We have stucco!

It may be hard to tell because the picture is a little grainy and far away but our house has stucco now. They are also done drywalling the basement and are currently working on door frames and doors upstairs. We have also had a few calls recently from the cabinet people, so I am thinking that our cabinets may not be too far behind. I guess we'll see! Only six weeks until our planned moving day! Yay!

We went to a movie at the theatre today for the first time in well over a year (last one we saw was X-men 3). We saw Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and other than the two old farts sitting in the row across from us having a good chat about going fishing, it was pretty good. I was quite disappointed with the last movie because it was full of gaps and Jason (who hasn't read the books) was left with many questions at the end. I think they did a much better job with this installment in the series. I think they were able to make a coherent story line from the book, but it is difficult to make a 700 page book into a two hour and eighteen minute movie without cutting out some important details. Well maybe not so important, but I suppose that is why I have enjoyed the books so much.

I think that they did a great job vilifying Professor Umbridge, but she was much prettier than she should have been. In the book they go on and on about how she looks like a toad. In my mind I kind of pictured her as Roz from Monster's Inc. And I thought in the fourth movie, and again in this one that they could have made Voldemort much more scary looking. I think in this case that my imagination made a scarier version. And the fact that over and over in the book they describe his voice as "cold and high pitched". It sure wasn't in the movies. Though I commend them on the job they did on the dementors in this movie. And I think they did a good job on Bellatrix Lestrange. All in all a good movie, but definitely still like the books better :)

When it rains, it pours...

We got our first offer on our condo today. It was exciting to see an offer, however they were $25,000 less than our asking price. That felt a little like a kick in the butt, but we decided that after our meeting with a realtor tomorrow (to see what he things he could get us) we will come back with our absolute lowest price we can take as a counter offer. Then there was a phone call from another couple who was interested in looking at our condo. They came to look at it tonight and spent about 40 minutes here looking in every closet, fridge, stove, dishwasher, opening every window, flushing every toilet, etc. They looked here quite thoroughly, then when it seemed like they were getting ready to leave, the woman's face changed and her voice changed. I wish I had a picture or could explain it better, but in my mind it was her dickering voice/face. She made us an offer that was $15,000 lower than our asking price, after she named a few things that she would have to change before she could live here. Then we explained to her why we listed at the price we did and she brought her offer up to $10,000 less than our asking price. I am still laughing at her dickering....kind of reminded me of someone at a garage sale. Here's hoping this keeps up and we are able to sell privately!!

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

I finished reading it last night. I found myself quite satisfied with the ending. It really wrapped things up nicely and did not seem to leave any questions unanswered. I don't know that I should say too much in case any of my readers haven't read it yet. From what I had heard from interviews with JK Rowling, I thought that only two main characters die. But I would say that there were quite a few more than that. I am curious though how children read it and understand it. I had to reread a chapter or two at the end of the book to fully understand the connection between Harry and Voldemort. I will very likely reread it in a few months and maybe I will pick up on some of the smaller details that I didn't fully take in the first time. I thoroughly enjoyed the series and I am a little sad to see it come to an end, but as I said above it was wrapped up nicely.

I'm Impressed

Last week I finally took my wedding band and engagement ring in to be resized. They had gotten to the point in the last few months that I was almost afraid to wear them because I thought they might fall off my finger. I got them back yesterday and was really impressed with the good job they did. They fit beautifully, but they also managed to remove all of the scratches that I had in the ring. I had this one particularly bad scuff on my engagement ring that I assumed was permanent. I really have no idea how they size rings, but they feel like they are brand new again!

New Bed

We bought the foam mattress today that I had written about on the weekend. Of all the furniture and appliances that we have bought in the last month or so, I am definitely most excited about this new bed. In my life I have only regularly slept in two beds. The bed that I had at mom and dad's is the same mattress that I slept on from the time I was about 2 years old until I was 24 years old. In the last year I got a feather bed, so it was a lot more comfortable, but that was a hard bed! Then I got married and slept in the bed that Jason had had for a couple of years. It is alright, I really missed my feather bed at first because our bed is very firm. But over the last two and a half years that springs have really started poking through. They aren't actually poking through the mattress, or I don't think we would be able to sleep on it. But if you prop yourself up on an elbow when laying on your side you get a spring in your elbow. It is not very comfy! I think that our current bed has caused some of Jason's achy backs and maybe even aggravated his bad rib. Today we went back to Sleepers and Jason got on the bed and said he could feel his back relaxing already. I think the thing I am second most excited about that we have bought is our fridge. Only 53 days until we move!

House Tour

This evening I called up my parents to see if they would be interested in a tour of our new house. I was very excited to get to show it to someone else. They seemed quite impressed and were happy that I offered the tour. Now that I know what our furniture looks like I can more easily visualize where things are going to go and it is very exciting! If anyone wants a tour, please let me know, I would love to show you!

