"Too much too little too late"

It was "art day" at our house a while back. Buck loves to paint and a good friend of mine (Eamax! Hi!) let me in on the trick of buying watercolor pallets at the dollar store for each child so that they can use it in front of him or herself. Buck loves painting pictures with his little watercolor set (although he's totally partial to only using black). I taped a piece of white paper down for Thunder to color over (not ready for paint just yet). He did do a little finger painting and then ripped up his own creation. 14 month olds will just not be contained :)  

We've had 2 different people come to look at our house so far (Days on Market: 8). The first couple was a no-go and the second lookers just left. We'll see. Buck had a swimming birthday party today, so it's been a nice Saturday so far. It's semi-warm outside. Let's hope the housing market starts to get a little hotter. 

"I'm your Mister, Mister on the Radio"

May The Force be with you

Yeah! Someone actually came to look at our house last night! That's it - they looked. I'm actually not expecting much. The bright spot on this week was finally getting a "for sale" sign on the front lawn (there had been a mix-up and we never got one). 

A "realtor's caravan" is coming by next Thursday. We are leaving for Oregon to see Coach K1 & Hoonka's new baby, T-gun. He is the youngest brother of A-man & K-man. T-gun is about 5 weeks old,  I think? My dream is to be helpful to Hoonka by watching her 2 oldest while she hangs out with T-gun (or sleeps). I am happy that I won't be trying to keep my own house clean. We've rented a house near to the K's so that we're not underfoot. T-gun is going to be baptized on Easter, so it's going to be a bit of a party. 

Please, please, PLEASE someone buy our house while we're away!! 

[Lastly, a BIG CONGRATS to E and Theo who welcomed their first baby -  son, Huge - yesterday. We all can't wait to meet him!]

"Lost"

So, if you read this, you know that I'm obsessed with the tv show Lost. I have to post some thoughts here for lack of a better place. This is a bit of a blurb on the general path of the show up to now.  Please feel free to read a different blog today :)

I think a Wrinkle in Time & Alice in Wonderland are big clues (they are referenced so often in the show). In both, awkward "anti-hero" young women unwittingly become saviors of mythical societies. They both have morally ambiguous helpers from magical places who only offer suggestions on how to help. But in the end, both heroines are forced to decide if they will make the necessary sacrifices to save themselves and the mythical worlds (thereby ultimately affecting their own worlds). In A Wrinkle in Time, there is a "formless black shape" spreading over worlds and consuming them in darkness. It controls minds and takes over the Will of average people. At the core, both stories are "good versus evil." In both stories, love wins - and in both, selfless love is associated with good. Sounds corny, but love seems to be the undercurrent of every character's actions in Lost. The show keeps asking "what will this person give for the sake of love?" and "what is love, really?" It's such a good show. Can't wait to buy the entire thing and spend a weekend watching it next year.

"You're hot then you're cold"

Thunder the Alien Hunter. Buck & his best buddy enjoy the swings & make adult me jealous of their worry-free playing. 

We went to the Science Center (re) today and had such a fun time. Buck - at 4 - is the perfect age for these kinds of outings. RKZ is (very soon) back from his business trip and things are ok. I am internally worried about the selling of our house. No calls, no looks, nobody going through the house. It's freaking me out even if it's only been 4 days. My policy has been to live each day at a time. It's worked today at least.

"It's - my - life"

