13 hours

Signing papers at 8am. Paint loaded in the car, ready to go. I've been doing a lot of planning but frustrating not being able to truly plan. I started out with old fashioned pinterest:

Yes, this is what I did before pinterest came along on the computer. I ripped things out of home magazines and put them in files for reference later. I had a large stack of clippings from white kitchens of course. Lots of different styles of houses so I was able to throw out a lot of clippings from the beach houses at least...

I forgot to show a shot of what sealed the deal for the house:

The professional stager they hired did a fantastic job. An almost creepy good job.... like on Modern Family. Rudy was shot on campus our freshman year and we're in crowd scenes. There was also a Hoosier poster, an ode to the med school years. The George Clooney poster in the master bedroom really convinced me the house was for us though. We forgot to negotiate for the posters but our realtor insisted on asking for the K-State light and pool table. That might make for a good charity auction donation.

Tomorrow after volleyball practice the kids will finally see the house. I need to figure out how to work the pool cover before they can swim though. As the kids are hanging all over me and asking for snacks a mere 45 minutes after a real dinner, I am ready for a bigger house.... and a glass of wine.

Week of random events

In addition to the usual kid sports and activities, this week my parents arrived from adventures out west and in Alaska. So they are going to get dragged along to some stuff and other times they will help with kid control. Thankfully my jury duty today was canceled so I don't have to deal with that at all. That would have been a rough couple weeks if I had been picked. I have no idea how that could have worked, don't think they would have let me leave to shuttle kids around or bring Emily with me three days a week when she doesn't have school. Army not cool with granting emergency leave for this sort of thing either.

There are fun extra things this week though like last night I took my mom to see the Blue Man Group and I understand why Tobias desperately wanted to be one now. Great show, I had no idea what to expect other than the paint drums. I did come home with silly string or something on my pants. I think it would have been too loud for the kids to really enjoy so I'm glad I didn't bring them after all. I also have the school auction on Saturday with some fun friends while Sean is at the ND-OU game in South Bend. Having flashbacks to three years ago when Sean said do NOT buy anything because we need to pay for the new house. Is it weird that we keep cars longer than houses? Clearly you can tell what I really care about.

Time to get the kids up and start chaos again. All of them in school so a fun day doing adult things. Hope to show my parents the new house early since they are leaving before we close on Monday. The house should look much different by the time they return!

A new low

Birthday dinner on a kid sports night is sad indeed. Actually dinner on any night with sports is never good but last night was a new low. Yes, that is bread scraps from the freezer with cheese sprinkled on for some sort of "pizza" without sauce. Patrick got sauce on his, from the tiny cup of sauce leftover from Papa Johns the other night. I just have no motivation to cook and make a huge mess when the kids don't eat much or care at all. As you can see, I had wine and nuts and candy for my dinner. Birthday treats from friends, couldn't let it go bad...

Hiding Queen

 I went upstairs to get something and came down to a missing Emily. She eventually popped out to surprise me. She gets this trick from Patrick although I usually know where she is hiding, like below...

Yes, wherever could Emily be? Inside her stinky blankie? I need to throw that thing away...

Thanks Erin and Lane!

Love the goodies, probably won't share with your cousins...

Welcome to radiology. (no exclamation point)

 This is what I found when I walked into the radiology reading room before my toe appointment this week.  Yes, you walk in the door to some holding pen or something, I don't know what it is, leftover furniture storage? Patients do not come in this area, only employees and me before appointments. After the contractor left for a different kind of holding pen, they did some rearranging of walls.

So you have to walk around that holding pen and then wind your way back to Sean's office. You will notice his door is open but he doesn't have an open door policy. As chief of the department (against his wishes) he has to handle all sorts of complaints and never any compliments. So he is not going to make it easy for anyone to find him now. This is where army fails, putting people into jobs they don't want and aren't good at doing (no offense, Sean). He doesn't like dealing with people, hence the choice of radiology. Put him in a box with a bunch of computer screens and he can do the work of two people. October 1, 2014 he will be doing just that full time. In the meantime army will promote him (October 1, 2013) and he will end up doing even more leadership roles, like filling in for the higher ranking people at meetings when they are on leave. Hey, what a great use of radiologist time! Never mind they are short a radiologist now, that's fine, it only relates to patient care. That's the problem with running a hospital like the rest of the army, they have different goals and purposes. I'd offer them my opinions and consulting services but I have oak trim to go paint.

