Sunday, June 27, 2010

Sunday Update

I'm sitting here on the couch with Duncan while he is watching Yo Gabba Gabba - his newest favourite show - one that we don't mind! It has catchy tunes, and some fun guest starts, like this one has Weird Al.

I realized I hadn't done an update since Thursday, and I think most people know me on facebook, so know what's going on anyhow, but briefly - we didn't move and we currently own two homes.

Friday morning after dropping the kids off we went to the bank to sign papers and get a line of credit in place so we could get the balance of our deposit to complete on the sale of our new place. That was our foremost concern  - not losing our new home. Then it was off to the notary to drop off the money and complete the sale. We now own the house!  Unfortunately we also still own this one.

We don't quite know what's been happening with the woman, and we still think we'll complete soon and not have to relist this place. Although I did have a fantastic plan in place to completely stage this place with free furniture from Craigslist and Freecycle if need be.

We made sure power wasn't going to be cut off, nor our phone/tv/internet. We had to make sure the insurance wasn't cut on this place either.

Now, there is one advantage to staying here - it's a heck of a lot easier to move once. The kids can stay in the home they know for two more weeks, and we're of course more comfortable in our own home. We actually think it was either the cats that brought this around (they some how knew we were about to pawn them off on someone else), or it was Duncan and his friend Lily next door so they wouldn't have to move away from each other yet. Yeah we're only going to be 3 blocks away, but right now it's wonderful being able to send him out side and they can play together with no plans in place. Yesterday our friend Sarah brought Dylan around, and with no "play date" planned, Dylan and Lily and Duncan were able to run around for probably a few hours and have a wonderful morning together. So we're going to miss that.

What am I saying - we're going to miss our neighbours, and we're going to miss this community. It's been wonderful living here for the people, and we've made some great friends. Theresa lives two doors away, Phil and Karen next door. Jill on the other side is a great lady too. Living here is how we found Nikki, daycare provider extrordinaire. Although they are moving too, so the convenience of that was coming to an end no matter what!

13 days until our "bigger house"! Let's hope by then we've got the funds from our sale so we can proceed with our plans for the place. I'll let you all know once we know which way this is going.

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Plan B again

Last night around 7 we got a call from Andy saying we might want to get plan B into place again. Our buyer had changed lenders again (we're not sure what's going on there... 3rd lender now) and they need to provide a letter of committment by the close of business today or else the whole thing goes belly up.

What's super frustrating is a. her mortgage lender told everyone it was all in place  yesterday, which obviously it wasn't and therefore we b. lost a day of running around getting banking stuff in order if needed. My parent's still are willing to step up to the plate, however there are still only 2 business days (today and tomorrow) before we need to complete. That is not a lot of time when you're talking about that much money!

I still want to have a heart for this lady - she obviously also has a lot going on, but she strikes me as quite flakey. I mean come on, she has had 2.5 months to get this all together and is scambling now? She signed a contract. A legally binding contract, and obviously she does not comprehend the legal implications if this falls through. We're not the kind of people to go aronud sueing people, but we'd have to go after her for it all, pursue the $5000 deposit (which we know now we should have asked for more  - oh the things we've learned!), etc etc etc... which is just a pain all around.

Anyhow, I'll let you know how it all comes out. We're at the end stages of packing here. Tomorrow is M-day (unless it isn't! LOL!!), so assuming all goes well, let's pray that goes well.

I like this quote from Dr. Wayne Dyer (you may have seen him on PBS)
" It makes no sense to worry about things you have no control over because there's nothing you can do about them, and why worry about things you do control? The activity of worrying keeps you immobilized."

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

What happened today

Gah, what a draining day!

The long and the short of it is that our realtor contacted us around lunch time today to say there may be a problem with the people buying our house. You know it's not going to be good when someone says "now I don't want you to panic..." (and I didn't - then *grin*).

From what we understand our buyers lost their financing through the place that was going to give them their mortgage. Not sure what happened there. Anyhow, if she was unable to come up with the financing then we wouldn't have the proceeds from our sale to fund the purchase of our new house, we'd have to come up with an additional $33k, and figure out something about financing our current home on top of it all. We, you know, just having bought coffee from Starbucks, don't have 33K laying around.

And if we can't buy the new place they can sue us for breech of contract, and we in turn can do the same to our buyer, etc etc... but no matter what we were stuck in the middle and kind of hooped.

So we prayed. I said right away I had faith the Lord would take care of us. I also suggest people pray for the woman buying our place - who is going through a nasty divorce, has two children, and really, would have been in a much tougher spot than us had this not gone through.

Our 1st answer to our prayers came when my folks told us that they would make sure it works out - lend us money, buy our place if they need to, etc... the 2nd answer came with our banker calling saying "we'll make it work, fear not". Our 3rd answer came on the way home when I got a call (I pulled over to answer it, don't worry) from our Realtor saying everything was settled and her financing was in place, and it was all good.

