Another Never Say Never

I know I said it last time. It being never moving again and the other it being never move into a brand new house again. You see, this is my sixth, yes that is right, sixth brand new house. I have been the proud owner of 2 brand new houses in Seattle area, 3 brand new houses in California, and now this brand new house in Mississippi. And while they are nice in that everything is brand spanking new, they come with their own inherent problems. Like, for the past 6 days, I have had no power in my bathrooms and the builder could not figure out why. The outlets were just dead. That was finally fixed yesterday.

Another problem we have occured is I guess since the hurricane here, the phone company just has not had the time to keep up with all the demands of fixing what was damaged and all the new subdivisions popping up all over town, mine included. So for the time being until they can get somebody here to bury phone cable (hopefully before the year 2007, but we shall see), my phone cable is running out my back yard and down the back yards of my neighbors to the main road. Yeah, I give it two weeks until it gets cut by some neighbor cutting his grass.

There is also all the stuff that you just don't have when moving into a new house like window coverings. Right now we are using the old fashioned sheet tacked up in front of the windows method. Lovely. And I give us about another month of that fashionable look until we get blinds/shutters put up.

Yesterday was a day from hell. I had scheduled the new furniture to be delivered, the new appliances to be delivered, and the satellite tv guy to come and hook us up. And yes they all showed up within 30 minutes of each other, and not just them either. No, I had to throw in the electrician guy fixing my dead bathroom outlets AND the phone guy stringing my phone cable out my backyard. Can you say insane assylum cause that is where I felt like going after all that. Oh and throw in an ahem "nice" chat on the phone with Jim's ex to top my day off. Yes, alcohol was consumed last night by the way.

Today, I am hoping to go enroll Jack into a preschool. I finally found a part-time preschool. It is about 30-40 minutes away, but it is worth it just to be Jack-free for 6 whole hours a week right now. He is so pushing my buttons right now and NOT listening to me. He even looks at me daring me to do something when he is doing something he shouldn't be doing. Yes, he got swatted on the butt many a time yesterday. I know that he is feeling out of his element, but with everything going on, I do not need him to be turning into a devil child in front of my eyes. So the preschool is Monday and Wednesday mornings for 3 hours and when I called yesterday, they had just one opening in the two year old class. I practically jumped through the phone telling her I would take the slot. So I am going there today to enroll him and he starts on Monday. And thank goodness Jim has this weekend off because I seriously might have dropped the child off at the nearest corner and ran away! Just kidding, mostly.

We are in!

Well we got into the house. We closed Friday afternoon and it has been a huge whirlwind since then. We just got our cable internet hooked up yesterday, so I was without internet for almost 5 days! GAH! And we still do not have our tv hooked up, hopefully today. We haven't watched any tv in over 2 weeks and I can say that I am having withdrawals.

The movers came with all of our stuff on Saturday. My mother-in-law and sister-in-law came down to help me with Jack and unpack because Jim had to work that day. I do not know what I would of done without them. They were so great in keeping Jack busy and they unpacked my entire kitchen before the movers were even done with everything! I would of probably been in tears by the end of the day without them for sure. As it was, I was so sore the next day, I could hardly walk!

We have been busy trying to settle in and unpack. Our garage is about 1/3rd the size of our old garage, which makes things interesting. I don't think we will be parking in the garage for many months to come, if ever. My kitchen is absolutely huge with so many cabinets that I actually have empty cabinets! Gasp!

We also contracted to put a fence up. I was feeling so exposed with no fence because the people behind us who own the lake, are always driving right near our back of the house. I also have people coming to give me estimates about putting blinds/shutters in and doing a closet system in our closet. Our closet is half of what we used to have, which again makes things very interesting.

Oh and we also started to paint inside last night. We are having our new furniture delivered today and since I didn't want to move the huge entertainment system to paint behind it, I decided to paint that wall last night. And of course, it was a fiasco. I bought a quart of the paint to sample the color, then we went back yesterday to get another gallon. Well it turns out that the quart was two shades lighter than the gallon and I had to repaint the section of the wall that was painted with the quart. I did that at 6 am this morning, so now we have all one color on our wall, which is always a good thing.

