My Kids Hold Snakes!

I love that I am "that mom" - the mom that, even though the thought of a snake winding back and forth through my front lawn used to scare the bejesus out of me, I now can stand by and encourage my children to pick up garter snakes. We were at Grandma's yesterday and a little snake, maybe a foot long, was out front and although you could tell he was nervous, Drake picked the snake up and held it. He even handed it off to Cora for a bit. After we explored the snake for a bit and everyone pet it and held it...we walked it back to a wooded area and set it free.

Yesterday - we also went to Mark's parents house in the morning to celebrate his brother's birthday. Afterward, we replanted our two pawpaw trees and our McIntosh apple tree (that Tiff got me for Mother's Day) - we also cut back one of our trees (the other McIntosh) because a good majority of the tree is dead and I don't want that to hurt the rest of the tree. We trimmed back some of the garden out front and went to the home depot to get some shelving and a 2x4 to finish off Tiff's bed. That's right, we made a bed for Tiffany. She had been crashing on a mattress on the floor in the kids' room - during the day she'd lean it against a wall, Murphy bed style, but we wanted her to have a space to call her own. We built a platform bed out of 2x4s and plywood. We built the legs tall enough that she could slide LARGE totes under the bed for storage. I think it turned out really well.

We have a busy month planned for May, including another work trip to PA, a Dayton Dragon's game, kids field trips, a visit to COSI in Columbus and more.

On the house hunting front...Since our credit score didn't budge a bit, we are working with the lender to see if someone would be willing to make an exception. We've submitted our cancelled rent checks for the last 12 months, a letter of recommendation from our landlord and a completed rental verification form from the landlord. Suggestions I have for anyone trying to buy house without stellar credit - keep copies of your cancelled rent checks (since this isn't something that we normally do, we had to go into our bank branch to get copies older than six months - since our bank will archive the last six months online). They also ask for copies of bank statements and paychecks - AND tax return forms. We started a folder and keep all this paperwork together. Each month, we just add new copies of everything. There is obviously a reason that we haven't qualified yet. Perhaps work or life has some changes coming in store for our family. Perhaps a different house is coming on the market. Perhaps we've found the right house, but need to wait until the sellers are ready to lower the price. Who knows? This is such a wild ride...can't wait to see where life takes us.