So said and done we had a stressful afternoon for nothing, but that people stepped up to the plate for us like they did means so much to us. Thanks again Mom.

And then we came home and Duncan and I made cupcakes and cookies and then Mom and Grandma Mac asked if I could come out for dinner, and we went for Greek, and now it is 10:12 and time to go to bed. The end.

Where there's a Will...

Well look at us being all responsible! We finally did up a will! You know we've only been married for 10 years and had kids for at least 3 1/2 years. So perhaps it was time we finally got around to it. Not that it's a complicated one - if one spouse goes the other gets it, if both do the kids get it, if we all do, our parent's get it, etc... But after having seen recently how messy things can get when no will is in place, it was the kick in the butt we needed to finally move ahead with it.

Yesterday afternoon we went to the notary and signed all our papers and what not. One step closer! Either Thursday afternoon or 1st thing Friday morning I need to go pick up my cheque from the sale of our place and go deposit it, and then turn around and get a new cheque done up for the purchase of our new home. Said and done we have a little less left than we thought. Still enough to get done what we need to, buy some furniture, a lawn mower, etc... but maybe the lazy boy recliners need to wait a little while longer.

Packing is going well. Okay, Bill has done 99% of the packing - he takes care of it while I run interferrence with the kids. He has been awesome about it though. We won't finish the kid's rooms until Friday morning when they are at daycare b/c every time we try to pack something that is their's (okay, Duncan) he wants to play with it. So we plan to move his stuff to Mom and Dad's during the day and have his bed all set up so it will be a bit easier for him to adjust once we're there.

Other stuff... both kids are sick again. Just a nasty cough. They both slept better last night but were up early this morning. Poor kids. It sucks b/c there is very little you can do for them. Okay, so when did cough and cold rx start being for ages 6 and up? It used to be don't give it to them under the age of 2, but now it seems it's 6?

Ants!! The ants are back in the back yard! Thank goodness not in the house, but after the horrors of last year, we dug up all under the back and put down rocks b/c it's supposed to keep the ants from coming near the house... well they are just coming out on top of the rocks! We put down a bait trap that our exterminator gave us last year, and it did the trick, but we also called the exterminator to come spray b/c I don't think that's a present the new owner really wants. You know, those ants are part of the reason we decided to sell.

Okay everyone, have a great day! Nancy - saw your post on 5 minutes for reading. I still don't have enough time to read :)

Monday, June 21, 2010

5 days until move #1

Good morning friends. Quick post before getting the kids up. Duncan has a nasty cold and had a hard night last night, so I think I'm going to be extra gentle with him this morning.

5 days until move number 1! Let's see... the place is slowly getting there. And when we came home from Father's Day festivities yesterday the house actually had that starting to get empty feel. It's hard to keep the house functionally neat during this process, but we do still have two small children who need to be able to play, and eat, and sleep etc... The plan is to not finalize their rooms until the morning we actually move. We're actually moving out a day earlier than we need to so we have time to finish cleaning, move odds and ends etc... I don't like that pressure of get out by noon.

We are into the "make meals out of stuff in our freezer and cupboard" mode, but we'll actually be pretty good on that front. Which reminds me, I need to take the steak out to thaw for dinner tonight.

We meet with the notary this afternoon to do all our signing of papers and to, yes, believe it or not, make a will! We've been putting this off for a long, long time, and figured it was time to finally get it done. Not that it would be complicated - pretty much when one of us goes, the other person gets everything, if we both go, the kids get it all, if we all go we don't care. Bwahaha!! No, but really, it needs to be done.

So, Friday morning my brother is delivering his trailer (bless him) that will allow us to store our furniture at his place for the two weeks - thereby removing the need to unload it all at Mom and Dad's and reload it again in two weeks. We could still use some extra hands if someone is available to help move stuff or clean. Ronnie and Theresa are both helping me clean. It shouldn't be too big of a job, but you know, wipe down walls, good vacuum, etc... Our realtor actually told us to not have the carpets cleaned and don't go crazy with the cleaning b/c what might be clean for us is not clean for someone else. Likewise, plan on a cleaning job when we move in.

And that's it! Time to go get the wee ones up. Have a gloriously wonderful Monday.

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Celebrate

Further to Tanya's post, she encouraged us to join in:

  • The smell of fresh baked bread that's filling the house right now
  • 8 days until we move! (for the 1st time!)
  • It's Duncan's last day of school (we're celebrating because he had a wonderful year)
  • Although she'll be walking soon, Cordie actually crawls now instead of army crawling
  • I've been getting to read books lately - it's wonderful!
  • friends who take time off work to help us clean and move
  • Father's! It's Father's Day this weekend and I have a wonderful one, my kids have a wonderful one, and my husband has a wonderful one. We're blessed!
  • Mild weather. I know people are whining b/c it's not hot and sunny, but this is perfect in my opinion
Join in! Link back!

