Selling the house
We've decided to sell our house this summer. We've been talking about doing it in Spring 2013 for quite awhile but a perfect storm of events led us to realize that now is a better time than later. Here are the advantages to selling now:
No more maintenance
House looks good with fresh outdoor paint and pretty summer flowers/landscaping
Lawn is green
Get the money now so we know what we have to work with
Don't have to try to sell/buy at the same time
No more fees for HOA, taxes etc
Get Charlotte and Valerie into the same school as each other
The school thing: Madeline is done with high school and starting community college, so we no longer care about being in the same high school district. And for Charlotte and Valerie- well, kindergarten is weird in Johnson County. You can get half day kindy for free, but it's a 2 1/2 hour program with no buses. You can get full day kindy if you're willing to pay for it ($300 a month) and if you win a "lottery" for the limited number of spaces. With full day kindy you can use the school bus, but that is $280 a year, per child. The whole thing is ridiculous considering that our property taxes were close to $5000 last year.
I'd love to homeschool again but it is not realistic right now for several reasons. I was so busy last year with nursing school that there were days I'd come home, dead tired, prepare some dinner for everyone, have the energy to read one bedtime story to the kids, then drag my way through my homework for the next day before I collapsed in my bed. Andrew's still traveling quite a bit (this week we got home from Denver late Thursday night, and he's flying to Orlando on Monday, for example) and with Madeline in college now, I can't count on her as much for supplemental child care as I could when she had basically the same schedule that Charlotte and Valerie had...and certainly not for any help with homeschooling them. There is more but I feel stressed even thinking about it right now so I'm moving on with just a final "homeschooling: maybe in our future, but not this year".
So, school for the girls: we've decided that we're going to rent a place, probably a townhouse or duplex, right across the street from an elementary school in a different school district (Shawnee Mission instead of Olathe) where the fees are much lower and where Valerie will be guaranteed a kindergarten spot. We're also renting a storage unit for any "stuff" we won't have room for in the townhouse but that we think we'll want in our next home...Christmas and other holiday decorations, Andrew's garage workbench and most of his tools, most of our yard maintenance stuff, things like that.
I'm being summoned to play a game with the family so that's it for now, but I'll be back to this topic often, I'm sure :)
No more maintenance
House looks good with fresh outdoor paint and pretty summer flowers/landscaping
Lawn is green
Get the money now so we know what we have to work with
Don't have to try to sell/buy at the same time
No more fees for HOA, taxes etc
Get Charlotte and Valerie into the same school as each other
The school thing: Madeline is done with high school and starting community college, so we no longer care about being in the same high school district. And for Charlotte and Valerie- well, kindergarten is weird in Johnson County. You can get half day kindy for free, but it's a 2 1/2 hour program with no buses. You can get full day kindy if you're willing to pay for it ($300 a month) and if you win a "lottery" for the limited number of spaces. With full day kindy you can use the school bus, but that is $280 a year, per child. The whole thing is ridiculous considering that our property taxes were close to $5000 last year.
I'd love to homeschool again but it is not realistic right now for several reasons. I was so busy last year with nursing school that there were days I'd come home, dead tired, prepare some dinner for everyone, have the energy to read one bedtime story to the kids, then drag my way through my homework for the next day before I collapsed in my bed. Andrew's still traveling quite a bit (this week we got home from Denver late Thursday night, and he's flying to Orlando on Monday, for example) and with Madeline in college now, I can't count on her as much for supplemental child care as I could when she had basically the same schedule that Charlotte and Valerie had...and certainly not for any help with homeschooling them. There is more but I feel stressed even thinking about it right now so I'm moving on with just a final "homeschooling: maybe in our future, but not this year".
So, school for the girls: we've decided that we're going to rent a place, probably a townhouse or duplex, right across the street from an elementary school in a different school district (Shawnee Mission instead of Olathe) where the fees are much lower and where Valerie will be guaranteed a kindergarten spot. We're also renting a storage unit for any "stuff" we won't have room for in the townhouse but that we think we'll want in our next home...Christmas and other holiday decorations, Andrew's garage workbench and most of his tools, most of our yard maintenance stuff, things like that.
I'm being summoned to play a game with the family so that's it for now, but I'll be back to this topic often, I'm sure :)