I was going to start on the kitchen today, but decided that I just didn't want to deal with more paint for awhile. I decided to paint the kitchen a bright yellow.

Oh and during all this, Jack has decided to turn on the terrible twos big time. He has been a devil child and will not listen to anything either one of us says. And then the screaming, whining, and pouting that ensues is so much fun to deal with. I know that he feels out of his element and is probably confused about the whole thing. We did get his room sorta settled and all of his toys are in his room now. Of course, he has to strew the toys everywhere. You can't even see the floor right now.

I did find a mothers group in the area. I am going to meet them tomorrow for lunch at McDonald's playland. It looks like they have a ton of stuff to do and activities for the kids. I think we need to take a day off from unpacking and actually have fun. I have been trying to find a preschool to put Jack into a couple days a week with no luck. All of them are full time only and the mothers morning out program is totally full for the time being. So I guess I have Jack full time right now.

I promise I will post pictures in the next few days. I just don't want to take any pictures with boxes everywhere and outside the builder has a pile of pallets stacked in front of our house that is not very attractive. Of course they say they will take care of them, but that was 3 days ago. We shall see. I am getting mad about it now because I found out that is the reason why we are not getting any mail because they are blocking the mail box. UGH. It is always something I tell ya.

Anyway, that is the latest and it is really great to be back into the internet blog world again!

So far so good

It is 10 am and so far no glitches for the closing this afternoon. In fact the closer even called and said it was a go for launch! Still not gonna believe it until we get the actual keys though.

I have spent the last two hours on the phone getting the phone, satellite tv, cable internet, power, water/sewer and any other company that bills us monthly. Geesh that is work! So I think we have everything ready to go. Our cable internet won't be installed until Tuesday, so there will probably be no more updates until then. Hopefully next time I sign on is at our new house - finally!

We jumped the hurdles ... maybe

I think that if we stand on our head, shake our feet, and jump around in a circle 12 times, we might just might close on our house today. Of course yesterday I was feeling good about the whole thing until the closer called and said "oh didn't you know, we need X piece of paper". I go "uhhhhhh nope did not know that. Ummmmm don't have that particular piece of paper." After which she responded "well the close hinges on that piece of paper." And I go "ummmm well I guess I need to make some phone calls to get you the oh-so-very-important-can-not-live-without-that piece of paper." And she said "yep". Oh and because this is the south, she ended it with "baby" and "bless your heart" because in the south you can be rude but putting in a baby and a bless your heart makes it all okay.

But she was nice, I was just frustrated. So after maybe 4 or 5 phone calls between California and Mississippi, I do believe that they got the oh-so-very-important piece of paper.

At this very moment, we are set to close at 3pm and get our keys to our new house then. But because this has been THE wildest roller coaster ride of my entire life, I am betting on a few more glitches between now and then. But I also am betting that we actually DO get into the house today because the movers are set up to arrive first thing tomorrow morning. Of course I had to pay half of buuukoo bucks to get that to happen on a Saturday, but it was only half of the major buuukooo small fortune bucks that we would have had to pay if we did not close today. So I am happy, sorta. I do so hate to be parted with my money for stupid things like that.

Speaking of parting with my money, we went out and spent a small fortune buukkoo bucks on new furniture yesterday. We get to receive on Wednesday (Jim's birthday so I don't have to get him anything else, he gets a small fortune of furniture HA!) a new bedroom set (yay king size, Jim gets his whole side hehehe), a new dining room table with china hutch (I have never owned a china hutch before, now I do yay!) and an entertainment center for our big screen tv. The same tv that we were going to sell and buy a small fortune new tv, but because we didn't get the money we wanted for the house and the moving company is getting half of Jack's college education, decided to wait on the new tv. See, I can sacrifice.

We also have spured the economy even more by purchasing new washer, dryer and refrigerator. That was needed, well mostly. We couldn't bring our gas dryer into a no gas house (gonna miss my gas stove immensely) and the house does not have a refrigerator and well I also wanted a matching washer dryer ya know. So of course got the nice new front loading with pedastals.

Well that is the news as of right now. Jack is awake and calling me. Will try to update later.

