Happy Birthday, Mic!!!

Sorry things are so crazy right now. As soon as things settle down a bit, I promise, we are gonna celebrate in some serious style!!! For now, just enjoy being 7!!!!

PSA

I've recently had the fortune to 'stumble' across Magneto Bold Too. I'll sing her praises another time, but if you haven't had the opportunity to read, please - go NOW!!! Trust me, you won't regret it :)

In the meantime, if you happen to be going to Blogher, give a gal a hand, will ya?

(there is supposed to be this really cool button over there in my sidebar with a picture of her and her gorgeous son, but I reckon ya have to be smarter than blogger to make that happen, huh??? today is so not my day!)

Now, back to your regularly scheduled programming...

No more waiting!!

Ok... so, all the fingernail chewing has come to an abrupt halt. The prayers, chants, sprinklings of chocolate milk, or whatever it is that you people do have paid off. Thank you!

Our house is tiny. Wait. I don't think you heard me... tiny. There are five of us, sometimes seven, occupying a whole seven hundred square feet. With two cats. To say we are a close family is just a bit too literal for my taste.

We've wanted to move since forever ago. We had hoped that by this summer we would be ready, but things just haven't quite gone the way we had hoped and planned for, so we accepted that it would be another year before we could move. Fine.

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine who I used to work with stopped by school to say hi. She had retired last year and was dabbling in real estate. I promised her that when we were ready, we would definitely enlist her services. When I saw her recently, I promised her that we had not gone with someone else, that actually, we wouldn't be able to move for another year. We chatted a bit, talking about how good the market is for buyers and stuff. She asked what we were looking for, I described it and she told me that she'd have a peek around, see what appeared and if nothing else, we could just make a Saturday afternoon of it, looking at houses that Steve and I could never afford and have a drink or six.

One week later, we were putting an offer on our 'dream' home. Yep. That fast. The house was in the first list she sent us, we had a look and fell in love. My friend sent us to a mortgage broker, we thought, "Sure!" We'll go for giggles and see how fast their heads spin before turning us down.

We were pre-approved for the asking price on the spot. Wha??? Huh???? Yep.

Speeding this up a bit... we didn't get the 'dream' home, but that's ok. Because, it would have been stretching our budget to the absolute max. We knew we wanted to buy a foreclosure because we could get more house for our buck, plus we really want something we can fix up and put ourselves in to. This was the 'nail biting' and 'still waiting' posts (eek! look at that grammar!!! oh well - I'm tired!)

Made an offer on house number two. This house had been on the market for almost a year, had been reduced, so we felt pretty confident. Silly us! Another offer (out of four!) had been accepted just before we put ours in.

By this time, I'm pretty crispy and thinking the hell with it... we had planned to stay here another year, what the hell? I was done.

Sunday night, just as we were going to bed, Steve found a house that looked interesting. The short version is that by lunchtime on Monday, he had seen it and was prepared to make an offer but he wanted me to see it first. I went to have a look after work, fell absolutely in love, as well, and we called our realtor to get the offer ready.

I didn't get my hopes up. What was the point???

Guess what???

Not a very good suspense writer, am I???

We got the house!!! They accepted our offer today, dickered with our earnest money a bit, which we played along. We will be closing on or about the 15th of May!!!!

Here it is...




Now, if you have even the slightest bit of 'good vibe juice' left that you could spare for us, we absolutely HAVE to sell this wonderful house we're living in at the moment :)

No news is...

... driving us absolutely MAD!!!

Haven't forgotten about all (2) of you... sittin' there... on the edge of your seats... waiting... waiting... Ok, ok... so you weren't in suspense, but hey! This shall be your reminder that you should be, k??? ;)

Hopefully, news soon!!!!

:: off to go chew on my fingernails a little bit more ::

Not that I'm superstitious or anything...

But, if you pray, would you say a prayer, please?

If you chant, would you chant for us, please?

If you worship baby poop green four-door cars on the first and last Monday of the month, would ya throw one in for us, please???

However you ask your "Higher Power" for favors, would ya mind throwin' in an extra-special teensy-eensy favor for me 'n The Limey and all of our offspring, please?

Don't want to jinx it, so I promise... I'll spill the beans (hopefully) soon, m'kay??

Oh... and THANKS!

I stand corrected

so THIS is my 100th post.*

And today is my One Year Blogiversary!

*I was just going by the post counter in my dashboard. Waaaay down the list of posts, is a draft that I never published (and probably won't, now). It was counted in my number by Blogger, but actually doesn't count towards number of real posts. Thank you, Xbox4NappyRash, for pointing that out, but dude! countin' my archives??? ;) )

So Productive (and my 100th post)

Things I planned to do over Spring Break:

1) Clean out all of our closets – mine & Steve’s, Mac’s, the Diva & Mic’s, the coat closet, the linen closet

2) Piddle (not the puppy kind) out in the back yard picking up all of the crap the kids dragged out over the winter and getting it ready for the coop and pool.

