For real this time

Our house is sold! The subject removal date was yesterday and everything is great. I didn't want to pack anything else until I knew it was a for sure thing this time so now I gotta get my butt in gear! We're moving next Saturday so that gives me just over a week. That's ok though because you may recall we've been living with a half packed house for a while now. The only thing left really is the everyday type of kitchen stuff and all the furniture. Things should go pretty quick on Saturday. Anyone up for some heavy lifting?!

7 Random Things

First, the Rules: People who are tagged start by thinking about 7 random facts/habits about themselves. Each player then must write about those seven things on their blog, as well as include these rules. Players then need to choose 7 people to tag and list their names. Don’t forget to leave each person a comment telling them they’ve been tagged.

1. I love to garden but hate bugs so must always wear gloves when i'm near the plants and dirt. There are some pretty weird bugs that live in Aberdeen that I didn't grow up with in the valley. Shudder...

2. I'm slowly turning into a health nut. It's weird because when I first moved away from home I would buy things like sugar frosted cereals pop galore and chocolate dipped cookies. (And eat them for supper if I wanted) But now I really like to make healthy choices. I buy cereals without sugar added, incorporate way more veggi's in my cooking and actually crave water if I haven't had enough. Cool.

3. I have always wanted to be a wife and mother so people always assume that I must love kids But over the last few years I have realized that isn't totally true. The way that a lot of parents are raising their children today I really can't stand to be around most kids. I thank God for my awesome nieces and nephew. Not that I expect perfection (where's the fun in that), but disrespect and kids ignoring their parents continually bugs me. Ok, so it's not really the kids fault but anyway...on to the next one that maybe won't get me shot.

4. I have one eye that is closed more than the other. So does my Mom and so does Hannah. Mine is my right one. I never really thought anything of it until I was in esthetics school and we were learning makeup and the teacher said, "You'll get surgery to correct that by the time you're 30." Ahhhh... I am so glad that isn't true and that I don't care what she thinks. This was also the teacher who said to never let your husband watch your child be born because they would never want to have sex with you again. Her husband left her supposedly for that reason. Sad.

5. I am a craftaholic. If I don't have something to work on that is crafty I will tear the house apart trying to find supplies to make something. I haven't gotten to the point of having to do a macaroni picture yet but i'm sure that day will come.

6. My two top favorite genre's of music are hard rock http://www.kutless.com/ and blue grass http://www.thecrabbfamily.com/

7. I am a messy disorganized person who can't stand to live in a messy disorganized house. I have fights with myself about this a lot, or worse, start to get mad at Cory for leaving stuff around when I have left out just as much. Must work on this.

So that's it I guess, Now i'll tag 7 people. Sara F, Joni B, Laura N, Jessica E, Carolyn M, Jill I, and Molly P.

Bad then good, then better, then worse, then ok

So since that guy backed out of buying our haouse after we had packed a lot of it up we decided to list with our realtor friend. So he came over and assesed that according to what the other trailers in our park have been selling for that he was gonna list it for 184,900. Yikes! I remember when I put out our homemade sign that I was embarrassed to put 174,900 on it. The market is definately crazy. So that is cool that we will potentially get more for it but then we had to get our house in tip top shape again. So we spent yesterday moving the boxes to Cory's parents house and cleaning up. We had also planned on putting outdoor carpeting on the deck but no place had it in until yesterday. So we thought that it had better be done. But first we had to replace a piece of rotten trim that was right beside the deck. Easy peasy. Ooops, did we forget that EVERY single upgrade we have done to this house has been way bigger and more expensive and time consuming than we thought? Yes, we must have. When Cory tried to attach the new board he realized that the wood behind the siding is rotted too. We have no idea how bad it is or how much is rotted but no matter what it doesn't look good. So we phoned our realtor and told him to postpone listing our place until it's fixed. We have another friend who used to do siding coming over to assess it but we're thinking we will probably have to re side the whole thing and replace the wood that the siding goes into. Oh well, good thing the price we will eventually get will make up for the money we have to spend. It will look nice with new siding too....to bad we wont really live in it when it's done!

On a different note I have become a member of an online community called facebook. And I have caught up with so many friends that i've lost track of over the years including my best friend Molly from elementary school! It's neat.

Thumbs down to that guy

What a roller coaster ride. Our house isn't sold. At the last minute (litterally the last minute) the buyers financing fell through. So all the packing i've been doing is for nothing. There is no way i'm unpacking boxes until we move to a new home so we will just have to live on bare necessities. But it makes showing the house more difficult.I know people aren't buying our stuff but it's harder to see the house past all the boxes. Oh well. One nice thing is that about ten minutes after hearing about this we had more people knock on the door wanting to look at it. Again very messy but oh well. Also the housing market is so crazy that even trying to go look at a place is hard. You see something interesting, try setting up an appointment and whamo it's already sold. Crazy. So because we're already mostly packed if something doesn't happen fast we'll probably get our realtor friend to sell it. He thought we should have been listing it higher anyway. So because I like to share pictures, here are some of our half packed house, Hannah and a bit of a picture i painted for Cory's mom. (It's Cory and his brother when they were young)

My new things

I eluded to a few new things that i'm doing in my last post so I had better tell what they are. I suppose one isn't entirely new to me but I haven't done it in a while. I guess i'll start with that one. I went to my brother and sister(inlaws) house and made a ukrainian easter egg. It is a really fun process where you use bees wax over different colors of dye to get the desired effect. I have done them in previous years but this one is the first I actually like ( isn't that right Krina! Hee hee)

I've also started to make ATC's (art trading cards) It is a really neat concept where people all over the world create art in their medium in the form of a trading card and then trade them with other people. I'm just sending out my first four and will be getting mine in the mail by the end of the month. One of the people i'm trading with likes Mexican art so I tried my hand at some. Hopefully she'll like them!