The birthday boy!

It's still Patrick's birth week, this isn't late. He started last Friday with birthday treats to school since he has a classmate who shares a birthday and she was bringing her treat on Monday. This girl wanted to bake something with her mom so they needed the weekend to work on that. Patrick insisted on chocolate chocolate donuts from Varsity Donuts and who am I to crush his dreams? I did get a bit concerned when that day blew up and I didn't manage to go pick them up until 12:30. That's right, lunch rush time in Aggieville on a Friday before a football game. It was blazing hot too and I had the leisure walker Emily with me. I had visions of parking at City Park and hoofing it there and then hoofing it back with a melting box of donuts. Well, the donut gods were listening and as I pulled into Aggieville, THREE spots right in front of Varsity Donuts opened up at the same time. So I wasn't even mad when the person in front of me snagged one. It was fate and I didn't have to show up a sweaty mess at school to drop them off.

Then on Sunday Patrick invited the boys from his class and a few other friends to Gymnastics Plus for the party he chose. This is not a party off Pinterest, oh no. I did pick up matching Avenger invitations, plates and stickers from the clearance section at Target though, does that count as a theme? Then he picked out a Batman cake from the grocery store. He has been flipping through the catalog of cakes for months now and again, who am I to crush his dreams? He was thrilled with all of it and it required almost no effort from me.

A good thing too because all my energy is going into my ongoing real estate obsession that requires moving every three to four years. (As this involves TV upgrades with each move, Sean is totally on board by the way.) And here I had been thinking that I didn't have a passion or hobby, well, pretty clear now what it is. It's just not the same as other people who have social hobbies like marathons, body building, horses, Junior League, you get the point. Obviously kids take up the rest of my time but they don't like to be labeled a hobby.

Anyway, photos from the birthday...

 Beat this, Pinterest! It actually tasted good enough that I had some but the frosting dye was bad news.

 The goofy picture.

 Kids with Goth lips. This is a very concerning picture.

 Nice.

 Putting together some of the birthday Legos. He was thrilled with them obviously and loves when Sean helps him. Anna also put some together for him.

Emily's thumbs are great at photo bombing.

 Patrick picked Famous Dave's for his birthday dinner. Again, I was happy to cook him anything he wanted but this was his choice. Easy...

 Favorite cheeseburger.

We didn't even have to sing to him, other people took care of that for us... Hard to believe he is six now, especially since it seems like he has been around much much longer. That one hour with him in church each week seems like 50 hours so that explains some of that. Kindergarten is going to school mass for the first time today, I cannot wait to hear how that goes. His poor teacher. Somehow the kids always seem totally under control when I've gone to see the girls do a reading or something. Impressive for sure.

The new morning routine

The girls are so obsessed with some new computer game that Megan set her alarm to get up early to play it. So she trudged into the kitchen, so crabby and then told me that everything was ready for school and she wanted me to make her breakfast now. Kitchen not open yet. I might be in here, but it's not on. Patrick also got an alarm for his birthday and now he gets up on his own at least so he can resume his preferred entrance that includes "surprising" us. Anna is kicking off her days with skyping her friend in Korea, who starts trying to call as soon as she sees my computer active. Another child interrupting my quiet computer time! Someday I will blog about Patrick's birthday but not now. I have breakfast service to start...

A lot to cover tonight

All this house stuff is distracting from the blog so I finally made a note of stories to include and will now procrastinate picking up the house again mere hours after I had it looking perfect.

