Update

Woohoo! I'm sitting here with nothing to do! The house is CLEAN and Emily is napping! Okay, I could vacuum, but why wake the baby? She needs to sleep anyway, she had her one-year shots today. Everything went great, 20.08 pounds, 29 inches long, no one-year molars yet.

I must say, it's a pretty good feeling to have the house so clean. Part of me, a very small part of me, is thinking that maybe I will try to keep this up when we move to our new house. I pretty much just do a smaller load of laundry each day, I squeegie the shower really well to keep it from getting filmy and mildewy, make the beds right away, stuff like that. We'll see what happens when we move, right now I'm all talk.

So far, we have had no showings. I'm not that surprised, it's the toughest time of year to sell a house. I know last year everything went really well, we had lots and lots of showings and sold the house in two and a half weeks. This time it's different, but that's okay. Eric's company will buy the house from us after it's been on the market 60 days. We found out the average time a house is on the market here is 8 MONTHS. Thank you, Nationwide, for being on our side.

But I'm ready! In case we do get a call.

I wish I could take credit for how awesome the house looks, but the truth is, the stager told me to put this here and move that there and get rid of those and add some of these. Except the Christmas tree and stockings, those were my own vision.

I absolutely LOVE our bedroom. For the entire year that we have lived here, it's pretty much been no furniture except a bed, a floor lamp, two t.v. trays with little lamps and alarm clocks on them. No color or decorations. Well, the stager said we should really try to make it feel like a retreat. My husband had no problems having us spend a little money to warm up the room. We moved the t.v. cabinet into our bedroom and I got a chair, some pillows, vases, candles, a couple of side tables, some artwork and I LOVE it! Mom helped me hang everything up and arrange it. I just do not have any artistic talent at all. I know it's prideful boasting, but I'm going to share pictures because it won't last long. And looking at this room reminds me of how much Mom has done for me.

You know, things are going pretty well right now! It has, as it turns out, been MUCH easier to get this house ready to sell and keep it clean than it was last year when we moved. The boys usually make their own beds, but since everything has to be picture-perfect, I've been doing it. This morning I was up in Owen's top bunk making the bed when I realized I did this last year when I was 9 months pregnant and CLEARLY exceeded the weight limit for the top bunk. I'm surprised the thing didn't come crashing down on me. It's much much easier to get that bed made now!

The boys spend most of the day in school, and they are pretty good about not touching the walls or the furniture or sitting on the beds or accidentally drying their hands with the decorative towels, or leaving stuff laying around. We've all gotten pretty good at living here without living here. Emily's a little more challenging. I'm watching her now, she has figured out how to walk on her knees! YAY! Won't be too much longer and she'll be walking on her feeties! I see she has one of Grandma Margaret's really old books I had set on the hall table. She's into everything.

Her favorite cupboards to get into are the one with the cleaning supplies and the one with the coffee maker. The stager told us to completely clear our kitchen counters and just make a space in that cabinet there for the coffee maker. I put chairs up in front of those cabinets to keep her out. It makes her really mad.

But when I think about last year, I really don't have any stress at all with this move. I've learned that I CAN live far away from our families, that it's really not the end of the world. We'll be moving just a half a day's drive away from here, so we can come back here and visit anytime we want.

I just thought I'd throw a random picture in just for fun. Here's our tree!

Thank You, Jessie!

Awww, my cousin Jessie just called. She's making Christmas cookies from Grandma Margaret's special recipe. She made them last year, too because Grandma died, just a few hours before Emily was born. I was so emotional last year from her dying, having baby blues, and dealing with the fact that we were moving 10 million miles away from everyone that I didn't even eat a single cookie. I thanked Jessie for making the cookies again this year and told her to make a LOT. She laughed and said I could count on it, because it just wouldn't be the same without Grandma Margaret's cookies. I couldn't agree more.

Birthday Pictures

I felt bad. I kind of forgot all about my precious daughter turning one today. We've been so busy cleaning and getting our house ready to go on the market (which it is now, yay!). Earlier today we went out to eat at this really awesome Amish restaraunt with Tracey and Eric and the kids. Then afterwards we ran some errands and quick got Emmy some presents and a little cake.

Emily's New Trick!

Today Emily turned ONE! And she's surprised us with this new trick. By the way, in case it doesn't show up well, each time she says, "Mehhh" she's blowing a spit bubble.

Our Street

I just thought I'd share. Here's our street with our blue house. See it?

Our House

What a week we had. We were gone last week house-hunting. It was quite a roller-coaster ride. I bet we looked at at least 30 houses. It was tough because this was pretty much the only week we could buy a house. Eric's schedule is chaotic, this was it. We had to buy a house THIS WEEK.

We finally found a house on Wednesday and decided to place an offer on Thursday. Well, we weren't in any rush, as far as we knew no one else was lined up to buy the house, so we visited a church first, then the school.

I wasn't crazy about this house. It was cute on the outside, had a nice level lot, beautiful grass, my husband loved it. But I didn't feel like the interior was functional for our family. I even woke up at 3:20 a.m. the morning we were going to make an offer, and I just couldn't go back to sleep. My mind kept turning and going, trying to figure out where we'd put our furniture, our stuff, I'd have to buy more furniture to make that dining room look nice, my red vases wouldn't go anywhere, there was no fire place, didn't have sidewalks on our side of the street, and on and on. It just didn't feel right, but I figured it would do. We'd figure it out.

So. After the visit to the church and school, we drove over to place an offer and got a call that the house sold. We were at a complete loss. I really thought Eric was going to break down. But for some reason, I wasn't really upset at all. I just knew things would work out.

We headed back to the realtor's office to start over. We ended up coming across this one house we saw when we made a quick visit back in October. I remember loving the interior, but the exterior...well...

Okay, it had a nice level lot, sidewalks on both sides, was in a great location. BUT....

Yep. It's BLUE. Actually it's "Ivy Green." And it really is pretty and cute and unique, but ALL the other houses on the street are neutral. You know, white, beige, cream...

We'll be known as The People In The Blue House. It'll be great. We'll order pizza for delivery, or have new friends over and tell them we live on Such and Such street, just look for the blue house. Can't miss it. And even better, we'll have our bright yellow Hawkeye flag hanging proudly off the front somewhere. Weeee.

I don't mean to sound ungrateful. I'm really really glad we got this house. I absolutely LOVE the inside, and all our furniture will work great in there. It's cozy and cute, it has a front porch, and the quality of the craftsmanship is outstanding. I'm happy!

We move in just 36 days...I've got a lot of work to do haha!