Happy Easter!

We had a fun time on Saturday with cousins Brenna and Andrew, aunt Melissa, uncle Chris, uncle Ben, uncle Mark and Grandma. We had a little egg hunt in the front yard for the kids. Maren didn't quite understand what to do but loves playing with the plastic eggs and her bucket.

Ramblings on selling a house

It really sucks!

Adam took work off all this week (its Spring Break for the kids too) so we could work on getting the house ready to put on the market on March 24th. The realtor will be here that day to take pictures and put the sign in the yard! Then the gossip can begin and I am sure everyone in our ward will be calling us to ask us whats up.


Here is a list of what we have accomplished so far.

• installed the new faucets in upstairs bathroom

• fixed cabinet door in upstairs bathroom

• reinstalled laundry room shelf

• caulked and paint touch ups on shelf in laundry room

• scrubbed both doors in laundry room

• fixed hole in wall in laundry room, the doorknob hit it when the doorstop was off when tiling
  

• installed new light in laundry room

• planted 6 new bushes in front of house

• weeded flower beds

• cleaned all light fixtures in the kitchen, those things got greasy!
  

• paint touch ups in kitchen

• sorted through all clothes to donate to goodwill (7 bags full!)

• caulked new sink and toilet in half bath

• paint touch ups on baseboards in half bath

• started priming Maija's room so we can paint it a neutral color. NOTE to those considering painting... DON'T USE COLORPLACE PRIMER! Its awful and doesn't work. We took the rest of it back and bought Kilz. Lesson learned.
  

• put all baseboards back up, caulked and paint touch ups on them, they were taken down when we tiled the floors

• paint touch ups on front door and trim

• lots of wall cleaning from dirty kid fingers and paint touch ups here and there
  

It is a good start. Its only Tuesday night. The biggest projects will be doing the tile in the upstairs bathroom, priming and painting Preston's (very blue) and Maija's (very pink) bedrooms and finishing the stain on the wood fence in the back yard. There is one wall left in the garage to paint too. The rest is little stuff and then lots of throwing stuff out and donating things. We decided to call the carpet guy our housebuilder uses to have him come finish the carpet edges where it meets the tile we laid. One less thing to figure out how to do on our own, we are running out of time! We have also sold a TON of things and are saving all of that money to pay for the move. Downsizing is quite liberating.

All of these crazy projects we started a long time ago have all crept up and hit us now that we are selling. We should have finished them years ago and sat back and enjoyed our work. I think we will join procrastinators anonymous!

Ahhhh, sweet mobility!

Well lookee what the little Miss Maren decided to do. Finally! She started doing it about 3 days ago and is getting better and better. She threw in a free sit and spin just for you! Oh yeah, aren't her pants cute falling off her chubby booty? I love it.

We're not in Kansas anymore Toto! Oh, I mean Texas!

Wait, this is Texas people. This doesn't happen in Texas in March! ITS SNOWING! Like lots of thick fluffy stick to the ground snow! What happened to my beautiful Texas weather? (hee hee mom)

Adam's work is cancelling everything and getting hotel rooms for people. This just makes me giggle. Adam is driving home very slowly. He knows how to drive on snow and ice, but its the other drivers he is worried about!

We don't have a snow shovel and the kids have no boots! I hope this melts soon. I find it funny that its not even snowing in Nebraska. Send the snow back where it belongs!

3:15pm, snowing for about 4 hours now.


As of 6pm we had a total of 7 inches! The kids are building a fort.

Yummy on both accounts.

Lunch with the Marenator

Today's menu started out as Stroganoff. She liked it for a few bites and decided it was not pleasurable anymore and tried to throw it off the tray. Stickiness thwarted her plans. It stuck to her hands instead. Mommy has the magic though. She can make any icky food into yummy food! Whats the secret? Alfredo sauce.

Hmmmm, its ok for now.

Maybe...

I need to think about this.

I'm thinking this isn't so good.

Maybe a little Alfredo sauce mom?

Perfecto! It IS good!

Now do I want some milk to go with that?

Look Aunt Sarah and JuJus! I can eat with my eyes closed!

Rumors

Rumor is that we are moving. Well, its true! So its not really a rumor now is it? After a lot of job searching, researching, and soul searching here in our area with no luck, we changed our location and started looking for jobs back in Nebraska.

Adam was offered a lovely job at a place he used to work for about 6 years ago. He is going to work as a Software Engineer for Kenexa (check it out) This time he is a little higher up compared to what he did before.

Adam's start date is April 7th. Not much time! We have to finish up some projects on our house and get it on the market. The horrible, no good, very bad, awful housing market. I am a little scared and stressed about this. I want it to sell, and I don't want to make a sale out of desperation. So if you could throw a few "sell that house" vibes our way, we will love you forever.

Now the big question is, do we all move together the first week in April, or do the kids and I stay here in Texas until school gets out and the house sells while Adam goes on to Nebraska without us? What would you do?

We are leaving our 4 bedroom 3 bathroom home to live in a cute 960 sq ft 2 bedroom 1 bathroom bungalow. It is a wonderful opportunity though, since its going to save us a bundle. We will be able to save up quite a bit to build a new home in Nebraska over by my mom and one of my sisters. Isn't that exciting?

Preston and Maija are over the moon excited about all of this. We finally told them tonight. Preston wants to be near cousins and snow again. Maija just wants to be in Nebraska. Maren, of course, has no idea whats going on! She is just happy to be around Daddy, Preston and Maija.

We are sad to be leaving our beautiful Texas weather. Sad to leave our first home. Sad to leave Adam's family, our friends and our neighborhood but we will have all that again in Nebraska. The snow I could do without though. Bring along the Texas weather and it would be perfect.

We have 4 weeks to get everything ready. Think we can do it? I do! Oh, and anyone know a good realtor to use? :)