goodbye little house

We sold our house.   

We had two weeks of mayhem after I returned from a quick trip to Colorado - packing, moving, cleaning the new house, cleaning the old house - you know, the usual moving drill.   It's funny that with everything going on, I didn't have much time to process it all.  Until Tom dropped me off at the old house the night before the final walk-through.  He took the kids to Chick-Fil-A for yet another nutritious dinner-on-the-run.  And there I was, with only my sponges and Chlorox spray as witnesses.

And I had a good cry.

It kind of felt good to just sit there and cry and take it all in.  I don't know why it hit me while cleaning, of all things.  But there was just something so sad about wiping all the little handprints off the walls, like I was erasing the evidence of a family that lived there.  Then I went to clean the oven and couldn't help but think of the hours and hours I'd spent in that kitchen, making meals and making cookies with my kids.  As I swept the hardwood floors upstairs, I thought of every night I'd tucked our little kids into bed and sang them songs.  And so it went with the whole house: the bathtub brought memories of babies' first baths, the front porch reminded me of the many rainstorms we watched out there, and on and on.  And on.

I guess you could say that I'm just a wee bit sentimental.

It was a wonderful first house for us, though, and will always be special to me, much like this whole magical time we've spent in Pittsburgh.  These have been some of the most intense and stressful years of my life and have also been full of joy for me.  We have learned so much, both about ourselves and about others and about what really matters in life.

I wish that my farewell to our little house were the last goodbye, but unfortunately, the goodbyes are just beginning!  The next month is going to require waterproof mascara on almost a daily basis.  But it will be fun to have a few last get-togethers and to live it up before we say goodbye to this little city and all of these people we love.

Anyway, life is good.  We found a short term rental for two months and are busy planning our next move.  I'll do my best to keep you posted!

Howdy

Howdy, folks. It's been awhile, hasn't it? That's okay, this way I have lot of updates for you. Well, kind of.

I am going to make this quick and painless, which will hopefully make me feel all caught up and warm and fuzzy so that I will hopefully stop associating my blog with guilt pangs :)

Since Halloween, we have:

• celebrated Thanksgiving, Christmas, Meredith's 30th birthday, and Valentine's Day (please use your imagination here in place of individual blog posts)
• contemplated moving to 12 different states and settled on none of them yet :)
• gotten our house ready to sell (think paint touch-ups, basement wall painting, dejunking, and lots of magic-erasering)
• listed our house with a real estate agent
• had 2 showings
• accepted an offer after 6 days on the market
• continued to contemplate moving to the 12 aforementioned states plus a few others
• visited craigslist daily
• hunted for short-term housing since we have to move out by April 12th

And so far, no trabajo y no casa (free translation: no job and no house). Which leads me to my to-do list for this upcoming week:

1. Research storage facilities and the cheapest hotel we could live in that doesn't have bed bugs
2. Hope the last hope we have for a short-term apartment doesn't fall through
3. Appear calm and collected despite inner panic
4. Think about packing? Then postpone.
5. Sew a cute apron
6. Visit craigslist hourly instead of daily
7. Refrain from asking my husband where we should drive the moving truck to (sorry, these things are just nice to know for people like me)

So, yeah. House is sold and waiting to close, but we are jobless and homeless for now. But we're working on those and hopeful. And if all else fails, we can always go camping all summer and get fast food jobs, right?

The children are doing well. I took Keri recently to get her hair cut and here is the face she made the whole time:

It's a classic Keri look.

Then, there is Grant. He is my smallest child yet. Braden weighed about 5 pounds more than him at this age and was huge! Grant is 50th percentile or lower on everything, which explains why he is moving so much faster than Braden...less chub to haul around :)

He is crawling, diving off hardwood staircases, standing up on everything, and eating every crumb and piece of trash in sight. He also likes to declare, "GA!" repeatedly. It's kind of fun having a conversation with him using only these two letters. He thinks it's hilarious.

And Braden is my imaginative and very curious child. To illustrate, tonight we went for a walk and he found a baby pinecone. When we got home he made a bed for his baby pinecone out of blue construction paper and while I was rocking Grant to sleep he was inquiring about the dietary habits of pinecones. He asks me at every meal where everything we are eating grows and frequently walks around the house asking where everything in our house is made or "grows". He likes to cut and color and build things. He likes saying our realtor's name and talking about what "Bill" does. He is also very concerned about how we are going to move everything in the house into the yellow moving truck and likes to go over the list of what we will take to make sure his bed is on the list. I am doing my best to field these questions and reassure him. Overall the kids are excited to move and are lots of fun.

Well, I hope that gives you an idea of the glamorous Draper life we lead. And by way of survey, if any of you happen to have a serious love for your particular state, please leave a comment stating why you love it and perhaps we will consider moving there :)