Only a Week?

We have been here a week now and it seems a lot longer than that. We became official Mississippi residents last Friday by getting our new driver's licenses. Of course, just like in California, it was a huge long wait. Do they have some federal mandate stating that getting your driver's license must have a minimum of 2 hour wait or something? During our wait, Jack made friends with a little blonde named Hope, who was 6 months older. And when she was leavng he yelled out to her "bye girl!". Always the ladies man.

After our marathon wait at the driver's license, we headed to get our cars registered and after having dropped some serious cash (found something that is more expensive in MS than Cali) for two new license plates, we were all official and legal like in the state of Mississippi.

We spent the long weekend up at Jim's mother's house. Of course Jack was quite spoiled with all the attention from his grandmother and aunts.

Jim started his new job yesterday and got sworn in and all. I am very proud of him and he looks very dashing in his uniform.

We are hoping to be in our house by Friday. Of course that will happen if all the stars line up just right and we jump over about a thousand hurdles. If we are not able to get into the house on Friday, then we must spend about a thousand dollars for short term storage (as in 3 days) for all of our stuff. The moving company called me yesterday and said they are delivering our stuff no matter what and if we don't have a house, then all of our stuff gets unloaded into their warehouse and then loaded back up when we close probably Monday. Ugh why does everything have to be so hard and stressful. Trying to balance the builder and the mover is like doing a high wire act. And I am not very graceful!

We are staying with Jim's brother's house right now and even though they have been great to us by cooking great meals for us every night and letting our dogs run free of the house while their dogs are locked up, I still want my own house! I guess I should say I want my own bathroom more than anything. Cause I totally hate showering in somebody else's shower. I feel like I am invading their private space or something.

I have been planning in my head what I want to do with the house and how to decorate it. I even have all the paint colors planned out in my head and what theme I am going to use for the kitchen. It is really funny because the vinyl tile in the kitchen is almost exactly like what we had in our old kitchen. Hopefully someday I can replace all that out with hardwood floors, but for now they work. And the cabinets are the same cabinets except the new ones are a touch more cherry color and they actually have hardware on them. And I really didn't notice it until I was showing a friend the floor plan and she said that it was very similar to the floor plan to our old house. I guess we just know what we like and what fits for us. What I really like is that the community has a swimming pool that we can go to and wear some energy off for Jack. I will try to remember to take pictures today and post a few.

And as for Jack, well I have been trying to find a place to take him one or two mornings a week for some schooling and socialization. It seems that all the so called preschools around here are just daycares and do not have any part-time openings. However, just yesterday, I found that the church we might end up going to has what is called a "Mothers Morning Out (MMO)" program. I have never heard of that and it is just what I need to save my sanity. I didn't get all the particulars when I called because they were busy, but hopefully I can get Jack into that soon, like yesterday!

So that is our update. Really did not mean to write a novel here.

I know that we will look back and laugh...

however, I do not think that time is here yet. We made it to Mississippi last night. Let me just say if there is anybody out there thinking of doing a cross country trip with two cars, four animals, two over-stressed parents, and one toddler, just think again. No, it was not fun.

The movers left our house around 6:30 pm on Monday. It was an extremely emotional day for me. I was doing fairly good until I went to pick up Jack at daycare and that is when I lost it. She gave me a photo album of all the pictures that she took over the past two years. It was so sweet with captions and all. It was very hard saying goodbye to her.

I came home with Jack and again lost it when all the neighbors kept coming over with cookies and such to say goodbye. We had really nice neighbors. And then I lost it at the end when Jim was taking Jack through the house saying goodbye. Jack said goodbye to his room, bathroom, Sissy's room. It was heartwrenching and I just had to get out of there.

We got on the road around 7:00 and about 15 minutes into the trip, I realized that I did not have the remote to the dvd player in the van. A big uh oh cause you basically can not play any dvd that has a menu. So we pull over and start to pull all the crap out of the van in search for the golden remote. We found it and was soon back on the road.

We made it to Phoenix after midnight. I think I can honestly say that I was exhausted. Probably in my top ten times of being exhausted. Tired.

