Oh, Christmas Tree...

Here's the tree...all decked out. You can't quite see all the fun ornaments, but I'm loving the new color scheme for this year's tree! It's turquoise, apple green, silver and white...with TONS of glitter. Conveniently matching my living room decor. ;)

All we need is a tree skirt and we'll be set! Hmmm...maybe I'll get some fabric and make something??

Craftiness to come... :)

ETA: My tree did not come to look like this by itself...nor by my own craftiness. Thanks, Christy!! ;)

life in fife...

So, we're all settled in here at our new place in Fife. We won't be here forever, but while we are here we're going to LOVE it! Our rental is a brick house built in the 40's. It's a little over 3000 square feet (I know, it's HUGE) and has tons of character.

Here's Hailey's room. It's huge. And you should see the closet. She can play in it.Here's Owen's room. It's probably twice the size of his old room.

Owen loves our closet. It's a cool place to hide out! :)

Here's our room. It's a little smaller than our last master, but still fits our furniture really well.

And here's maybe my favorite room in the house. The kitchen. It might be original. With bright yellow and blue tile.

Here's everyone resting after a long day of moving. Todd and Mike were extra sore after playing in the turkey bowl yesterday morning. Don't feel too sorry for them. That's what you get when you're the only two 30-somethings playing tackle football with no pads with a bunch of high school and college kids.

Here's the view of the living room from the dining room. As you can see, Todd is really excited about posing for my picture. ;)

And here is Hailey's favorite room. When we first came to look at the place, she walked in here and screamed, "IT'S PINK!" and from then on out referred to it as "the house with the pink bathroom". She loves it here.

And here's the rec room in the basement. It's also HUGE and connected to the room we'll be using for our office.

In the words of Little Orphan Annie, "I think I'm gonna like it heeeeeeeeeere!!"

The Boy

Here's the boy. He lights up our life. Isn't that a song from the 70's??Here he is hiding in his recent favorite spot. He goes behind the door of the inside office and just waits. Unlike his sister who jumps out from her hiding spots before you even get into the room! :)

And here's Mr. Independent. Who must feed himself now.

(and yes, that's a chocolate donut on his tray...Todd went to the store for breakfast this morning and came back with what he refers to as "the breakfast of champions". :)

He has also perfected his "cheese" face when I'm snapping pics.

Oh, well. At least he gets bathed more regularly now. ;)

Oh, and sorry for the lack of pictures of Hails. She's going through a strong-willed phase and will NOT allow her picture to be taken right now. Let's be honest...this phase could last the rest of her life. ;)

Packing, Packing, Packing...

Well, after a whirlwind last several weeks my house is beginning to look a lot like we're moving out. In fact, we're starting to move some stuff into the garage of our rental house TOMORROW! The brunt of the moving will happen on Friday, though.

I've really taken the opportunity to plan well and move smart this time around. I've carefully planned the packing in each room so that we know exactly what boxes are to be stored in the basement and which ones will be unpacked. Honestly, I'm so happy to live more simply! We've purged, sorted, donated and down-sized. It feels really good.

I'll post pics of our rental house all decked out soon. I love it. It's got some serious character...and by character, I mean bright yellow and blue tile on the kitchen counter and pink and black tile in the main bathroom more than half-way up the walls!! It's got immaculate hardwood floors throughout the main story and is so well taken care of by the owners. Best part? The 1500 square foot basement that has a huge bedroom for some much needed office space, large rec room, and more storage than you could EVER NEED!!

We covet your prayers right now...this time is very busy and a little stressful, but we're also really excited about the future...more specifically, very excited to live about 90 seconds away from Chris, Christy, CASE & MAGGIE!!! :)

Under contract...

50 flyers

6 days on the market

1 showing

1 full-price offer

WE SOLD OUR HOUSE!!!
(pending the appraisal, of course)

***

Let me anticipate your questions and answer them, okay?

1. Where are you going to move??
We are planning to buy a lot and build a house, but as you know that can take a while so we're going to rent a house in the mean time.

2. Are you freaking out??
Yes, a little. We anticipated having our house on the market for months, so we were beyond shocked to have this happen so quickly. I know that God has a plan, so that is what I'm clinging to at the moment.

3. How soon will you close?
The people want to close ASAP, so their offer reads "December 17th or sooner", so we could potentially be moving by the end of the month.


Well, that's all I know...please pray for us, if you think of it, that the appraisal would come through right so everything goes through. And that the Lord would keep me from being anxious. And for Hails...she seems a bit stressed about moving.

Closets

Before...After...

I was inspired by this project on a blog I love to read a long time ago, so when we realized that we could only list our house as a 4 bedroom if we added a closet to Hailey's room I knew this would work great!

