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.