The next day we stopped in Ft. Stockton, Texas. That was quite a fun time. There we were in the room at La Quinta (very pet friendly hotel chain). All the animals, Jack, and Jim and I were sleeping and it was around midnight. All of a sudden our door opens and another family is coming into our room! Jim, in all his glory, pops out of bed and instantly thinks about the cats who could run out the door any minute. He starts to yell at the people to close the door and the stunned people run out the door fast! And no animals were hurt in the process.

Yesterday we drove 950 miles to get here in time to get the cats into the boarding kennel. We were on the road at 4 am and got here with about 30 minutes to spare before the kennel closed. We had to drop the cats off in boarding because Jim's brother's dogs are allergic to cats. Go figure.

So here we are now in our new home. The past week or so has been a huge blur. We found out that our house closed escrow yesterday and we should have our money in our bank account sometime today. We stopped and saw the new house. It is looking almost all done. They just need to do the landscaping and that is it. And I have to talk to the mortgage company about the new loan today. And Jim just left to go to the police station to show up for all his new hire stuff.

I am so looking forward to just sitting down and doing absolutely nothing, especially if it has nothing to do with driving!

This Is It

The boxes are packed. The cats are going to be drugged today and caged. The last night spent in our house is done. The day of goodbyes is done. The tears shed because of all the goodbyes are gone. Next step is Mississippi. "See Ya" in a few days.

And Now...

Ya know there has been nothing easy about this move across the country. As if any move across the country is easy. But it just seems a bit harder.

And now the latest? A Huricane! Yes that is right folks, there is a huricane heading straight for our new home. And projected landfall? The day after we get there. The day Jim has to show up at his new job. Oh and the projected strength at this time? Category 3. Yay! My first huricane!

Because of this, we plan on taking the northern route and probably stay at Jim's mother's house for a bit before venturing into the huricane's path.

Fun. Fun. Fun.

Laws of Packing

There are certain undeniable laws of packing.

1. You can NEVER have too many boxes. We went to Home Depot two days ago and bought what we thought were the last of the boxes that we would need. HA! Jim is now as we speak running to Home Depot for another box run. I *think* that this will be it. But probably not.

2. Just when you think you are done packing a room, you find more. I hate all the small stuff that you just don't know what do with. Like the 7 bars of soap under the bathroom sink. We don't use bars of soap. We use body wash. So why keep the 7 bars? My solution? Keep 2 and throw the rest away.

3. You can never have enough bubble wrap or newspaper. We have gone through 3 giant rolls of bubble wrap and 2 smaller rolls. We also have gone through the equivalent of a month's worth of newspaper.

4. This side of packing is just one big pain. But hopefully the other side will be a little bit more fun. Maybe.

7:30 AM

It is 7:30 in the morning and Jim and I have been packing for 2 1/2 hours already. So far this morning, we have finished packing the kitchen, cleaned out the refrigerator and scrubbed it out, packed up the laundry room and most of Jack's room. I would say that we are about 97% packed. Yahoo! Starting to feel semi-in-control of the situation. Sorta.

Thank goodness for Jack's daycare lady, Pat. She has taken Jack all this week so that we can get stuff done. I bought Jack a new Thomas backpack last weekend and he is so proud to wear it to her house to "go to school." He talks all the time about going to school. "I go to school Mama. Sissy goes to her school. I go to MY school. Mama when do I go to school?" Ugh. He is growing up way too fast and in three very short years he will be going for real. No I am not ready for that! But I did promise Pat that I would put him in preschool when we get to MS. She said that he is one of the smartest little boys that she has ever had and we need to cultivate that. I am going to miss Pat. She has been a huge lifesaver to me. I found her when I was desperate for daycare and she turned out to be a gold mine. Jack loves her so much and it is going to be so hard to say goodbye to her on Monday.

There are a few people that we are going to miss so much. The L family, who adopted me when I first came to California. Janet is a sister to me and they bailed me out of a lot of hairy situations over the years. But I just keep telling myself that it is not like the other side of the world, only 1800 miles.

Alright, enough of nostalgia. I need to get back to packing. The home inspector comes in 3 hours and that makes me very nervous. Always afraid of what they are going to find.

