Summer update

After all of my fretting about how hard it would be to have my house ready for viewings with 5 kids in it, my house sold 10 hours after the sign went up on the lawn, 1 day before the listing was supposed to begin, and just hours before I was due to come home! We tidied up on Sunday and jumped in the van and drove out to Matt’s dad’s house (the boys had summer hockey in our new town). Our agent had told us that the photographers would call us on Monday to arrange to come and take the photos on Tuesday. That was good because I still had a few things to tidy up or take care of. A bit of trim to be painted, Patrick’s bed to be made, light bulbs to be replaced, 12 bags of garbage in the driveway waiting for garbage day. Well they didn’t call, and at 2:30 the agent called us to say that the photographers had already done their thing and that our house would be on the website by Tuesday. Even though I was mortified by the fact that there was a case of pop on my counter, Patrick’s bedspread is hanging down off of his loft bed, and more, the house looked pretty good on the internet. At 4 pm I called the agent back to correct one thing in the listing (the year the roof was replaced) and he told me that he had already had 2 calls about our house. At 8 pm I was putting the kids into the van to leave when the agent called to say that there had been 2 viewings already and that I should wait there by the fax machine, as they would likely be sending us an offer! We signed it back for more and by 10 pm we had accepted their offer. I couldn’t believe it. They asked for August 30th closing, which is okay, because we really do need to be in a new house before school starts on Sept. 4th.

You can see my house photos in my facebook album.


Now our problem has been finding a new house with such a tight timeframe. We put an offer in on a house in the country. It sits on a 56 acre farm. The owner is severing a 2 acre lot to go with the house. It will include a field that is currently used for vegetables, and a few rows of apple trees. The house needs lots of TLC, but the rooms are pretty large and there are 5 bedrooms. It is about 30 years old. The real reason we chose this house over some others we were looking at is the location. It’s on a road that is very well known for the mansions that are on the waterfront side of the road. It is very hard to get waterfront building lots now and a building lot alone will cost 500,000 now. Matt and I are banking on the fact that this will eventually rub off on our side of the road. We figure that any work we do to this house will come back to us dollar for dollar. Matt is going to move a futon into the house on August 14th and start cleaning and painting after work before we move any of our furniture in. I have to say that while I will miss our house, I am starting to get excited about my new “modern country” decorating scheme.

The boys have been doing really well with their summer hockey. When we signed them up, we put Damon up 3 years into Patrick’s age division, and we put Patrick up 2 years as well. Damon is holding his own against the older boys! Because of his size and his toughness on the ice, nobody except the convenor has a clue that he is so much younger. And Patrick’s skating is standing out and he has a lot of hockey people out there really excited about him coming to the region. Dads from various teams found out we hadn’t bought a house yet and were trying to talk us into moving to their town so that he could play on their sons’ team as opposed to against their sons’ teams. When you are an 11 year old boy moving to a new area, it is nice to be welcomed like that!

Campbell is doing well and enjoying his summer vacation. His soccer ended and his best friend went to Japan for the summer. He lost his first tooth and has another one that is loose. He also has an awful cavity that I need to get taken care of. Bad me.

Kira finally decided that she was going to be toilet trained. So she was. As easy as that. Other than a couple of totally acceptable accidents, she has done great.

Hanna cut her first tooth. She is very very close to crawling, but instead she does a half-crawl, half scoot. When she is crawling and she wants to get to something, she leans forward on her arms as if she will crawl, she goes forward with her arms until her legs are extended behind her, and then she sits back down. Somehow she moves around the room remarkably well with this method.