning double stack the totes I packed.. then everything I needed would be here!

SOOO the property I was so excited about, the one I had researched and knew of several people who had purchased their property through the same company... WHAT A LIE!
 was supposed to be able to access my property by car. NOT  They showed a photo of a mall sink hole type area with garbage in it.. If only that were the case! TRY a HUGE GULLY with long trenches and drop offs full of trash!
ALSO we were supposed to be able to swap equity if we did not like the property, meaning we could switch our land and continue payments thus owning a different piece of land... WRONG the guy was a jerk! refused to allow us to trade, refused to reimburse us, refused to hold our deposit until another property became listed.. this is just the top of this battle! I am going to the BBB and getting a lawyer..

NOW back to the nitty gritty..
We had planned for a cabin on our land, but since we could not get to the land, NO cabin

so we had two choices try to camp, in below freezing or pay for a hotel until our money ran out..
we came prepared mostly to camp so that was our goal. WE received a phone call from our church and they were upset we were considering camping and asked to meet with us.. SO off we went to meet them..
Now I do  not want people to get the wrong impression of my church, but the people I met were RUDE! accused me of not needing a nice house and implied we were careless and did not plan well enough and such... needless to say this pissed me off and I  said as much.. They sent us down the road to the next Church building. 
SOOO these people are seemingly nicer. There is a member who has rentals and one just happened to be open.. and said we were welcome.. I was afraid we would have to take our pets to the shelter, and was upset, but he is an animal lover and was fine..

The HOUSE IS NASTY DIRTY.. or at least it was.. just to point out the main gross me out points.. cockroach bodies, layers of dirt and grease on floor in kitchen. nasty stains in bathroom..

I could go on and on, but I will not because a wonderful sister and her children came and helped me get the place into shape! Much better and livable now..
We have had donations of beds and new pillows, got the kids enrolled in school, which they seem to like.
So the next thing was off to Joes job.. OH ya the run around to find out they filled his job the Friday before even after knowing we would be here Monday!
so job hunting and trying to adjust in a place I did not expect,  just trying to make it home..
Guess I am still looking for home.....