Moving Sucks!

Okay. I am tired. Very tired. I think I slept maybe 3 whole hours last night. Why you ask? Cause I had roughly 3 million things running through my mind. Want to hear just a few? Alright here goes: Things to do: call utilities, call insurance about the dented van and transferring claim to MS, forward mail, find kennel in MS to put cats in while waiting for new house, pay bills, call builder in MS, call realtor about closing issues. Things to pack: all kitchen, bathrooms, Jack's room, clean out refrigerator. Just rambling thoughts include where to put my furniture in new house, are the cats going to freak out on trip - oh yeah call vet about getting kitty drugs, have to buy disposable kitty litter boxes, on the trip we are never going to be able to go into a restaurant because of the 4 animals in the car, pack a lot of snacks on the trip, buy a lot of snacks, need to buy laundry detergent - ran out the other day, man 1800 miles is a long way to drive with 4 animals and a toddler in the van, buy more kid videos to keep toddler happy, oh yeah can't forget the snacks. Wow it is 2:30 am and I am wide awake. I might as well get up and start packing.

That is basically my night last night. I am tired. Moving sucks. Do not let me do this for at least another decade. Seriously.

I Think I Am Going To Throw Up

That is the phrase I used many many times today. After countless phone calls between us and our agent, our agent and their agent, and I think 3 different counter counter counter offers, we SOLD THE HOUSE! Of course they are getting one heck of a deal, but we are getting out of here in 7 days! Movers are scheduled to come on Monday and we are out of here late Monday or early Tuesday. As Quincy says on Little Einsteins "I can not belieeeeve it!!".

24 Hours

24 hours ago, I was feeling really down and melancholy. I was getting depressed because Jim was leaving in a few days, leaving Jack and I here to fend for ourselves for who knows how long. All because we could not sell this stupid house.

24 hours ago, we rejected the only offer that we had received in 6 weeks for the house. It was way too low with a contigency to sell their house first. I was beginning to think we were never going to sell this house. You know you hear horror stories of people trying to sell their house for over a year with no success. Ugh.

Then a bright sun came out. We got a phone call from our agent last night around 6 pm saying that the couple we rejected came back with another offer! They have money! Lots and lots of cash! Enough in fact to BUY our house with CASH. By the way who has that kind of money just laying around? Can I be adopted by them?

They offered $50K LOWER than their first offer, which was way low to begin with, but all cash with a SEVEN day CLOSE! That means we have to be out of this house in seven days! OH MY GOSH!!!!

Of course we countered back raising the price and we are now waiting here on pins and needles hoping they will either accept or come back with another counter with a higher price. At this point, I am just saying whatever you want to buy the house, buy it. But, I did feel like they were taking advantage of our desperate situation and offered $50K less. People $50,000 is a lot of money to be taken out of my pocket! I am just scared that they will walk away. I don't think they will because obviously they want the house very badly, but this waiting for a phone call is tearing us up. Can our realtor just call us NOW?????

The funny part about all of this is we were talking to the builder in Mississippi about 30 minutes prior to getting the last offer. We were telling her that it is not looking good for us and we were probably going to have to lose the house. In fact, I told her to just go ahead and send us the papers to sign telling them we were backing out. She is the one who said that we still have a couple more weeks and to just wait on that. She is really nice. At the end of the conversation, she told us that she will be praying for us. Then 30 minutes later, we get the phone call from our realtor with a cash offer, seven day close! Now I just want to know, does she have a direct link with the big man upstairs or what?

Dancing The Dance

Real Estate. It is basically all about dancing when you think about it. Picture yourself (house) at the high school dance and you are there up against the wall (on the market) watching all the other people (houses) dancing and having fun. You just wanna have fun like them.

Then, out of the blue, somebody walks up and looks you over (comes for a showing). You get yourself all pretty (clean the bathrooms) and put your best foot forward for them. They walk away and talk with their friends (agent) about you and if you are good enough for them. Most of them these days (in this market) don't come back to give you another look. But you get lucky that one day and they actually come back and ask you to dance (make an offer). You are thrilled. You start to pick out the wedding date (when to call the movers). But the light comes up and you actually take a look at the person you are dancing with and see that this person rides the short bus and has a drool cup (the offer stinks).