On either side of her bed we added a PAX wardrobe from Ikea. Then we cut about 5 inches off of the bottom of her existing headboard so we could install the wall sconces. Since there was obviously no room for a side table to sit a lamp on, we decided that wall sconces were the way to go. And because Ikea is awesome, we found lights that didn't have to be hard-wired!! Yay for no electrical work! :)

All in all, it took us about 2 1/2 hours to assemble the boxes, put the doors on, and get everything put back into place.

We both looked at it and went, "Why on EARTH didn't we do this a long time ago??"

I'm really falling in love with this house again now that all of the unfinished projects are getting done... :/

(obviously the quality of my phone pic doesn't even compare with the professional one, but you get the idea... ;)

On the market...

Our agent had her photographer come and take some pics of our house for the MLS and I can't believe how great it looks! Here's to seeing if our house will sell in this market?? :/ If it won't, it won't and we're good with that. Whatever God wants for our family is what will happen.

We covet your prayers as I attempt to keep my house "show ready" with 2 small kids. ;)

Our family trip...minus pictures :(

So, let me start out by saying that although I charged my camera battery the day before we left for Fort Mills, SC it died on me during our first outing with all the kids. What the?? Must need a new battery or something. At any rate, Lisa kindly offered me her pictures and said she'd load them on our computer before we left. And they are on our computer! Unfortunately, they're on Todd's computer which has finally decided it will NOT charge when plugged in anymore. No problem, right? The computer repair place nearby said they could replace the part in just a few hours! Horray!! Oh, except they'll have to order the part from China, so it could be a week. (insert sad face here)

Well, let me narrate the trip for you and add pictures later, ok?

Our flight out East left Seattle at 6:05 am. Yep...we had to be at the airport just after 4:00 am which meant getting up to get out the door at 3! I almost just stayed up, but knew it'd be a long day. We flew to Detroit and then had a 40 minute layover!! I'm talking we scrambled off one plane and RAN to the other gate and literally walked directly onto our next plane. The timing was perfect because my sqirmy-wormy son was TOTALLY ready to sleep as soon as the plane started moving. Wait...why isn't the plane moving yet. Oh, right. Because the pilot's seatbelt was broken and it needed to be fixed before we could get moving. How important can his seatbelt really be, people?? It's HOT in the back of a parked plane and my kid is beside himself. (because again, he woke up before 4!!!) Finally we got moving and he slept the whole flight. Perfect.

We got to Aaron and Lisa's BEAUTIFUL new house in Fort Mills and the kids were in heaven playing together. I'll save that commentary for the post with pictures. I was pleasantly surprised at how well Owen went to bed at a normal time (which was, of course, 3 hours earlier than usual). Then it came to Hailey. She was SOOO tired, but playing her usual bedtime games. And continued playing her games every night we were there. She screamed and cried and came downstairs and brought Todd and I to the end of ourselves. We survived, though, and loved every other minute of our trip.

Some highlights:

*playing at this indoor play structure that was basically a McDonald's playland on steroids...that gets disinfected several times a day. :) We so need one in rainy Seattle.

*Hold 'Em...mostly because Lisa and I took all of Todd and Aaron's "money".

*Baking Halloween sugar cookies...that I crowded all onto one pan, only to make one very large Halloween sugar cookie. :)

*Carving pumpkins. Two princesses (one that looked a little like Lord Farquaad from Shrek...sorry Hails :/) and a dog. With his whiskers cut out! The pictures will prove it...they were seriously amazing pumpkins.

*Visiting Aaron & Lisa's church. We visited on a day where the fill-in music leader put a VERY "Southern" twist on the music...and it was fun. :)

*Trick-or-treating with the kids. So cute. And Aaron and Todd came back with full buckets of candy AND some overflow that ended up in an old pillow case. Then we all "inspected" the candy. You know the drill...safety first! Sugar headache later. :/

Our trip back was quite the challenge with Owen. That poor kid did NOT like being cooped up in two different planes for such a long time. And the lady in front of us on our second flight did not like him. And said to me at the end of the flight (after MANY huffs and puffs of frustration and head-shakes throughout) that "at least I knew I couldn't travel with him." To which I replied, "How can I not travel with him? He's my SON!!" Rude. Let's just say I was rather thankful that it took us forever to get to baggage claim after we landed so I didn't have to endure anymore of her mean-mugging.

All in all, it was a great trip and we loved having so much wonderful time with our family. We miss them already and have vowed to do more skyping.

We love you Gabby, Mason, Lisa and Aaron and can't wait to meet baby Fry #3 soon! Thanks for hosting our craziness for the week. :)