The last thing i'm doing is another type of swap where I had to write about a day in my life. Just an ordinary day and what I did and then I have to send it to three people and three others send theirs to me. my sound lame to some but i'm excited. So here is what I wrote:

24 Hours in the Life of Me

This morning started out the same way as every other weekday morning. With me hastily turning off the annoying alarm clock that signifies that my poor husband has to get out of the warm bed and get ready for work. At least, that is what he says happens. Everyday I turn off the alarm but don’t remember doing so. It’s weird, I can wake up to my daughter making the tiniest squeak in her room but not remember turning off an alarm.
Slowly the haze lifts and I get up and put on C’s housecoat (he lets me use it on weekdays) and join him for breakfast. I never used to like breakfast but ever since I was pregnant I’ve got into the habit. This morning I ate a new kind of cereal called, "GoLean Crunch." It has seven whole grains with no sugar added but tastes great. We are trying to make healthier food choices and finding a lot of great recipes etc.
Our kitchen has three nice big windows and the morning sun was gorgeous. It looks like winter is finally over. Our winters are fairly mild but cloudy so when spring comes with it’s sunshine I just feel healthier.
I faintly heard our five month old daughter’s morning wake-up sounds in between the loud cereal crunch in my head and C and I raced to go see her first. This may sound odd but we had to wait to have a child for almost five years and are blessed with a girl whose temperament is as bright and happy as the afore mentioned sunshine. She greeted us (her dad first, as he beat me down the hall) with her beautiful smile. After a quick diaper change we settled on to the couch for her breakfast and to listen to C read from his bible. Then I watched as they played together the same game that happens almost every morning. Dad bouncing and singing to make her laugh and her ending up laughing and puking on him from the jostling after an all liquid diet. Then it’s off to work for him and back to bed for us.
I have always been a big sleeper and so far I have been lucky to still be able to get enough even with a new baby.
Today is a little different because we are in the process of selling our house and have to meet with a lawyer this morning. So I phoned my mom at nine and asked her if she could watch H while we met with the lawyer. Thankfully she was able to on such short notice and so we got ready and drove over to Grandma’s house in our "boxy but good" Volvo. We had a cute two door sports car until we had H but obviously had to get a more family car and Volvo’s are safe. (Ugly in my opinion, but safe) So we got to visit with grandma for about half an hour before I had to go get C from work and get to our meeting. Can I mention again how beautiful of a day it was? Maybe I had cabin fever and didn’t realize it. Walking down the street I got one of my favorite spring feelings of being a little chilly but the sun warming my bare arms.
We got to meet with the lawyer almost right away and he went over the contract, made a few changes and gave us some advice on what to do next. Pretty straight forward but pretty expensive! Oh well, if you need someone to do a job then I guess they can dictate the price.
We then went and picked up H who was just waking up from a nap and headed home with a quick stop at Mc Donalds for me. C didn’t even make fun of me this time (he hates the food there) but just gave in to my craving. So much for healthy food choices!
I then spent the rest of the afternoon checking email, looking for new swaps on swapbot, reading friend’s blogs and writing up notes for this letter.
Another reason I love spring is how much lighter it is in the evening. So when C got home from work it was light enough and warm enough to eat outside.
Dinner was easy as I have started to plan ahead for meals when I go grocery shopping. I find it a lot easier than looking through a cookbook hoping I have all the necessary ingredients. Tonight was oven fried chicken strips and spicy yam fries. Yum!!
This is the one night a week when C and I go our separate ways for our extra curricular activities. He has choir and I have dance. Every week C’s mom comes and babysits H even though she is sleeping when she gets here. So generous of her.
I picked up one of my friends who takes dance with me and headed down town to the studio. The class is great as it’s all my friends and is taught by my sister-in-law. It’s a mixture of jazz and hip hop and I take it mostly for the exercise. Meaning, I don’t really seem to be a natural dancer! This was obvious the night that I tore a tendon in my ankle showing C my moves! Oh well, it’s fun. Tonight I started dance with a headache but all the stretching and laughing helped to make it go away. We’re finally coming together in some of our routines so it looks pretty cool.
Once C and I got home we were going to play a game of "Settler’s of Catan" before bed but both of us realized how tired we were. We used to be night owls but lately nine thirty is getting late for us. So off to bed with maybe a little reading to unwind.

Doing this swap has really made me realize that there really is interesting things that happen throughout an ordinary day and I can’t wait to receive the ones from others in the mail! Yay for snail mail!

Oh, and what's a post without a new picture of Hannah?