How to deal with an angry, aggressive neighbor

Clear to close

At last. After a seemingly eternal loan application process we are cleared to close on our new house.

It's not a beautiful home - yet. We will begin the renovations next week!

Now, just to endure our current neighbor situation. It'll all be over soon!

Claire's 7th Birthday Party

Movie Night

Moments

Feeling a bit lonely. Matt's been spending 16 hours a day in downtown Chicago at a conference. My babysitting job has become full time. I also have a new job: applying for a FHA 203K loan.

I find myself checking my email a lot, unable to sit still, pacing and generally restless. I'm drinking a lot of tea. I'm cruising my new favorite blog. I'm cleaning and doing laundry at night and making lunches for the girls at 10:30, not wanting to go to bed by myself.

Today I found joy in a moment of sunshine, happy kids after school and a feeling of Spring in the air. I'm encouraged that this is the last day of my alone-ness. All will be well.

love for my van

I've been hating my mini-van lately. Just dreading getting into it, buying gas for it and driving it now every day to get the girls from school. I caught myself dreaming of a sedan or even a subaru - anything but this annoying van.

Then the van broke. I drove on it for weeks, enduring jerking starts and unpredictable lurching. I figured it was the cold and it would just go away. But, it could wait no more - I almost hit someone because of the lurching from 1st to 2nd gear. So, we took it to the shop. They couldn't figure it out and were prepared to charge us $200 just for looking. Seriously?

Then, after a lot of prayer on our part, the technician found a service bulletin addressing the very problem our van was having. And it was going to covered under our powertrain warranty. That means free!

And they gave us a rental car. Which would have been nice but it was a Chevy Impala and I often have 4 kids to move around nowadays. Ugh. And - Impala's suck. Big time. I won't go into details. We had it for 4 days. Four long days.

As soon as I got the call from the shop saying my van was done, I got all the kids in the car and went straight to get it. I never missed a van so much. I won't complain anymore. Everyone has a seat, I have somewhere to put my purse again and it actually moves when you press on the gas pedal (no more lurching).