In these pictures, besides the cute story, please note the normal chaos that I allow my house to be in as this will help in understanding the story later. K is getting increasingly creative and sometimes I pause long enough to take it in. She set up this tea party and then invited her sister and her animals.
On this day, she made a library. Dad made her a cash register from a shoe box and duct tape. As you can see, we were also playing camp with the tent set up behind her.
By the way, it is full-on summer here. We are hot and windy, and did I mention hot?
One day in school I decided to try explaining a food chain and the idea of a food web. We have so many crafts in our rainforest/jungle that I figured I could get away with it. I wasn't sure they would understand the concept, but boy was I wrong. They caught on right away and even carried it further than I had decided to go. I was kind of proud of them. The strings were the food web within our school room...the flower is all vegetation. :-)
While I had the camera out, I took a picture of some of our crafts. We have a lot of fun creating in our classroom! We have learned about everything from pythons to hummingbirds, and beetles to caimans.
Hard to tell but those are piranhas and dragonflies.
These were their food chains. They each chose one from the web.
Of course we still do school with our friends too...vampire bats.
Hanging upside-down like a bat.
Did I mention it has been hot? Our version of our pool this go around. Since we are moving, we did not want to pay to fill the big pool.
Remember how I said to take notice of the chaos I allow in my house? (Don't worry, for the OCD in the house, we clean up each night). Well, Friday we decided, in classic M and B fashion, that we should go ahead and list the house. We figured this would let people visit while we are gone to the family reunion next week. Then 60 days and we are in the middle of August when we need to move. We had it all worked out. Besides, we were having a BBQ with M's old partner, who is also a real estate agent, on Saturday (yes, the next day). We ran the idea by him and he said he would list it, we just needed to bring pictures and get all the clutter out.
So, Friday afternoon, we found a storage unit, rented it and used my pilot to make a thousand trips removing the weight equipment, one of the couches, boxes that were storing things in the closets and all the Christmas stuff in the shed. We then cleaned and rearranged each room, taking pictures as we went. We gave him the pictures and considered our work done for a little while. Our agent listed the house the next morning and on our way home from church - yes, in a couple hours - we had our first call. It was instant panic to actually make the entire house look like the pictures - everywhere, not just one room at a time. We showed the house and had our first offer that afternoon.
It has been steadily increasing chaos since. Monday one more came by and another offer, Tuesday two more, tomorrow we already have two planned and our agent said he has gotten five phone calls. I am totally stoked to be having such interest and to be getting offers so quickly. Hopefully this means we will get a great offer and maybe head out on vacation with our house on its way to being sold.
I am, however, a bit overwhelmed and my children don't know what to do with themselves now that I demand they not make a giant mess and I make them clean the house every couple of hours (we have to leave when people come to look so they don't feel awkward looking through our stuff while we are there). Our house has never been so clean...or neat...or organized! It looks fantastic but I don't like living here, it's too stressful. Home is where you relax. I have no idea how the OCD of the world survive. Tomorrow we are headed to a friend's house for the entire day so we can just stay away and not feel so aimless.
So, our lives right now: we are packing and planning for another one of our vacations but can't put the stuff anywhere, so all the planning is in my head. We will be camping, hiking, going to a family reunion, staying in hotels up to Redding to stay with my parents while we check out houses and schools up there before we head back here. Pray for my girls. This is a TON of driving, even for us. The reunion is in Colorado. They are going to be exhausted and pushed to their utter limits. Then when we arrive here, we will begin the process of packing up our house for a move. It's a lot of change for anyone much less my babies. Plus, I may have to primarily do the move on my own if the house really does sell this early and we have to move out. (M will stay with my Aunt and Uncle while he finishes his time here).
Well, that's enough! I hope you had a wonderful Memorial Day. This may be the first one I remember forever. :-) God Bless!!