That is selling real estate in a nut shell.

To update those playing or dancing at home. We got an offer today from the couple who never showed up last week like they said they would. They came by today for a showing and their agent is THE rudest in three counties and very unprofessional. She was practically strong arming me at the showing, telling me that she didn't want our agent to present the offer to us, but her. Um no thank you lady. I don't like you and that is what I pay my agent for. Now kindly remove yourself my house, thank you.

The offer was basically a slap in our face. They came in at $20K below what we are asking (which is $55K below market to begin with) and they have a contigency on their house to sell. Our agent told us they have their house listed about $50K over market, which just went on the market TODAY. How fast can I say F*#@ YOU to that?

We are going to counter that they can have the house for either $10 or $15K below asking with absolutely no contingency and 30 day close. If they don't like it well there are about 3000 other houses on the market for them. They can slap those owners in their faces.

So we are kinda back to square one probably. But like our agent said, at least we are in the game, unlike 90% of the other houses on the market. At least we got an offer 6 weeks later, while the other houses in the neighborhood are not even getting showings. I guess that is something.

So if you are wondering what we in the Jackaroo house are doing, you can just be assured we are dancing the dance.

Well...

There was no offer forthcoming. There was no showing yesterday like they said. We spent 3 hours yesterday morning cleaning and doing yard work all for nothing, except now we don't have to do it today for the weekend. Don't know what is going on, but here we are on the roller coaster ride again. Today is the ride to the bottom. Who knows maybe tomorrow, we get to ride up to the top tomorrow?

Good News and Bad News

I have two items of good news and one bad news.

The first good news is that Jim's car came back from the body shop all pretty and shiny again. It looks like she never had a huge owie. So now he can leave on time to go to Mississippi, which is a good thing in order to report to work on time. Yay!

The other good news is that our realtor called yesterday and said that he thinks that we are maybe getting an offer today. And here is the bad news. He is not too sure we should take the offer. The gist of the long story is that it is the first couple who came through a month ago and the husband liked the house, but the wife didn't want to live in this town. Well it seems they listed their house yesterday and it wasn't with our realtor, even though he has been working with them for 3 months showing them properties. I guess they went with another realtor, which I normally wouldn't care. It is between them. But our realtor (formally known as Mr. Ahole and has become a nice guy to us in recent weeks), said that he has no idea whether their house is listed too high for their market or is it priced to sell. At least if he were doing the listing, he would have the control and be able to market the heck out of it like he is doing ours.

So long story short, if we take their offer, it will be contigent upon the sale of their house, which who knows how long it could be. It is in California, the land of no house sales. And if we do take the offer, our status on the mls will go from Active to Backup Offer, which means our listing basically drops off a lot of searches. Like our realtor said, it is kinda like shooting our foot. And he also doesn't trust this couple very well and it could come down to them backing out at some point and then we would be back to square one. Of course that is just his opinion and it could just be hurt feelings because he didn't get their listing.

Why can't this just be easy?

Alright Alright

We held open house again for the third straight weekend in a row. That makes THREE weeks in a row where the house has to be immaculate and spotless. And like all the other weekends, no offers were incoming. Not even one. In fact, most of the feedback from the precious two showings we did have included that we have a "funky" backyard. To which, I exclaimed that at least it HAS a backyard, unlike 95% of the houses in California full of postage stamp lots. But I guess people just have to bitch about something. Oh yeah and one of the couples who came through, wanted the AC units moved to the OTHER side of the house!! Huh? It seems we can't even have AC units in the right place.

So in response to all the "lovely" feedback, Jim and I made an early morning trip to Home Depot this morning. We bought $600 worth of trees, plants, shrubs and roses in hopes that it will make our backyard a little less "funky". Of course now we have to dig 25 holes to plant the $600 into, of which we have planted exactly 8 trees until it became too unbearably hot outside. Only 17 more to go!

I really hate the selling-the-house process. Really. Really. Really.