These pictures reflect my life lately - Toy Story 3 is coming out this summer and I think they are making a big push early by distributing toys based on the movie series. Buck LOVES the Toy Story movies and the army men are his favorite of all the toys. When I saw this box of army men based on the characters in the movie, I decided to get them for him as a surprise during the move. He loves them - especially the 2 paratroopers. Of course, Buck decided to watch the movie again to see "what the guys should do." I think we might need to turn off the videos for awhile so that my son realizes he can think of his own stories.  Yesterday was a good day for us. RKZ had to leave at 4am, so that was a bummer, but the boys and I were able to make it to Mass and then lunch at IKEA. I love IKEA because they do "free breakfast Sundays" for kids (I don't know if it's just here). The cafeteria is always loud and a bit messy, so I don't worry about Thunder. His big moment was that he insisted on using a fork to eat his meatballs. I was nervous he was going to stab himself the entire time, but T did pretty well and ate 2 meatballs on his own. Buck just started using a fork a few months ago (ha. ha.) We ate out because I was hoping someone would come see our house yesterday. No lookers even - I'm a bit nervous, but RKZ says to be patient. Waiting is not my strong suit. 

"My united states of whatever"

Yesterday, we went to the West Edmonton Mall - affectionately knowns as:  "West Ed" . It was supposedly the largest Mall in the world (might still be). It's about 3 hours from Calgary, so it's a handy place to go for the day or the night to have some fun. The mall has a lagoon going through the center of it (complete with sea lion show), an amusement park, a waterslide park and these bumper boats. There are a lot of things in the mall, you can click on the link above if you're interested. RKZ and Buck road the bumper boats and got soaking wet by having a "water war" with the pre-teens in the other boats. This was the highlight of Buck's trip. We originally planned to spend Friday night and then go to the water park in the morning, but Thursday's puke-fest ruled that out. We ended up just spending all day Saturday. 

The other reason we went up to Edmonton, is that it is a 1/2-way point for us to meet up with Thunder's birth mom, H and her boyfriend, D. It's funny because D is not Thunder's b-father, but Thunder loves D. I think that the connection might be a kindred spirits thing because both Thunder and D love adventure and excitement. It will be nice as Thunder grows up to have a man like D as sort of an "young uncle." Our entire family loves D - he is a quality man.  Saturday was a nice day and H & D were able to spend a few hours walking around with Thunder on their own (sort of). T was very tired throughout the day, but I don't think he showed them his grumpiest, which was nice. It's still a bit awkward overall. We all still value developing a relationship with everyone. 

And I got a new cel phone as mine was dying. That was good. 

"baby, you're too pretty for me!"

Well, the stagers are finished. They finished yesterday and then the photographer came to take the photos. I'll add captions to each picture. If you didn't see the old house, these pictures won't mean very much to you. I didn't think of taking "before" pictures until now - I'm not in the habit of snapping random pictures of my house, so I just don't have comparisons for you. When I am a professional blogger, I'll think of these things ahead of time. 

This is the view of our "new" living room from the entrance way (sort of). I was proud that they kept the large picture of the ship (hanging behind the sofa). That is the only thing that belongs to us in this picture - oh, also the tiny statue of the baseball player on the mantel (courtesy of the Duchess, Gma Nancy). This is the same living room, view from the kitchen. What is really ours? The two framed pictures by the lamp - painted squares of a tin roof taken from a farmhouse in Manitoba (and 2 of my favorite things in the house)

2 shots of the dining room. I am proud to say that the table, chairs and hutch all belong to us (as well as the china they kept in the hutch. Only the picture is added (and, I've already told RKZ I want to buy it for the new house - everything not ours is for sale, by the way. The kitchen nook. Pretty much the same except for the fake flowers and green lemons (also fake). Buck has enjoyed pretending to eat these and Thunder throws them everywhere. It'd be funny if I wasn't nervous about the "you break it, you buy it" policy. 

The kitchen looks almost the same (minus 3 years of clutter). I had to take a picture of the lovely oil and vinegar and pestle accents. These pictures really make me like my kitchen. I'll miss it when we move to the 80's kitchen of the new house (think "renovation-now").

