On the market

 There are two options for our hypothetical acreage dream.

1) An acreage we can get for around 100,000 that's very dated or needs a lot of work, but livable. That way we'd eliminate our mortgage debt and be able to send that cash toward fixing it up. This is probably the husband's favorite option.

2) An acreage we can get for more our current house price (or slightly more if Matthew's income goes up with a job change) that needs very little done to it and is instantly livable. With all the correct number of bedrooms and bathrooms.

Our realtor sent us one today that was over 280,000. A little 5 acre one out by a town that's basically a suburb of our larger town-city-thing. It looks like a tree-covered patch in a quilt that is basically a field.

I'd be interested to see it, but I'm guessing it wouldn't work. First off, it has three bedrooms. We need at least four, 1 - me and the husband, 2 - the two older girls, 3 - the baby, 4 - Aunt Joy the Senior. She's the husband's sister, and Joy-the-baby inherited her middle name. I can't have the baby in with the older girls, or in my room. Aunt Joy Sr needs her own room. Also, the place has one 3/4 bath and one 1/2 bath. So basically, one shower.

No.

Aunt Joy Sr really needs her own 3/4 bath.

And Grace freaks out in the shower. Some sort of sensory thing?

Also, it's much easier to bathe three girls in one tub than to do individual showers, or a plastic tub in a shower, or whatever. Our old house didn't have a tub and we made do, but mass washing children is both more efficient in both water and mess localization, and more entertaining for the kids themselves. Bathing one child in a plastic tub or showering with them was ok. Three? That takes a veritable assembly line.

So something would have to be done right away. And at that price? I would guess we don't have much money to throw at renovation.

But still. I'd like to look. Even if we have to move out of our town-city.