The Roller Coaster

The whole home selling/buying process should be called The Roller Coaster Of Your Life and one that makes you puke during and after the ride. This is not fun folks. It seems like we get our hopes up about a potential person who will buy this house from us only to get dashed and kicked in the stomach. We have held open houses for two weekends straight and also during this week, we have put out the open house sign out front to tell people to "come on in and look at our stuff and then talk amongst yourself how you don't like the view in the back yard, or the awful and sinful slope in the back." And here I thought we had a nice house, but seems people just don't like looking at other people's houses that are in the middle of a total rebuilt. It is entertainment people, don't you get it? Geesh, you have no sense of humor at all. Oh and to the couple who thought that it "would take too much work to get it to their personal standards" I say screw off to you.

Yep I am getting to be bitter can you tell? It is coming down to the wire and there is about a 99% chance that Jim will be going to MS to start his job without Jack and I. We get to stay here and listen to all the lovely comments from the people walking through our house. And we get to do this until it sells! Sound like loads of fun, eh? We are probably looking at at LEAST two months separated from Jim. Don't you envy us?

Oh and that really nice house that we put a deposit on in MS? Yep probably going to lose that also. I give that about a 99% chance also.

So to sum up. No sale on house, even after dropping price that is $130K BELOW another identical house in the neighborhood. Snooty comments from potential buyers. Jim and I separating for a few months, and not by choice. We do still like each other. And the nice house on the lake that was perfect for us? Gone. Lost. Hope the new buyers like it.

Laughing and a Crying

I wanted to make an uplifting and happy post today. I was going to title it "The Circus Came to Town". Because that is what happened. We went to the circus last night to get some much needed relief from the stress of the current Jackaroo House. It was much fun and saw some cool trapeez acts. Jack loved the doggie and kitty acts and we really need to talk to those people who were actually successful in training cats, cause our cats are in serious need. I do think Laura was a bit bored and she had the look of a typical pre-teen - "oh god I just hope nobody I know sees me here". But it was a good, fun night.

Jack eating cotton candy at the circus. Was quite amusing to watch him eat the stuff and the resulting stickiness everywhere.



BUT then today happened. We had another open house today so we needed to vacate for a few hours. We went to church, then to lunch and then did a little bit of shopping. Well not so much as shopping, but looking, because there is nothing like moving across the country that will put a stop to all buying. You just think that it is something that needs to be packed and you say no to whatever.

So, there we were, in the store walking around having a good time. Then some man walks up to Jim and says "excuse me Sir" as we were walking out. At first I thought was "uh oh what did Jack swipe". But nope, it was him confessing to backing into our van!!! Yep that is right, for the SECOND time this week, we have another car damaged! People, we only have two cars!

So we go outside and see this:

The ugly dent on my poor van. She has an owie!

Do we have a bad luck streak or what? Both Jim and I have gone years and years and years with no accidents and in a span of one week, both of our cars are hit, by no fault of our own. As if we just needed the stress meter to go up another notch. I actually started to laugh when I saw the van. Cause either you laugh or cry and after everything that has happened the last couple of weeks, if I didn't laugh, I would probably start sobbing for at least 3 days straight.

I do have to give kudos to the man who came back into the store to confess hitting the van. He was a nice guy, but I just have this to say. If you are going to be driving a huge pickup truck with a 50ft bed in back, learn how to navigate the thing in parking lots, or don't drive it at all!!!!



But I end the laughing and a crying post with some cute pictures of the kiddos:
Pretty Laura, who is getting prettier and prettier everyday, even though she hates it when we tell her she is pretty.


Jack after the long day today. He kinda collapsed on the couch. Couldn't even walk the distance to his room. This is EXACTLY how I felt also.

The Silver Lining

With all the stress of selling/buying/moving and all that is involved with that, there is one small little silver lining. My housekeeping has stepped up about a thousand notches! I have made my bed every single day! I have made sure the dirty dishes are out of the sink every day! I have vacuumed on a regular basis! I have cleaned the shower/sink out after every use! It is quite amazing and pleasant to live in a house that is all clean and shiny. Of course it doesn't hurt that half the house, including most of the toys, are packed up in boxes in the garage. But still, I am quite proud of myself. :)