The basement. You might also recognize this furniture as our California living room furniture. I've been trying to get rid of it for 3 houses now; but, the stagers have saved it for me. If you click on this picture, you'll see the brown "shaggy" pillows. I've already decided to buy the pillows and center table which will make this the den furniture in our new home. Everything old is new again! Oh, we are also responsible for the very cute boy in the shot. He goes where were go :) 

the room affectionately called, "Grandma and Grandpa's room" (the guest room to the left of the bathroom) has been turned into a home office. It's absolutely lovely. The lead stager (Jeff) told me that "the more small furniture you put into a room, makes it appear much larger." Interesting. The rug, clock, book of quotations (on table) and statue of the golfer on the desk are ours. 

The "bonus/TV room" upstairs. If you've seen our house before, you'll recognize this furniture because it used to be in our living room (around the fireplace). It was nice to hear that the stagers really loved our old stuff, but that it was just "too big" for staging spaces. Big furniture made the house look much smaller. This furniture is now in the room where the u-shaped couch and chair were (they were put in storage because they are "giant"). Buck said that the new pillows look like "giant bean-bags", which makes me laugh. The bean bags are currently all over the floor because they make it impossible to sit on the couches (especially if you're 4). In this room (I'm proud to say), all of the furniture and the movie posers are ours. The lamps will soon be ours as well (I've decided I have no skill picking out accent lighting). 

Our new Master bed room. The king bed is in storage and none of the bedding or side tables are ours. Everything else is the same (only seems much more neat). RKZ and I are both committing to not "cluttering" up our new house (roll eyes here). It's been interesting cramming 4 people into that double bed. Not that we do the "family bed" but by 6 am, we're all there. This set up does make our dresser and chair look nice, though. It was my dream to have the room set up like this (with the king bed in the room) - the next Master is bigger (but not enormous like so many new Masters'). RKZ and I have almost compromised into hanging our wall-mounted TV where the mirror is now (he is generally anti-tv in the bedroom). We'll see. I'll be sure to someday post pictures of our new house once we're finished decorating. 

Now that this is done, I feel as though I have our house back. Wouldn't you know it, but Buck was up ALL last night puking (once an hour) on the new Master bed (and us). The kids' rooms remained the same, but we have only 1 set of bedding per bed so we're already up to our necks in laundry. The house went up for sale last night, so I'm posting (currently) in my pj's while Buck watches tv and tries not to get sick upstairs (all over the bean-bag pillows). RKZ was home this morning, but March is their busiest month at work and he had to go. Thunder is totally off schedule and screamed bloody murder from his bed for 1 hour this morning (when he was supposed to be napping). He's asleep now (thank goodness for him and us). 

Two acres of land better totally be worth this :) 

"One thing started leadin' to another"

So, idiot-girl (me) decided to take pictures of the new house and post them here - only I forgot to take any pictures of the actual house (only the inside) and it's all messy without context. My brain is totally shot. So, I decided to post pictures of the views from various rooms in our new house. Way more interesting anyway. View 1 = backyard. Yes, the entire picture is our new backyard - back to the end of the snow equal to the line of evergreen trees. This is the view from the driveway (I think) View #2 = the view from Buck's bedroom (upstairs to the North). This is our front yard. Notice the Spanish tile that makes me think of 11141 S. Meads Ave :) Also notice that 14 year old Buck will easily be able to fall and break his leg off of this section of the roof. 

View 3 = view from the kitchen of aforementioned backyard. The kitchen has a lovely picture window and gets the morning sun (it's East facing). Our property stops at the fence you can't see very well in this picture. This view makes me happy (even if the strawberry bowl does not). View #4 is the backyard again. Do you feel like you've been here yet? 

Day 3 of the stagers (has it really only been 3 days?) - the cleaners came and were professional. A team of 3 lovely people who made the house sparkle. The kids and I drove around for a few hours while they cleaned and Thunder fell asleep, so we came home. The cleaners loved the kids and I signed them up to clean our new house when we move in. 

