Craziness Update

We have been having fun here.

Angel- Now has a wedding dress. It is beautiful. We were able to buy it off the rack and it only needs small alterations. A little hemming and the halter part of the dress needs shortened. She is also going to have a french bustle put in so the small train can be put up for the reception. They chose the location for the wedding and the reception. It is a nice place (and the price is right). They are working on the guest list and have picked out the invitations. Once the guest list is closer on numbers we will order the invites. 73 days to Wedding Day!

Bear- is still adapting to a full load at school and a 20 hour a week job.

Our House- We did reach an offer agreement and the home inspection was done today. Hopefully that will turn out well. We found out today that there was a law passed last year that is going to require extra work and money from us to satisfy our counties requirements for the 'lot-of- record'. I'm actually less than pleased with this new development. I understand it but it still frosts my butt. This will be the 5th house I have sold the second that Joe has sold. Neither of us has ever had such a stressful transaction and we are not even a quarter of the way through it. I think that a lot of it has to do with the way the market is. I will say so far it has been very educational and I am incredibly happy that we listed with a realtor instead of doing a For Sale By Owner like we originally planned. Right now we are scheduled to close mid-November. So that brings me to the next part of this update:


Where will we be living next month? Good question. We didn't plan on the house selling so fast. Once we heard that we were getting an offer we scrambled a bit to come up with a solution. We do have property in Wyoming. BARE Property. No house. The idea of living in a travel trailer or two through a Wyoming winter is more than Joe and I can handle. Plus our surrogate is in California. She is due in January. We do not want to be in Wyoming which is even further away than we are now when she goes into labor. So our solution is to winter in California. Joe is from Northern CA and his entire family is still there. His grandma has been nice enough to offer for us stay at her place. She has an RV pad with hookups (water, electric and sewer). We will park our trailer there and my sister will loan us her trailer. So we will be a family living in two travel trailers for the winter. Northern CA in a travel trailer is much more doable than Wyoming in a travel trailer. And Joe has a job lined up. It is a temporary job that will run from early November until spring. Our plan is to be down in CA the second weekend in November. Lots and lots to do in a short amount of time.


KiKi and LuLu- I expected them to be upset about living temporarily in CA but they aren't. They both tell me they are excited. They will go to school with Joe's nieces. I am hopeful that this will be a fun adventure for them.


J and Baby- Doing good. We get to go down and see J next weekend for her OB appointment. And we are going to have a 3D ultrasound. I am very excited that once we are down in CA we will only be 2 1/2 hours from J. That is nothing compared to our distance now. 94 days to baby day!

Friday!

The play was pretty good. It was very long though. We didn't get home until 11. The girls didn't seem too tired this morning but I hate keeping them out that late. One of the things about the play is that everyone is encouraged to throw popcorn at the villains. We were setting in the front so there was lots of popcorn thrown around. At the end of the play the villains get their revenge and throw popcorn back at the audience. KiKi and LuLu loved the popcorn part of the play. I'm glad we went to see the play but once will for sure be enough.

Just a few small projects to do this weekend. I'm painting the front porch and the kitchen door besides that just the ongoing cleaning stuff. I'm leaving work early this afternoon to take Bear to town for some girl time. There are tons of old junk stores here that we want to hit. I am on strict orders to not purchase items that are big due to our upcoming move. Haha... silly man. If I find the perfect (insert whatever) then how could I possibly pass it up?

Summer's Here!

Finally, we have something resembling summer weather. Yes, it is September. But the last few days have been hot. Today is cooler but still very warm and dry. Looking at the weather forecast it is supposed to remain this way through the weekend.

Thursday night we are going to our local melodrama “Shanghaied” which should be a lot of fun. We have never gone before even though it has been playing for something like 20 years. With Bear visiting it seemed like a good time to go. Especially since she is a theatre major and very much enjoys plays and such.

The realtor is coming back tomorrow night to do some additional listing pictures. I have been looking at lots of decorating web sites and blogs and have some ideas for staging. This part seems like it should be fun but it scares me a bit. I'm not good at decorating. Things never seem to look right when I put them together. I love cottage style looks but can't figure out how to translate those into real life. That will be my task for tonight. Attempt to make my house look like a "Model Home". Model homes sport dog hair, right?

An Exciting Day!

Our house goes on the market today. I would say it is about 95% ready to show. Tonight we will finish up a couple of things. I truly wonder how I will keep it looking good all the time. And of course, the dog has decided now would be a very good time to shed. Aren't they supposed to do that in the spring time? Shouldn't he be getting some heavy winter coat now instead of losing it? sigh.

We got some other great news a few days ago. We had been looking at a piece of land in Wyoming. We made an offer on it at the end of July which was rejected. We made a second offer last week and it was accepted! We are scheduled to close on it before the end of this month. Super fast deal. It is 2 acres with a well and a septic in place and power/phone to the lot line. Our plan is to either build or move on a modular. The catch. We will have to move to Wyoming before the house is completed. We will be 'roughing it' in our camp trailer. Should make for a fun time. The plan is not to move until spring so at least we won't have any weather issues to worry about. I have been studying lots of "Off Grid Living" type blogs for ideas on how to be more comfortable during the camp trailer time. I am amazed at how ingenious people can be. They have given me some very good ideas.

Our new property has an amazing view which makes it a little easier to give up the amazing view I have now. The picture above is the view. See that mountain? That is Casper Mountain. I thought we would only have prairie there so I was quite happy to find a piece of property that looked at a mountain. Okay, so it isn't as big as the mountains I'm used to. But it'll do! Lots of fun things to do on that mountain too. A nice little ski area, cross country ski trails, hiking, fishing, camping. All good things. A few miles from our new property is a river and a park with a boat launch. We are pretty sure hubby's boat is too big for that little river but a smaller boat would work. The same river has some great man made rapids for kayak's and tubes in the town of Casper plus we are told the fishing in the river is very good. And less than an hour east is a nice big lake perfect for more fishing or for water skiing. My goal once we get relocated is to convince Joe that he would much rather have a water skiing boat and a small fishing than a big fishing boat. Wish me luck on that one (here is where I need a winking smilie). But in my mind it is a good deal. Two boats in place of one! What's not to like about that idea?

It's Saturday!

I love Saturday's. I sleep in late, then I lounge around for a little bit on the 'puter, then I make us a little brunch and then I get to work. We spend most of our Saturday's (and often Sunday's) working on fixing up this 108 year old home.

Before we were fixing it up for us, now we are fixing it up to sell. The realtor is coming on Monday to see about listing it so this weekend will be full. In fact, I should be making our brunch right now instead of sitting here typing so I can get to work. Joe has already been painting for 2 hours and I'm still in my jammies.

We have done quite a bit of work to this place. We are hoping that the realtor will agree and not want us to do much more. I'm about burnt out. It is not nearly as fun to fix up a place that we are selling compared to one we are trying to make 'ours'. I do love this house though. And part of me wishes we were staying here.

We live in the country. 19 miles east of the nearest real town. That town isn't very big (population of about 10,000) but if we drive about 45 minutes east we can get to a bigger town (of about 40,000) or 2 hours east to Portland (really big town). It is beautiful here. Our house sits up on a little hill and overlooks a slough and a small valley. The picture above is the view that we have from our front deck. Usually it is very green but we are having a dry year. You can't see the slough very well in the pic but it is there. I'll miss that view when we move to Wyoming. We are going to be put an offer in on a piece of property this coming week that has a pretty nice view too. Different but still nice. I am very hopeful that we will get it. No house on the property just a septic and a well so we will build a house. Fun times.