Treasure maps: the kids love to make them and they think that by drawing the map and putting an X on it, that will make the treasure appear there. We are still learning about cause and effect. Emily made a teeny tiny map on a scrap of paper at lunch today, complete with a teeny tiny X and by golly, we were not leaving that behind. She needed to go find her treasure! I would make her dream come true except I can't read her maps.

Carlos O'Kelly's: I had two hours to be out of the house for showings today, 11:30 to 1:30 so I took Emily to lunch. Since she has to do what I say and she can't read yet, I tricked her into going to Carlos O'Kelly's with me. It is never a place any of my friends suggest going to (although I did get Kitra there once, such a loyal friend) and it certainly isn't a place Sean would go to (chain restaurant AND Mexican, double negative), but it turns out that for my Tex-Mex it's a different option at least. Oh, and it's also at the mall, it's that kind of place. Emily loved it, although she only had chips and coloring. So that would be my guilty pleasure, and I earned it after 4 hours of manic cleaning (and that was just today). And then we got Emily some fall clothes, a shocking amount of outfits for $60 at Crazy 8, which I forgot we had here. Disposable clothing? So fall temperatures are welcome to start tomorrow, we're ready. It is finally raining at least, although weather.com says there is a 0% chance of rain happening. Why don't they at least hedge their guesses with 5% all the time, why so firm with the 0% chance?

The Oreo: I had to go for my weekly toe appointment on post at 7:30am yesterday so that left Sean to get the kids actually out the door to school and then I met him at his office to swap cars and Emily.  So he was dealing with the chaos and in the midst of that Patrick stole away the little pack of Oreo cookies that Anna saved from dinner out the night before. She was planning to put them in her lunch box. Megan said there was a lot of yelling, so much so that when she dropped her brand new contact she was too afraid to ask Sean for extra time to look for it. Brand new contact, gone. When I got home later that morning I saw the wrapper on the counter, along with every light in the house on, which would make you think we were ready for a showing, except everything was trashed... and realtor on the way to take measurements of the rooms. Oh and Sean always remembers Oreos fondly as "the kind my grandma used to make". Why put effort into making homemade cookies when you can delight your kids and grandkids with Oreos?? Anyway, as I was leaving for the real people showings today Emily escorted me to a corner of the formal living room and pointed this out:

The thief must have panicked and fled the scene...

I didn't have enough time this morning to fold the remaining laundry and distribute it to many different rooms, so I just brought it along for the ride...

I'm sure as time goes on I won't care so much about showings, or else I will be packing more and more junk in the car when I leave instead of putting it in all the right places. Eventually we will be partially moved into the new house and I hope to have most junk there.

Emily trust issues: Emily has recently started reminding Sean about stuff he needs to do. We're not sure where this stems from but last time he drove her without me she made sure that he knew he had to unbuckle her and get her out of the car too. She also wants to make sure the two of us have communicated about who is in charge of her. Tonight was a little complicated with kids needing to be at different places at the same time, plus I had a meeting. So Sean and I were running through the logistics and she was sitting at the counter playing the iPad and says to us, "who is going to stay with me?" Umm, no, one of us is taking you in the car, pack up the iPad... Perhaps this anxiety stems from an episode of a Disney show. We realize she is too young for them but she watches stuff with her siblings and we are too tired to stop her. Nothing inappropriate but not educational either. Then she likes to throw quotes at us and sometimes they fit the situation. For example whenever I instruct her to do something and she initially resists, once she realizes that I'm serious (she knows I pick my battles) her way of conceding to my authority is to say, "fine, suited yourself".  To which I always reply, "I WILL suited myself".  I'm teaching some fine grammar there.

Okay, I will blog Patrick's birthday next...

People of Walmart

Only at Walmart would you see a child tapping along in tap shoes. Ah, life is fun for the fourth child... whatever it took to get her to go pick up Megan's contacts with me. We barely had to venture into real Walmart, so the trauma was limited.

A special kind of crazy

The house is officially on the MLS now, not that I've looked it up, it may not show up online until the weekend. The agents are doing a walk-thru today for their office and then we have a real showing, which means I have less than 4 hours to get it together here. I realize that if someone wants the house they won't care if everything looks perfectly clean, they either want it or they don't. This isn't like in San Antontio where there were miles and miles of nearly identical houses and you had to stand out to get an offer.

