Bye bye house

Okay so this past week and a half have been crazy to say the least. We got the final word on Monday night (April 19th) that everything for the sale of our home was going to be finalized that Friday! So we started the packing frenzy- well at least I did since I couldn't really move anything. I've never felt so handicapped while being pregnant as I have recently because usually I can lift and help move things like the best of them, but not right now. Anyways, we signed papers on Wednesday and got to pick up our proceeds check on Friday. Unfortunately everyone and their mom is taking money out of our profits so it's not as much as we would have liked it to be, but it's better than nothing. I just need to focus on the positive.

Haha thinking back on that I sure wasn't thinking very positively this past weekend. As it turns out, my in-laws, which is who we're staying with right now for a few months, invited friends of theirs to come and stay with them last weekend too... so what about us, their son and his family with a 9 month pregnant wife??? Basically my mother in law, who can be quite difficult to deal with a lot of the time, didn't really care about us. She was more concerned about her friends and offered to pay for one of the 2 nights in a motel... yes, not a hotel, but a stinky, uncomfortable motel. As you can tell, I was far from happy about that situation. When I first thought about staying in a hotel all I could think about was lounging my big, fat body in a pool and relaxing, but NOOOOO! No pool, no breakfast, no comfy beds, ugh! Yes I'm complaining, but I'm just not comfortable lately and highly irritable, so hey, it is what it is. Not to mention that the motel that my mother in law "graciously" paid half for had smoking rooms! Yuck! Our room was about 6 or so rooms down from where the smoking hall was and everytime our door opened the smell of smoke came into our room. On top of that, the hallway was horrible to walk down. I covered my nose every time because the smell made me want to puke! So needless to say many unrepeatable things came out of my mouth about this situation... let's just leave it at that, lol. I'm trying to get past this since I have to deal with her for another few months.

So there's our big story. These past few days I've just been trying to get as settled into their home as I can. My in-laws really are good people, but this last weekend just ticked me off more than I can even express. Our plan for now is to get through having Hannah, give me a few weeks of recovery time, and then we're going to hit the house hunting hard after that. So for now, I'm trying to make myself as comfortable here as I can and trying to make the best out of the situation. Wish me luck!

Update on the house...

So Monday night we finally received the word that everything was going through... FINALLY!!! Which means packing, moving, packing, moving, etc. Ahhh... a little overwhelming, but it's starting to come together. Yesterday I went and rented a storage unit and last night Tim and his dad took 2 full truck and trailer loads away. It made a pretty good dent, but we've still got a good amount of stuff left in our house and garage. We have through Friday to get everything moved out so wish us luck! I'm trying to pack and do what I can. I tell you what though- I've never felt more helpless being pregnant than I do right now. Usually I can help lift and move things quite well, but right now I'm just a giant blimp who is only able to pack for a little while at a time because my stupid feet start to hurt and swell up... fabulous =( . Oh well it's all getting done gradually. This afternoon the buyer's are going to do their final walk through (I hope they like the packing mess, hehehe) and then we go to the closing company and sign our house away... TEAR!!! This house has been wonderful to us and we're quite sad to leave it, but it's such a good time for us to upgrade into a bigger home that we have to take this opportunity now before it's over.

Hailey being Hailey

Yes she is obsessed with shoes and obviously it doesn't matter if they are mommy's or daddy's. These were all taken while we were busy getting ready for church... yes Hailey isn't dressed yet. We learned a long time ago that you wait until the last minute to get her dressed into her church clothes because she is very good at getting them dirty.... so she's in her pj's still.

Where's Hailey now...???

So since we've gotten rid of Sunny I haven't been nearly as worried about what Hailey is getting into because she used to love to get into the kitty's food and water. Well now that that is gone, she's found something else to preoccupy her time.

Did I mention how obsessed she is with our shoes lately, lol?!! She will put them on and walk around the house and she gets mad if you try to put them back so occasionally I will trip over one of my own shoes. She has been helpful lately though because she will bring me my shoes, which is so much nicer than me having to bend over and get them myself. Well tonight we didn't hear anything from her for a while and we went to investigate... she had managed to empty off the entire shoe rack! That's my little girl- staying true to her monsterific self!

Bye Bye Sunny Bunny

So I probably should have done this yesterday, but it's taken me some time to get used to the fact that our kitty, Sunny, is gone for good. We needed to get rid of him because we're moving in with Tim's parents soon and they are allergic. Plus I think that we've both reached our wits end with the whole cat hair everywhere issue. Other than that he has been the most fabulous cat I have ever met. He's super lovey and cuddly and great with kids. We couldn't have asked for a better cat. We've had him for about 4 years and he has been the only cat out of 4 who have been good enough for us to keep. The others have been very mean or were peeing on my clothes. Yes, I know, gross gross gross!!! Anyways, we were meeting with our doula, Pamala, on Monday night and casually asked if she knew anyone who might be looking for a kitty. Turns out they had been looking and she took Sunny that night! I've been ok with letting Sunny go for a while now, but it has been very weird to not have him here. He's been my snuggle partner in the mornings since Tim leaves for work about 4:30 every morning and I still looked for him yesterday and this morning. I had to catch myself yesterday when I almost told Hailey to "go find Sunny." It's a good thing that Hailey is so young or else she probably would have been devastated by us giving him away. So to our beloved kitty, you will be missed, but nothing makes me happier than knowing that you went to a good, loving home!!

Hit and run

Okay, okay I've been blogging a lot lately, but this one is soooo worth reading! As I was carefully and slowly backing out of my parking space at Costco today all of a sudden I see another car backing out so I slam on my brakes. The other car proceeds to keep going, hits me, and then DRIVES OFF!!! Are you freakin kidding me?!!! I honked at him and he ignored and kept driving... so guess what I did.... I FOLLOWED HIM!!! Yes I did! If you know the Costco on Sprague in Spokane here, he drove in front of Home Depot towards Fancher. I thought that I might get lucky and he would stop somewhere, but noooo so I was forced into some evasive action. Right in front of the Home Depot garden area I went around him and parked diagonally so that he couldn't keep driving, got out and confronted him. I told him that he had hit me, I was pregnant, had my daughter in the car, and he just drove off. What the heck? I also told him just because he's old doesn't mean that he can get away with that. He looked at me like I was the crazy one because he had absolutely no clue that he had hit me. He apologized, but barely, and I got back into my car and drove off. I think I stunned him quite well because his car didn't move at all when I left.

Okay, now honestly, my car didn't get hit even close to hard enough to do any damage to us or the car. I know perfectly well that accidents happen. My big problem is that it happened and he drove off. I mean, seriously, you know when your car hits another car. It stops and meets resistance. I never planned on dealing with insurance or anything like that, but an apology should have happened and not from me following him to get it. I told Tim what happened and after he laughed at me and asked if we were ok he asked me if I got his license plate number. No I was more furious at the time and just wanted this guy to know it. I realize that my actions probably weren't the best, but hey what can I say- I was crazy before I got pregnant and it's 10 times worse now. If you don't believe me ask Tim about it, lol! So there's my story in a nutshell. And let me tell you what... it sure felt good to let that all out.

Our happy helper

After all of the help that he's graciously given us, especially lately, I thought it was quite appropriate to dedicate a blog to my wonderful father in law. Honestly, there is no way on earth I could have possibly gotten a better one. He's helped us with so much to get our house ready to sell that I'm going to have to think long and hard of something that will even come close to showing our appreciation and gratitude.

We are just about getting done with the stuff around our house to please the buyers and the appraiser and then Tim goes and hurts his knee at work yesterday. Luckily it happened at work so it should be covered under L&I this time- last time it was while playing basketball so the cost was all ours after the insurance covered their part and we've paid well over a $1000 towards that so far. Unfortunately though, there were a few things left to do, such as climbing up a giant extension ladder to finish painting spots that were scraped last week and taking care of the remaining earth to wood contact on our front porch. Now one might ask why it was left from last week... our weather has been very uncooperative and painting hasn't even been an option until today. Well I can't very well climb up on the ladder right now being as large and in charge as I am right now (lol!!!) and we didn't think that it was wise for Tim to either since we're not sure of the extent of the damage that was done, so our wonderful dad came to the rescue again. I just don't know what we would do without him sometimes. To keep going on Tim's knee issue, he just had surgery to repair the miniscus (spelling???) 3 months ago and has healed quite well from it so this set back is very frustrating for us both right now. He got in to see the doctor who did his surgery yesterday who was quite surprised at his range of motion and scheduled a follow-up appt in another week. If things aren't any better by then they will have to do another MRI to figure out what's wrong now. I'm just praying that everything will be fine, but right now only time will tell. Tim's back at work today on light duty with a swollen and sore knee, which is to be expected after what happened, and he's being quite the trooper about all of this.

