Ryan

One of Ryan's new favorite hangouts: the cupboard. Perfect size for him.
 

The house hunt

So, here's the story of our house hunt. The week before Christmas my little brother, Todd, and I were chatting about our house and Todd ended up offering to help us with a down payment for a new house so we wouldn't have to wait another year or so to find a new house that would fit us better. Merry Christmas to us. I had our realtor who had helped us buy this house come by that week and go over what we could do to get our house ready to sale. Mostly this included de-cluttering and moving some big pieces of furniture out so or house would look bigger. We also decided to do some painting and get new carpet since ours was well used and couldn't get all the way clean. And Annie decided to pour an entire bottle of white out all over the carpet in her room. Good thing we were replacing the carpet anyway. :)

So the day after Christmas I started packing away lots of toys and books and junk. We quickly filled our garage and I think in the course of the next month I rearranged the garage 3 times to fit all the boxes I was packing up. We got all the painting and re-carpeting done the week after Christmas when my parents were visiting Todd and Savannah in Seattle, so we got to stay at their house while our house was getting fixed up. I learned that the fastest way to clean out a house is to paint inside and put down new carpet because then you have to take everything off the walls and out of the bedrooms. Instead of putting everything back in it's place after it's done, I just put it in boxes and out in the garage.

The next week Jake's parents came to visit, and Janet helped clean our house really well, so the week after they left I just had a few last things to do, then we moved the extra furniture and a lot of the boxes into a friend's parent's garage--they just bought the house in January, but won't be moving in until this summer, and in the meantime the friend's sister is living there, so there was plenty of room for storage in the garage. At that point we were ready to list the house. Less than 4 weeks after finding out we were going to sale. It sure was a whirlwind month.

We listed our house on a Wednesday, and on Saturday night we got an offer. We had been out to look at houses a few times and nothing was jumping out at us. There was a house I had liked from the start, but Jacob wasn't sold on it, so we were a little wary about accepting an offer when it looked like nothing was out there for us. So we didn't accept or counter the offer. But we did go out and look at a few houses again on Tuesday and found two that we both liked and felt good about. So we put in our counter-offer a few days after the deadline had passed, knowing that our buyer was still interested in our house. I was expecting a quick response because I knew she had a deadline before she had to head back to DC and she wanted to get the house stuff taken care of before that. As time passed and we didn't hear anything I began to get a bit anxious. She didn't respond by our deadline, and I was sure that by us waiting we had spoiled everything and given her a chance to look and find another house she liked better. I started worrying that our house would be on the market for months and that her offer ($10,000 below our asking price) was as good as it would get. I finally accepted that maybe it wasn't meant to be with this buyer and that things would work out how they were supposed to, and within a half hour of my change of heart we got the phone call that the buyer was going to accept our counter offer (of what we originally listed it for and $1,000 in closing costs), but just hadn't had a chance to meet with her realtor to sign the papers. Phew! So the next day (Monday) we got the signed paperwork and our house was officially under contract.

With our house sold (barring any issues with the inspection, appraisal, etc.) it was time to buy our new house. We put our offer in on Tuesday, got a counter offer back the next day and accepted their counter offer. So by Thursday we were officially going to be buying this house:

We will close on our new house on March 8th. Since our buyer isn't moving here from DC until April we set that closing date as March 27th. So we'll have almost 3 weeks to get most of the rooms inside painted, then move, then clean the old house. Hopefully it's plenty of time.

And now that we have a house to buy we've had tons of papers to read and sign. Such a pain. I am so excited for this all to be done and not have to move ever again (hopefully). The new house has 4 bedrooms upstairs and one downstairs, so we'll have an official guest room for visitors to use. Though it may be a while before there's anything besides a blow-up mattress to sleep on. This new house is double the square feet of our current house, so we'll have lots of empty space for a while as we slowly acquire furniture for all the extra rooms. The kids will have a blast running around in all the empty space. And on the stairs. Rachel was very insistent on getting a house with stairs. Any time we looked at a one-story house she automatically didn't like it just because there were no stairs. :) Hello baby gates... And hello boxes. Time to start packing.

Playing catch up

It's been a busy few weeks and kind of feels like real life has been put on hold while we go through the craziness of buying and selling a house. But life does go on. Just with less frequent blogging. Here is some of what we've been up to lately. 

In our preparations to put our house on the market we cleaned out a lot of junk and clutter. Annie noticed that the shelves in our walk-in closet were a lot more bare as I had packed away about half of my clothes that I could do without for a few months. The bottom shelf became Annie's bed. She'd knock whatever pants were there onto the floor, unless they were conveniently placed for a pillow.

When I would take the kids with me house shopping Annie would frequently find an empty closet or cupboard to climb in. Rachel liked to join in the fun, too. Apparently laying on empty shelves is tons of fun.

One of Rachel's favorite developments that came as we cleared out the junk and clutter was that we found our old camcorder that had been lost in the back corner of a shelf on our desk. It wouldn't keep a charge very well, so we hadn't used it since Annie was a baby. I figured since we hadn't used it in two years and Rachel has been asking and asking for her own camera, she could have it. She has LOVED having her own camera. It takes pictures and videos and she'll spend hours on end looking back at things she's recorded already. I'll have do do a separate post sharing some of her work.

 

Ryan is getting more and more adventurous. And must be growing some because he's finally too big for the 6-9 month clothes. It must be all that extra nutrition he gets from the garden.

The boy loves dirt and rocks. He's getting around pretty well, and finally took his first solo steps last Sunday at 10 1/2 months old. We were hoping he would be slower than his sisters in walking, and so far so good as he's a month behind the girls in first steps. If he goes according to their schedule he still has about 2 months before he's walking well without falling down often.

 

He does love to climb what he can. We took our eyes off of him last week for 15 seconds and came in to see him standing on the dishwasher door holding on to the top rack with a big smile on his face. Rachel, unfortunately, likes to help him get to where he can't quite reach. We've got to keep a close eye on the little guy. So far we have no major injuries to report.

And of course all the kids like treating us like jungle gyms. 

 

Jacob "fell asleep" when the girls were attacking. They got locked in his arms and thought it was so funny. 

Their most favorite game is "Get me." They run around yelling "Get me, Dad!" while he chases them like a monster, tickling them when he catches them. Occasionally the tables will turn and they will chase Jake for a minute while he screams like a little girl. Fun times. :) Ryan always thinks it's hilarious and runs after them in a crawl trying to join in the fun.

The rest of the visit

For a lot of the rest of the time that Grandma and Grandpa Campbell were here visiting it was FREEZING cold. So we didn't go out much. We hung out at home and enjoyed the time together. It turned out to be a good time to have them visit from a purely selfish point of view because Janet is not afraid to get her hands dirty and did a big cleaning project for me almost every day, which ended up speeding up our preparations for putting our house on the market. She scrubbed our kitchen floor until you could actually see the original color of the grout. She also spent at least a half hour scrubbing and scouring the master bathroom shower which was originally white, but the floor hasn't been all the way white since before we moved in. With some baking soda, vinegar, dish soap, and some good ol' elbow grease (and a little help from Rachel) she got it looking better than it has since we've lived here. 

While the girls worked on the shower, Ryan worked on cleaning the door stop.

Annie wanted to get in on the fun, too.

Movie night watching Ice Age 4:

On their last day here we decided to try to snap a few pictures. Most were a flop since the kids have zero attention span.

Grandma and Grandpa with their only grandson:

Trying to get a picture with all the kids proved to be a little difficult. Annie was NOT getting out of her "bed" and Rachel was totally distracted by the camcorder I found when I was packing up all our junk on our desk. It doesn't keep a charge for long at all, so we stopped using it shortly after Annie was born when we got a new camera, so we let Rachel have it. 

This was probably the "best" one we caught with all the kids:

Then Ryan was off to explore.

It was great having G&G visit! Thanks for making the trip. See you this summer!

Grandma and Grandpa Visit: and bring snow with them!

The weather man said it would get cold on Friday and it did. We got a light dusting of snow Friday morning. Dad said that the cold weather had been following them around since they returned from Alaska. They visited Mark and Ashley in San Antonio right before coming to see us and San Antonio had had some unseasonably cold weather while they were there.

Grandma and Grampa Visit: Old Tucson Studios

Grandma and Grandpa Campbell were in town to visit their grandchildren for the first time since returning from their mission to Alaska. We were happy to have them in town for a whole week.

The weather man predicted that Thursday would be the last warm day that week, so we stole Jake from work for most of the afternoon and went to Old Tucson Studios. It was lots of fun.