Sunday, June 13, 2010

New House stuff

I figured this should be a separate post.

Less than a month until we're in our new house. I wish it was sooner. We're just ready to be in there. We love to chat about what needs to be done, what we're going to buy. I think we'll get a cordless electric mower. The yard is big enough, but not huge, and in efforts to be more environmentally friendly and all.

What we need to do: Okay I say we, but Bill will be doing most of this with my Dad acting as foreman *grin*. I have the Monday and Tuesday after we move into the new house off. Bill might also. So we're hoping we can get most of what needs to be done, done then. That includes having service people in - furnace services, chimney swept, insulation piped in, gutters fixed, flashing around the chimney fixed. We plan on making the downstairs laundry room into a functional bathroom, so we need to get a toilet and a small vanity for in there. We need to move the door from my woman cave (men get Man Caves, so I think a better name than "my sewing room" is warranted - can you think of a better name?). Anyhow, we need to move the access to that room from what will be the bathroom to the hallway. That's probably our biggest job.

We need to replace the wax rings around the existing toilets. We need to replace the door from the garage to the basement with a proper rated steal door. The deck needs to be repaired. It's not broken - actually all of this stuff is more preventative than needs to be fixed. It's "an ounce of prevention" type stuff.

Okay... so you know I started writing this around 8:30 this morning, but Duncan wanted to play. And how do you say no to a little boy who wants to build train tracks with you? Well, you don't. It's almost 10:30 PM now, so I'll just send this off and blather on about our new house later. Good night! 

Sunday Morning

Hi friends!

Yeah it's your long lost Carole who has not been blogging at all any more. Darn work for getting in the way of my blog writing and reading! I am constantly hitting "Mark All as Read" in Google Reader and I've been unsubscribing to a bunch of blogs I used to follow as I just don't have the time any more. Don't worry dear friends, I do still make sure I keep up on my friend's blogs. I can't access Reader at work. It's not blocked, but our net connection at work is so slow. It's dial up slow. That's right - DIAL UP SLOW! I honestly think that having a slow internet connection is our company's best defense against people wasting time online during the work day. It's too frustrating. Thank goodness for my iPhone *grin*.

So I'm behind on my reading of blogs. I've also been enjoying doing this ancient activity known as "reading a book". I've been back into book reading again. Just finished another one last night and it's so nice. I am enjoying spending time in the evening with my book on the couch and just reading. I'm glad I have a husband who is also a reader and understands when I say "I don't want to watch tv tonight, I just want to read". He get's that. I'm still reading books from British Author Carole Matthews. Really enjoying all the books I can get my hands on (through the library).

We're less than 2 weeks to moving date. We've done a lot, but still lots to do. We're now into "eat everything we can in our freezer and cupboard" stage. Although we're not moving far but since we'll be at Mom and Dad's for two weeks the less we need to bring there the better. When we move to the new place there is going to be a major shopping trip involved. We haven't been replacing stuff we're running out of like condiments etc... So by the time we move we'll be living off of bread, milk and peanut butter. *grin*.

Bill has had some kind of flu again this week. It's been brutal for him. He missed all but one day of work this past week and frankly I'm not sure he'll be ready for work tomorrow. He's been doing what he can to pack some boxes and stuff but his energy is so low he pretty much can do a little and then has to rest. And sleep. I'm glad Cordy-ella has been sleeping through the night consistently, so I'm actually not too bad for getting up with the kids. Yes Tanya, there is hope for kids sleeping through the night!!

Duncan. What can I say, this kid is awesome. Yeah he's still very 3 - throw the ocassional fit, but less and less all the time. Potty training is going well - at least at daycare. He's still resistent a lot of the time to wear underwear at home and sit on the potty. And I still refuse to push him. He got a hair cut on Friday and looks like such a little man. At this age you think about how much they can change in even 2 months and it's amazing. Verbally, singing, learning. Yesterday he figured out how to blow bubbles. It sounds like a silly thing but he's been trying to learn for a long time now. The look on his face when he got it was awesome.

Cordelia. She is a gorgeous, clever, funny girl. She is totally figureing stuff out. She's cruising around furniture now so it won't be long to walking. She really just sits down and figures stuff out. She is a total go getter. She is an awesome eater. Really, usually she eats more at meals than Duncan does. I'm still nursing her, which I love it's going this long, but will need to wean by August before we go to Vegas.

Work. I'm glad I live close to work now. I'm glad for the pay cheque that comes with it. 'Nuff said.

Looking forward to the new house!!