The Carpet cleaners came this morning, 2 men in their 70's with an awesome pair of machines that basically scrubbed dirt and junk out of our carpets. The owner, Doug, even brought some crud up to show me. It was impressively disgusting. Doug explained the entire process, told me all about Dust Mite feces and decided I needed to hear all about what his carpet cleaning can do for me. I was - again - impressed and signed up Doug and Max to come clean our new carpets in the the Springland house. I'm either a sucker or making amazing new contacts. The floor looks amazing and I'm hoping that this will be the first night the kids don't cough and sneeze until 5 am (that's been the worst part so far). 

On the actual staging front, the whispering hasn't stopped but the house is looking decorated and lovely. A lot of detailing and fun things for Thunder to walk around grabbing. Pictures tomorrow, I promise. Right now, we are trying to figure out what to do about RKZ's decision to paint the areas that needed to be "touched up" on the walls. He chose the wrong paint and it is very dark. Our walls look like Jaguar's - very spotty. God bless him, he has to go to the Rona (Canadian Home Depot) at 7 am tomorrow and try to find paint to match. Nobody wants to see pictures of a spotty (albeit beautiful) house. 

Also, the pod guys can't pick up the pod until "sometime on Friday." 

It's not looking good for our heroes. 

"I'm goin' home..."

The boys share an interesting moment in the exersaucer (don't even know if this can be spelled correctly)

So, it's day 2 with the 'stagers'. I'm going to stop putting it into quotes and just say stagers. First, our real estate agent recommended them (have I even mentioned we've bought a new house?). The company is called "dekora" and they are interior designers/home stagers. The idea is that they make our house show home beautiful. Yes, I know what you're thinking, "but isn't your house already that beautiful?" ha. ha. Turns out, no. And we have a lot of crap (for lack of a better word). Seems that stagers are basically just people who come over and tell you how much crap you have - whisper and complain a bit among themselves - and then are fakey-nice while they tell you how your house should look.

They aren't that bad, really, but I mostly love the movers (young guys making an easy buck) who come over to cart our things out into this rented storage unit called a 'pod'. The pods (we needed 2) are delivered by a big truck, filled to the rim, and then taken away for storage.

Once everything is placed into the 2 pods (that should end today), professional (we'll see) cleaners come in to detail our house. That should take 3 hours. The stagers will be working around the cleaners to finish up.

Tomorrow, the 'staging' furniture (read: things much better than my own, organized by a professional decorator) will arrive and be placed in mathmatically correct places to ensure the speedy selling of my now completely depersonalized home. Don't even get me started on how many comments I have gotten over our 'religious art.' I get it, I like Marys and Crosses...and I don't mind taking them down because the buyers might be Jewish - stop telling me already!

Also, tomorrow, will see the arrival of the 'dry carpet cleaner.' I can't wait to see how he gets the children-sized stains out of our carpets. Pictures are on Thursday (for the feature sheets) and Friday (I'm assuming) our 'hollywood' Grady house goes on sale.

I promise pictures of the finished house on Friday as well. I do believe it will be beautiful and I do believe it will help sell our house. I just feel a bit judged and intruded upon by the entire process (except by those movers and the pod guys). This must be how the people on the tv show 'the Biggest Loser' feel, like their lives were fine before but that nobody wanted to buy what they were offering without some cleaning out of crap. I'm on a furniture/tchotchky - try spelling that! - diet.

pictures and update tomorrow.
Feel free to comment! I turned them back on for this process.

"Monday, Monday"

North American Bobsled team 2018!! 

So, I've been totally freaking out about this week - we have "professional stagers" coming to "stage" our house - as well as pack it all up (was the general idea I got). Turns out this morning that our lead stager has pneumonia (she came over on Friday which I'm sure was her most contagious day). I feel awfully for her but I feel even worse for the 2 ya-hoos currently wandering around my house trying to figure out what they should do.

I'm not exactly sure how this day is going to go...but I'm glad it's not my fault that it's disorganized.