Selling our house

We decided last year that we wanted to put our house up for sale this spring. Mainly because we are running out of space fast and we thought it would be a good idea to capture on the good rates and the lower home prices. Well.... little did we know what we had in store for us. First we had to get rid of the rest of the knob and tube wiring in our home, which we did last fall. That was such a pain and I didn't even have to do any of the labor for it. We actually lucked out in that area because Tim and his dad were able to use a retired electrician for guidance and they did most of the work themselves, which saved us a TON of money! That was good.

Then we talked with my Grandpa, who is our realtor, and set up a time to sign some papers and the real chaos began. We met with him and our house was on the market by March 5th... in between now and then, which has been exactly a month has been extremely stressful on our entire family. First of all, we've had to deal with 'uncluttering' our home to make it more appealing for buyer's when they come to see it. That task alone was frustrating because I'm very pregnant right now and most heavy lifting was out of the question. Thank goodness Tim's dad is retired now and has been able to help Tim as much as he has. I developed a cleaning ritual each day and did a pretty good job of keeping our house clean so that it would be available for showings whenever. Well about 2 weeks after our house was listed on the market we got our first offer- EXCITING!!! But the buyer's completely low balled us and then asked for closing costs. We countered back with an amount we didn't expect them to accept, BUT THEY DID!!

From that point on the madness increased ten fold. The inspection was a week later and we had to prepare for that by fixing last minute things, but mainly scraping, prepping, and painting the outside of the house. That was a nightmare. First, I almost fell off a ladder cause I insisted on helping Tim tape the windows outside. Then because we had to finish painting on Sunday after church. The inspection came back with reasonable requests from the buyer, but still stuff that costs more mulah. We had to fix a plumbing issue and the hot water tank, which we ended up having to get a professional in for costing us a new hot water tank adding up to over $700!!! It was a good thing that their inspector flagged it because it turns out that the previous homeowners were extremely stupid. They installed in incorrectly and could have killed us all with carbon monoxide poisoning!!!

Then came the appraisal and we were told once again to fix more on the house. This time they found a few other spots we had missed with peeling paint- that's a pretty easy fix. Just scrape and paint if only the weather would cooperate with us here. Then comes the harder part- fix the earth to wood contact on the back and front decks. This has to be done so that the house is FHA compliant for the buyer's loan. And then the biggest factor of the appraisal- the house has to appraise for what the buyer's are giving us or else we have to lower our price- YIKES!!!

As of right now we're waiting on the results from the appraisal and are praying lots. I don't think that I could go through this again with another set of buyers, especially with Hannah making her arrival in less than 2 months now. I just pray that this is meant to happen now. Wish us luck and I'll have to do a better job of updating on this crazy situation.

Easter fun

Sometimes I'm a little "blah" with the holidays. Maybe it's because my kids aren't old enough to really have fun with it yet or maybe it's because I'd rather focus on the more important things like Jesus Christ and why we are even celebrating the holiday in the first place. Anyways, this year I caved and got Hailey stuff for a small easter basket, just a few small things. On Friday we went to my mom's and Tim helped her color some eggs. She lost interest pretty quickly. Easter weekend was really nice this year because having General Conference made it easier to focus on the more important things. After the afternoon session of conference on Sunday we went to Tim's parents for dinner and an egg hunt for the kiddos. Hailey also lost interest very fast in finding the eggs, especially since there was a dog in the neighbor's backyard- (she loves dogs!) and she threw them into the pail that we had for her, lol!! I should have had much better pics, but my camera has been quite lame lately =(