The last 27 days

I just caught the day of my last post - 27 days, wow. Not sure if I've ever gone that long. What have we been up to?

It's football season. Kat's marched in 4 football games. She's also been to two Homecoming dances - her own & one with a friend from another school. She came home from band very excited tonight because they now know their entire marching show. They have their first marching contest this Saturday. I sit here multi-tasking and updating my calendar to keep track of where our busy sophmore is due to be each day.

Elena is still doing well. She recently started attending Tumble Tykes - which a gymnastics class that meets on a bus at her school. She was so excited to get to join her classmates. Her little class is keeping them busy - they take Spanish daily, and have yoga, music & chapel once a week.

I'm making it. I try to remember that it could be so much worse. I am uncomfortable. I am carrying this baby very low, so I have more swelling and pain that would be normal at this stage. I am bushed by the time 4 PM rolls around each day - a bonus is that overtime is now a big no-no. But I am still able to work and I still have a job (we had layoffs a few weeks ago).

Rob is super supportive husband, roomba pro - that little gadget is getting some use with the house on the market, and band dad extraordinaire. And he's studying for a certification.

The house has been on the market almost 5 weeks. We dropped the price about 2 weeks ago because we had only had a few showings. We had 5 showings in the last 9 days - 2 this afternoon! It's been crazy. Hopefully, the craziness will result in something. I am ready to start looking at real houses - not just online.

Cute pre-schooler story on the house showing thing - Laney & I ended up in the house during one of the showings tonight. The idea was to rush in, apologize for interrupting, let the dog out, fix her dinner and put her back in the crate and leave them to it. By the time I had the dog food in the dish - they were done (I hope I didn't rush them, but they were in the back yard when we came in, so I don't think so). As the agent was leaving, she said, "You have a lovely home." Now I am not taking that to mean anything, she was being polite. But Laney looks me after they leave and says, "They liked our house. We can get a new one tomorrow." Ah, to be 3 and optimistic and have no concept of time.

I would love for Laney to be right. I am tired of living what I have come to term as "life on hold". A good chunk of our stuff is in a storage unit. More of it is in sealed boxes in the attic and in a closet upstairs. I had to buy a new glue gun to make Kathryn's homecoming mum. A friend asked for a scan of something and I had to admit I had no idea where the book was. I also have this basic policy against bringing anything non-consumable into the house right now - so the girls have gotten used to hearing, "When we get the new house" or "after the move". Half of Laney's birthday presents had to get packed up and put away before she could even enjoy them. I haven't done much prepping for the new baby either. I am looking forward to setting up the nursery again & I need to see what's in those boxes to see what else we need/want for this little guy.

So wish us luck - if you're the praying type - pray for a sale & a purchase that work out with the kind of timing we need. And I'll try not to stay gone quite so long this time.

First Day of School Pictures

The Sophmore - all girled up for her first day of school. Don't worry, she was back in jeans & t-shirt the next day.
The Turtle (what her school call the 3 year olds) looking like a Partridge Family refugee. I didn't realize how 60s-esque this outfit was when I bought it, but it's still pretty cute. Rob asked her if she could say "Ban the bomb".

Update

We've been busy to say the least. The house is almost ready to put on the market. The hall is painted. Kathryn's room is painted a nice boring off-white (it was pink, she was 6 when she picked the color). The kitchen cabinets are repainted.

We've cleaned, we've packed, we've thrown out a ridiculous amount of stuff! It's amazing how much trash you can accumlate in 9 years. I think our garbage men may hate us by now. We also opened up a storage unit last week. That's where our dining room table & my sewing table & cutting table are.

This weekend we'll take some more stuff to the unit & do a bit more painting - try to redo the bathroom cabinets.

We meet with the real estate agent on Tuesday to take the pictures & sign the papers. And no, we haven't looked at any houses yet. Hopefully that'll start soon as well.

On to non-house related stuff . . .

Kathryn's been in band camp for the last week & a half. This is the late afternoon camp - they march from 4 to 8:30 every day learning their routines for football season. School starts on Monday. She'll be a SOPHMORE! Holy cow. I am looking forward to having the whole family back on the dinner table when band camp is over.

Elena is (I am almost afraid to say this) potty trained. She's been accident free for a while, I still expect her to have one now and then, but she's doing great. She's graduated from the thick training panties to Disney Princess panties, she's very excited. She's also sleeping in underwear. But that is not her big obsession right now. Right now she is obsessed with her Mickey Mouse Birthday Party. She's been talking about it since the trip home from Colorado and the closer it gets the more excited she gets. I am just hoping all goes well with it, considering that the house will be on the market, Kat is going to San Antonio the day before to march at the Alamodome, and life is just a little nuts right now.

Young Alexander appears to be doing well. He enjoys kicking his mom. He also stretches like his sister. He's big enough his mom can't wear real pants anymore, but I can still get into a few of my pre-maternity baby doll type tops. I have another appointment on the 31st.

So that's life at our house in a nutshell.

It's a boy

We had a routine ultrasound today and all signs point toward boy! Everything is developing normally and we're a little over half way through.

I've nicknamed the little bug "Thumper" becaus he is so much more kicky than Laney. I had trouble telling when Laney started moving. (turned out she preferred to stretch instead of kick) Not this time! Thumper makes his presence known. At 20 weeks 6 days, we can actually feel his movement on the outside at times. At this rate, the next 19 weeks are gonna be fun.

What We've Been Up To

Our July at a glance . . .

We got home from our vacation and had one week left with Kat before she went off to spend a month with her mom. We had the little birthday celebration for her before she left.

We had a quiet 4th of July with the usual suspects. We celebrated Christina's birthday with hamburgers, blueberry cheesecake, and explosions.

We also started cleaning up the house for sales. We painted the hallway. We're almost done, I still need to do the base boards & doors.

The next weekend we went to my brother's house and spent a relaxing weekend at the beach. We needed that. Things have been nutty at work for both Rob and I, so a couple of days of sun, sand & family was extremely theraputic.

Laney started swimming lessons the following week.

We also went and saw the new Harry Potter movie that weekend. Well, I saw the whole movie, Rob missed half of it due to a power outage at the church where Laney was being babysat. He saw the rest the following weekend when Kat came back from her mom's.

She came home a few days early in order to attend a friend's Quincera. She got to wear her new freshwater pearl set she got from my Grandma for her 15th birthday.

We started meeting with one realtor to get ready to put the house on the market. We weren't getting the kind of communication we were happy with and he was insisting that our house required some very expensive repairs, i.e. siding to the tune of $8K. We thought we might not be able to move if that was the only way our house would sell.

But August has seen things looking up. We were referred to a new realtor by some good friends. We met with her yesterday and she was relatively optimistic. Clean up the house, pack the personal items away, repaint a few places and off we go. So we started packing in earnest last night and continued today. We're going to try to get as much done in the next two weeks as possible, so that maybe we can be on the market close to my birthday. I'd like to be in our new house by Thanksgiving.

Wish us luck, keep us in your prayers, etc.

Back from the beach

We're back from spending the weekend in Lala Land (aka, my brother's house). I hope to post pictures of the trip soon, along with the rest of the Colorado vacation, Father's day, 4th of July . . . and at some point, we'll start sanding the old paint off the base boards and get them re-painted so I can declare the hall fully done. Sigh . . .

Happy birthday, Kat!

We've come a long way in the last 12 years. Here you are on the first birthday I spent with you & your dad in the skates I bought you for your birthday.

And now your 15. Wow! You're a beautiful young lady and I love you very much.

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Some pics from the early birthday we had for Kathryn:

Never too old to blow out candles:

Her new slinky: