Open House

We are on the move...well trying to. We need more space. We are busting out of our 1500 sq ft 3 bed house. It's been great for our little family. We love the neighbors, cul-de-sac with playground, the elementary school, the convenient location and have made wonderful friends in our ward, but we knew we needed to eventually move to get more space. We moved in 9 years ago and thought we'd be here for 3-5 years. Ha! Thanks to the housing market for tanking we stayed longer than originally thought. But it's been fine. We have made this house our home and have good memories here. I get all sentimental thinking about it. 

We met with a Realtor a few weeks ago to see our options (if it was even feasible to sell now, with it being still valued lower than what we owe). She came out the next night to see the house and said she had some clients that were actually LDS and that this would be perfect for them. Well, the following Monday that couple came to look at it and loved it. They wanted to make an offer on it. It wasn't even listed yet! We were thinking of listing it in March, but after hearing that someone was interested we went for it. We set an open house date for Feb 1st, but then debated whether to even list it or just let them make an offer. Well, long story short, our Realtor talked to her broker friend who suggested we just list it to get good market exposure (Kyle wanted to do that too). We did and upped our open house to a week earlier. My Mom and Dad had come over to watch Kate play basketball the weekend before our open house and she helped me paint all our doors and door frames so that was perfect. We had that all done and I could do all the other paint touch ups. We got the house ready and listed it on Friday Jan 24th and had our open house on Sat the 25th from 1-4pm. They came on Tuesday before we listed to take pictures and I need that wide lens he used because it makes everything seem so big! 

We had a showing on Friday afternoon so we went to the kids' school playground with a friend during that time. Then Kate had a bball game that night. We got an offer from the people who looked at it on Friday. Saturday morning we had a couple showings in the morning so we left at 9:45am and didn't get back to our house until 4:15pm because the open house was from 1-4pm. So for the entire day we went to the mall, got McDonald's then met up with some friends at the zoo. All the kids fell asleep (Kate is lying down underneath Kyle's coat), they were exhausted, so after the zoo we just kept driving. We still had a couple hours to waste. We drove to Mt. Vernon, turned around and came back. It gave the kids a good nap. When we got back to our house a couple was just walking up the steps to look at the house so we waited in the car. Thank goodness for our DVD player in the car. Then we finally got in our house. We had an hour before we had to leave again for a couple more people to look at the house. Then around 6pm, we babysat a little girl for a couple in our ward for a few hours. We had to make the exchange in the parking lot because people were still in the house looking at it, haha. It was funny. The baby slept the whole entire time so that was a blessing. At 6:15pm we were able to go inside our house and we made dinner and got the kids in bed. It was a long day. There were 10 groups of people that looked at the house today. 

We talked with our Realtor that night about the offer we got on Friday night. We had to answer to the offer by 9pm on Saturday. Basically, it was a good offer. Better than the one the LDS couple was going to make. So we countered the offer, because there were some minor changes needed, and they accepted our counter offer on Sunday! We had an inspection set for Thursday. Today! Crazy how fast it all happened. And good thing we listed it, we got a better offer. Our Realtor did say that a couple other people would have made offers, but they wanted to close sooner than we could. We need time to find a house. This offer we accepted closes on March 7th and allows us to rent back week by week if we need until April 7th, which is so nice. Here we thought our house would take a couple months to sell and it all happened within 24 hrs! Now for the inspection and appraisal to come in fine. eeks! We are nervous about that. We also need to find a house. There was one we've been looking at since November and I had talked to our Realtor about making an offer on it and that night it went pending. I was so sad! Everyone is telling me that something else will come up and it will be fine. I sure hope so! Time is ticking. And can I just say that I'm tired of cleaning and picking up the house spotless for showings, open houses and inspections! ha! The back of our suburban is full of extra toys that we moved out of rooms to make it look less cluttered. Can't wait for my trunk space back. Putting groceries in the car from Costco and Winco was interesting today without space in the back. :)

January Happenings

Where has January gone? I've been awful about taking pictures this month and about blogging. I think after Christmas I'm all pictured out. I don't know, but I need to pull out my camera more. 

 L-R: Paxton, Lindsey, Ellie and Rylee

Lindsey loves going to preschool. We do a little co-op with other kids from Church and we have it once a week on Mondays for 1 1/2 hrs. Simple, but good for these little guys. She asks often if she has preschool and the mornings she does she gets dressed super fast. Here they were being Kangaroos with their pouches, thanks to Franki for the picture. :)

Chelsea keeps me on my toes. She hardly plays with toys, but instead plays with shoes, purses, ipads/iphones, tupperware, wipes, towels, etc. and pushes chairs and stools around to climb on. 

Kate has been enjoying basketball. It started out rough with a tough game, but they have improved and done much better with the other games (and not to mention the other teams have been a much better match). She has practice twice a week and games on Friday or Saturday, sometimes both. It's over with in a couple weeks. They are the Blue Tornadoes. She loves it.

We've had some nice sunny but cold days lately so we get outside to enjoy the fresh air for a bit. Chelsea likes this tire swing so she will sit on it for a while. Preston and Lindsey joined her too and had fun spinning around. Of course, I like to make it go faster than usual to test them. I'm so mean. I don't have any pictures of Preston, but he's enjoying Kindergarten and doing well with his AR reading. He reads books and takes tests consistently. I'm proud of him. He is happy when he gets to go to school. One day when he didn't have school he moaned that he couldn't go to school. hahaha.

I was working on Chelsea's baby book trying to update it before I forget everything. Good think I made notes after well child visits and on my calendar or else I'd be clueless about stuff. It's amazing how fast time flies when you go back and look at pictures. I found these of Kate and Preston when they were little and I remember them doing these things and remember taking these pictures, but it feels so long ago now. I loved Kate's white fuzzy hair and Preston, even though he was a tough baby, still had some cute moments. That sounds bad, but he was very hard as a baby. 

Last week, I found Chelsea up on the dresser after her afternoon nap. Seriously?! I hurried and took a picture b/c I thought it was hilarious. She was giving me the most evil grin ever. She's done this a couple times since, but was crying the last time she ended up here. We've tried scooting her crib closer to the other side of the wall, but then she gets the laundry out, bangs the light against the wall and pulls Kate's decorations off the play kitchen so that doesn't work. Then, we push it towards the dresser and she bangs the top drawer open and close. She also pulls out all the ointments, lotions and combs we have in the top drawer. It's a no win situation here. Good thing she's cute.