"This is the night - tonight - Everything's gonna be - alright"

These pictures are all from Buck's school. He and his classmates like to climb the giant mounds of dirty snow and slide down them or throw snowballs off of them. They are all squinting because it's also VERY sunny here. Our weather is similar to Denver or Salt Lake City (only about 10 degrees colder at any given time). It sounds freezing (and probably looks it from the jackets), but the sunshine is really amazing.

King of the mountain (mound) 

Buck is 4. His friends are a mix between 4 & 5. This is by far one of my favorite ages of my son. The only things I don't enjoy normally have to do with his turning into an actual "boy" - like his ability to use sarcasm on a regular basis, his love for the phrase, "Ok, whatever," and the fact that he loves to moon me (yes, the 'show your naked bum, moon).

Does it ever seem that life crashes into you like waves? I mean, real life where life-altering things are happening (not the make-believe drama of youth). My sister-in-law's mother passed away after only a month of being diagnosed with cancer. My entire family is very shaken up by it, and the saddest thing to happen in a while is the fact that we couldn't get down to her funeral in California yesterday. It's so difficult to spur-of-the-moment travel with 2 small children. Death is one of the only things that has the ability to stop time for the living, I think.

Another difficult thing happened on RKZ's side of the family - still too fresh to be posted about - but a life-altering thing and I just wonder how all of this happens at once. I'm guessing that it's my age. 40 is the new adulthood, I guess. And the Duchess is famous for saying, "Everything happens for a reason and it will all work out." She's always right, by the way.

And today, my Grandma Jody turns 94.  She is beautiful.

"Jungle Love - oeoeo"

ZOO in the frozen tundra :)
Buck chooses a new mommy

My boys squashed together.

Went to the zoo a few days ago. Today, we went to a local Mall and the boys spent an hour in the indoor playground. I am in full "escapist" mode at the moment. I totally blew off things that needed to get done today to just sit and watch my boys play. I'm thinking that this is what boys are for.

About the moving. I will post pictures of the new place (new to us) this weekend. We have a home inspection on Saturday.

I was watching a TV show about a blogger who got sick last night (HOUSE, if you watch it) and I was struck by the fact that she blogged about every tiny detail of her life. This eventually helped with her diagnosis, but I was more struck by the fact that I post about almost nothing and since Thunder has come to us, I'm lucky if I post once a week. And even though this character's blog was a huge source of controversy, I find that blogging is more theraputic (I'm not looking that up) for me. Also, she had millions (or a lot) of readers, I'm thinking it's just you - and maybe even you aren't reading the post, you're just looking at the pictures.

Regardless, I will post this move for my own benefit. Also, it might give my very pregnant friends something to read in the middle of the night when they can't sleep. They may have the catharsis of the fact that they are not in the middle of a giant move (unless they are, which begs the question of why they are spending precious time reading my stupid blog).

So, to make a long story even longer, we found a house on 2 acres that we really like. It needs to be completely redone because it was built in 1985 and looks to never have been remodeled. But, it has been kept clean and in nice condition, so we decided to make an offer. Low and behold, they accepted it and now we have to sell our house in a terrible housing market. That's ok with both of us because currently, we would hold hands with our neighbors through dinner if we opened our windows...of course, those same neighbors put their house up for sale yesterday morning.

I'll post later about our agent (the "she-shark") & our "stager" - and, yes, the fact that we're using a "stager" makes me feel pretentious and strange. But if he sells my house, I'll record the entire thing for a reality show and be edited as the "b-" with no problems. let's be honest, there wouldn't need to be a lot of editing.

"movin' on up!"

The pictures definitely don't match the post...but oh well.

We've been so busy because we are moving to a new house. Catch your breath and rest assured that it's still here in Calgary. I'll post pictures on Saturday (after the home inspection). There is a very long story leading up to the move, but suffice it to say that we're very excited.

Now, we are entering the crazy world of "home stagers" - those people who come and make your house look pretty so that other people will want to buy it...like the trainers on the Biggest Loser (that was just mean).

I have a 4 year old whining about being bored next to me.
I'd better go.