3) Organize the living room

4) Get the kids’ spring / summer clothes washed and put in dressers / closets and get winter clothes out

5) Catch up on some reading

6) Go visit my sister and parents

7) Get a haircut and ahem… ‘refresh’ my color

8) Catch up on all my shows on the DVR and finally clean-up the damn thing

Things I have done (thus far) over Spring Break:

1) eat myself into oblivion

2) hang out with Steve and stay up way too late every night and sleep waaaay too late every day

3) play on the internet

The kids left Monday morning for vacation with their Dad. Last weekend was our weekend, so we spent the time just hanging out since they were going to be leaving. We won’t see them until next Monday, after school (unless Mic plays his soccer game on Saturday, then we might see them for about an hour). My parents came up on Saturday. Weather was beautiful, so the kids spent a lot of time out side. Sunday, some friends came over for a couple of hours – kids had a blast playing with each other and the adults got in some good chatting time. Steve and I stayed up until about three a.m. Monday morning, only to get about 4-5 hours of sleep before we were up, getting the kids ready for their big send off. They were so excited… up and dressed before we even tried to pry our eyes open. Hustle and bustle for about an hour, their Dad arrived and they were off.

We spent most of Monday being slugs because we were so tired from the night before. We ran a couple of errands, came home and collapsed. The webcam arrived and Steve promptly spent the next eight hours trying to get it to work. I sat here, staying out of his way being ever so supportive (because he tends to get a little grumpy after, oh, about the sixth hour of fiddling) until it finally sprang to life. Well, then, we of course had to play around with it which tortured the poor chicks. I don’t yet have my Cheep to English dictionary, but I’m pretty sure they were saying, “Would you two mind? Please leave us alone and Go. To. Bed. already?!?!?!” (because they are English chicks, you know… and they have that knack for telling you to flick off ever-so-politely)

So, after rising at the crack of noon yesterday, we slugged around again waiting for the first three cups of coffee to wake us up, then finally got out for yet more errands (we are the errand-est running people!). One of which was to stop by the health food store to have a poke around. We were in the egg section, scoping out and reading the cartons because that is our new obsession after all… eggs and chickens – I tell ya, it’s never ending excitement around here! Steve finds one brand of organic eggs marked “Fertile”, grabs ‘em and says, “Let’s put some in the incubator.” Just like that. What??? Doesn’t everyone’s trip to the grocery store end with coming home and incubating dinner (because what were supposed to be six eggs in the incubator and six eggs set aside for feeding us breakfast for dinner, turned out to be all twelve incubating). I’m sure you’ll get updates on those soon, but really, incubating is so last Tuesday!

It was cloudy, cold and rained the entire day yesterday, so what else could we do, but stay inside once we got back home (that really sounds pretty stupid and like I’m stating the bleeding obvious when I read that back… oh, well – work with me, m’kay?) So, being the sloths that we are, and since dinner was now approaching the embryonic stage, we headed out to the all-you-can-eat buffet down the street.

I told you I ate myself into oblivion. Came home, collapsed on the bed because I just couldn’t move. At that point, I should have just pulled the covers up over my head and called it a night. But, no. Once I finally felt semi-human again, we watched American Idol (recorded, because really… why would anybody sit through those commercials when you just don’t have to?). I agree with Simon about last night, by the way… they should have just called it ‘good’ last week and let The Beatles rest while the contestants were still on top. Last night really did seem like a mess.

Off to bed, where we inevitably find ourselves laying there and chatting for hours… before we know it, it’s five o’clock. Another day of accomplishing absolutely nothing and not having the sense that God gave a goat to just go to sleep at a reasonable hour.

So, when the slits in our head that house our eyeballs were trying to focus on the clock that read 11:30 this morning, as we were coming to life, I tell Steve that I just can’t do this. I’m going to have a real hard time when Monday rolls around and I will be expected to arrive at work before noon (how dare they!?!). So, you might think that I’ll be sensible and get to bed earlier the rest of the week, right?

Wrong. Tonight and tomorrow night, Steve will be working. And I do like going to work with him… it is, after all, sitting around, drinking half-priced alcoholic beverages and chatting to friends that I don’t get much of a chance to see often. But, it means that we’ll certainly be up until 2:30, if not later. Which means, sleep ‘till noon again, only to do the whole thing over tomorrow night.

I shouldn’t complain, really… it’s like leading the life of a college kid again, only with stability and a home and (even if it is only a tiny amount) money in the checking account. The best of both worlds.

I’m staring at the bags of clothes I need to go through for Mic and the Diva. So, at least, I’ve moved them inside from storage in the garage. That’s progress, right?????

Also... this is my 100th post!!! Grab a beer and some chips, sit back and celebrate with me, won't ya?