But, I hate the idea of people walking through my house and judging it. It's a small town after all! Patrick got handcuffs for his birthday and I had put them up high on a shelf to keep the kids from fighting over them and Sean suggested that I pack them away, lest anyone think they aren't just kid handcuffs. Anyway, to keep this house in showing condition it is going to take a special kind of manic energy. Not sure I have it but if I do, I hope it hangs around long enough to tackle some projects at the new house. I've got miles of oak trim to paint there and I realize it's not just painting... it's stripping, sanding, cleaning, priming and painting... Might need to price that baby out, per Krauts and Stouts suggestion.

Enough procrastination... time for caffeine and cleaning. Remaining child is still sleeping...

AARP?

Sean thought it was hilarious that I got my AARP cards in the mail today. I was all ready to mail in my membership dues to get my great benefits but couldn't find anything anywhere in the information about how old you have to be. Would they kick me out? I mean, Emily did start preschool today, I'm retired now, right?

Then I saw this link on CNN:
http://money.cnn.com/2013/09/05/pf/acxiom-consumer-data/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

You can read the article and then go to the website to see what data has been collected about you. They had my birthday as 12/30/39. Umm, what? Suddenly turning 39 doesn't sound bad at all, except no AARP benefits. I was able to update that, maybe I will get more appropriate mailings now. They were spot on about me being interested in online and catalog shopping in every category though! I do not discriminate. I send a lot of gifts that way so I can avoid mailing stuff myself. I had to suffer through the line at the post office this week, a good reminder to never do that again. Sean is just now getting around to sending in his betting slip from the ND/USC game last year, I think that was it. I guess this means he gave up on getting to Vegas to turn it in himself before the year deadline was up. Too bad, I hear there is plenty for us retirees to do there.

We're ready!

We have worked like crazy to get this house organized and packed up a little so we can show it to prospective buyers. We are doing previews this week if anyone is interested and if we don't end up needing our realtor on this end, we'll throw in brand spanking new a/c units and furnaces. Current ones still working but they are vintage. I don't need anyone cursing me when it breaks in a month, as those things tend to happen.

I do enjoy organizing but I did underestimate how much work this was going to be. It is eye opening to realize how much can be packed away and not needed for a few months, or maybe ever. It would be liberating to just go donate those boxes and not move them to the new house... if anyone wants to come steal them away, ha.

A few observant people have noticed that the new house has a lot of oak inside it. Anyone who has ever met me has heard my views on oak trim and oak cabinets. Other people like to force their religious and political views on the world, I prefer to focus on the important matters, like interior finishes in a house. So I now stay awake at night thinking about how to remedy these issues. Well, obviously a whole new kitchen solves the main problem but then the trim in half the house... is that ME stripping, sanding and repainting it?! I'd have to be high to agree to that task, then again, after doing that task I would be high on fumes.

I do look forward to regular painting though, an easy task I can handle and it has immediate satisfaction. I told the kids they could have some say in the colors and bedding since most the bedding is quite worn. I spent a lot of years frequently washing bedding... everyone with kids understands this. Time for new, a cheap update to their new rooms. They still haven't seen the house, well except for my sidekick, Emily who had to tour it with us. I'm surprised the kids haven't begged her for more info. She does have a limited vocabulary though, but knows the word pool quite well. We're going to try and get a photo of when they see it for the first time. No idea when that will be, maybe not until closing. They keep asking how many sleeps until we move. Well, we don't know, so much up in the air, depends on when we need to be out of this house. It's going to be a good offer to get us to move right away and live through the renovation... and fumes.

Emily will never be sad again

I just told Emily that she is going to meet her preschool teachers today and then tomorrow she will get to go to school for real. She had a huge grin on her face and told me that she would never be sad again and that she will keep on smiling. Watching her try to talk with that big grin on her face was so funny but of course that is when my phone froze up and wouldn't take a photo.