One of the first places that we stopped was the Mercantile.  We listened as the proprietor taught us about how an old west Mercantile was operated and what he carried in his store.

Here's Grandpa taking some pictures while Grandma and Rachel look on.

Ryan was exploring the Mercantile on his on terms/territory.

Grandma and Grandpa looking at what the shop had for sale.

The proprietor talking to Grandma, Grandpa and Rachel.

 Just outside the Mercantile, the studio re-enacted on an Old West gun fight.  Here are some pictures of us waiting for the shoot out to begin.

We did our fair share of exploring.  Grandpa was by far the most interested in looking around and taking pictures.

Jake said am I using the force to push Ryan's stroller in this picture.

Ryan with Cheerios. What a happy kid!

Ryan arching his back to smile at Momma.

Big Jake's BBQ!

Miscreants behind bars where they belong.

Come on Grandma! I want to ride the train!

The studio has a small train that will take you for a ride.  While Grandpa looked around and took pictures, we grabbed our sandwiches went on a ride to see the sights and start eating lunch.  Jake and the kids really enjoyed the train ride.  Ryan of course is always happy to be outside.

Hello everybody!

Sandwich: yum. Munch, munch

Ryan wonders if he can have one of these at home.

Not far from the train station, we finished our lunch and then went to ride the carousel.  We were the only ones on the carousel, so we rode it twice.  Rachel loved riding the horses.  Annie decided to give it a try, but quickly determined that the horses were not for her.

Ryan liked the carousel as well.

Grandpa, Grandma, Ryan, Annie, Rachel

We all had fun at Old Tucson, but Jake had to go back to work and Annie and Ryan needed to nap.

Later that night, we all got into the beanies that I crocheted for Christmas and asked Grandpa to take some pictures.

 

More fun with Grandma and Grandpa to come...

PS This was written by Jake trying to write as me. He did a decent job, except that he used big words like proprietor and miscreants which totally is not my lingo. But yay for Jake for posting to the blog! He must have gotten impatient with me being a little too busy to post lately. We're putting our house on the market this week, so the last couple of weeks have been full of packing extra junk, cleaning, etc. Maybe now that that is done I'll have time to catch up on the blog. Or just let Jake do it for me.

Bed Time

At Christmas Annie got a new mattress and both the girls got the promise of a new bunk bed. But with all the painting and new carpet we were getting done we decided to wait until that was over to make less furniture that would have to be moved around. So last Thursday the inside finished getting painted, then Friday we got carpet installed and the outside painted, so Saturday we finally got around to putting the bunk bed together. Everyone was very pleased with the exciting new "toy." They especially liked how easy it is to make a tent out of it.

We managed to keep Annie off the top bunk for maybe 2 days before she figured out how to climb the ladder. We still try to keep her off with time outs enforcing the rule that you have to be 5 or older to be on the top bunk, but we all know how well 2-year-olds obey. 

We also left the crib up for now. For naps and bedtime she usually wants to sleep in her "Hello Kitty big-girl bed," but after a couple chances if she's out of bed playing, or up on the top she loses her chance and has to sleep in her crib. Mostly she hates that, but last night there were apparently monsters in her bed, so she requested her crib. In a week or two we'll have to take the crib down to make a little more space in the room before we put the house up for sale, so hopefully she gets used to sleeping in her big girl bed real soon. She actually does nap there almost every day, but she's only been able to sleep there at night once in the week it's been up because night-time is just too exciting to stay in bed.

Perhaps if we let her have a binky she would stay in bed easier. Annie threw her binky away shortly after Thanksgiving, with some motivation from a little doll she wanted that she couldn't have until she threw her binky away. It was easier than I thought it would be in general, but she still feels a big connection to binkies. Whenever she finds one of Ryan's she sneaks it into her mouth and goes somewhere unobtrusive to suck away. Sunday I found her under the table laying on her blanket. I asked if she was sleepy and ready for a nap, and when she turned her face towards me to reply I realized why she was laying so quietly:

Its been a lot of transitions for Annie the last few months, with potty training in November, then no more binky in December, and now a big girl bed. I try to remember that when she's having a hard time settling down these days.
And the last bed-time picture: after scriptures and family prayer the girls like a "ride" to get their teeth brushed. Jacob is usually happy to comply.