Also, I took some new interior pictures with the upstairs drywalling and downstairs framing done, so if you would like to see them I have them posted in a Facebook album. If you are not on Facebook Jay should have them loaded up on his construction page within the next short while.

Hee Hee Hee Haw Haw Haw

This afternoon I was bored so I put in The Little Mermaid on DVD. It has always been one of my favorite Disney movies. I think my favorite scene is with the French chef and Sebastian. Jay found it for me on You Tube and I thought I would share it with you. I like the "hee hee hee haw haw haw" part the best, but second best has to be when he stuffs Sebastian with bread.

Enjoy!

Today we headed out to do some mattress shopping. We first went to Ashley and there was one bed there that I liked quite a bit. Then we went to Mattress Mattress and there was a bed similar to the one at Ashley that was a little more expensive. Then we thought we would check out Sleeper's Mattress Factory. I thought they would be quite expensive (even though I do believe in NOT cheaping out on something as important as a mattress), but they weren't too bad.

After trying a few of their coil mattresses and not really liking them, I tried some of their foam. At first I wasn't sure if I liked it. I tried two of the firmest ones first and it was just a really bizarre feeling. It was very firm, but just so different from any mattresses I had tried before. After I didn't really like the super firm ones, I tried laying on a couple of others just for fun and found one that I really liked. After laying on it for a few minutes and checking out some of the things that usually determine whether a mattress will work for Jay or not, we determined that it would be pretty perfect.

Best of all, the foam mattresses do not transfer any movement. I know they have the coil mattresses that have the pocket coils and whatnot so the wine doesn't spill when the lady jumps on the bed, or the bowling ball and bowling pin thing, but I think those ones still do transfer some movement. The foam though is very unique. I like it a lot! I also like that the pillow top on the one we liked was separate from the base mattress so that if you want to rotate or flip either it is no problem. We also learned today that a king sized mattress is 16 inches wider than a queen sized. At some point in time Jay and I got in our minds that a king size bed is only 8 inches wider than a queen size. I almost thought it wasn't worth the effort for 8 inches, but after laying on a king size today I realized just how much bigger our new bed is going to be. I think it will be very nice to have a king size. I am pretty excited for when we can sleep in our new bed. The mattress we have now is just HORRIBLE, very springy :P

I thought it was strange in January when we were in Swift Current and we saw a male deer go trotting past the living room window. I can't imagine seeing this. One of my clients at work today told me about it and I thought she was pulling my leg, so I came home and looked it up.

Sold!

Well not yet, but now that I have your attention I can tell you that our open house tonight was much more productive! We had two couples who seemed very interested, a single woman in a wheelchair who was just checking out the accessibility features, two older ladies who were just snooping and another couple who were interested, but they weren't ready to make an offer without selling their condo first. So I am quite confident that when I call the lawyer's office tomorrow at 5pm that the receptionist will tell me that there is at least one offer. *sigh* I am not going to get my hopes up too high yet, but I think in the last week that I have learned a lesson in patience.

I also got an update on my grandpa tonight. Apparently he has been moved into a rehab center so they can monitor him for a couple of weeks. They are going to do some physio with him and I am not sure what else they will do there. It does sound like however that the doctors were very firm with their suggestions that he not be living on his own anymore. I think if he flat out refused to go into this rehab center that they couldn't force him.....and I think we are all a little surprised that he isn't back at home yet. Maybe he has finally come to a place where he is ready to move and admit that he needs some help. My mom had told me that from the reports from my aunt and my grandpa's brother that it seemed that he was almost enjoying himself in the hospital. I think he misses having grandma to cook for him and in the hospital he gets three meals per day delivered to him. It also sounds like he was enjoying the social aspect of having people around. I think it has been awfully lonely for him since grandma passed away. This could turn out to be a very interesting summer for him, and for my mom and aunt. If he has to move out of the house....wow that is going to be a lot of work! Both my mom and aunt grew up in that house and I have so many fond memories of that house. It'll be interesting to see how it turns out.

A reflection on first birthdays

This is James on his first birthday. He was not too happy about being stripped of his shirt, with a bib on and plunked down into a chair while everyone stared at him and took pictures.

This is William yesterday, on his first birthday. He looks almost equally unimpressed about being tied down to a chair awaiting his birthday cake.

However, the bleak outlook improved when the cake arrived. James, being the funny little guy that he is, dug into his cake face first. He didn't want to get his hands dirty, so he bent over and ate his cake.

Will not only go this hands dirty, but he had cake in his hair, up his nose and all over the shirt that his mom forgot to take off of him before he got his hands on his cake.

It seems to me that most little children are pretty miserable on their first birthdays. I realize that these are just my two nephews and I don't know if a generalization can be made based on the two of them. But maybe it would be wiser for parents to skip over the child's first birthday and have a party for their second birthday. James was much happier that day than he was for his first birthday. I say if the little guy wants a nap, let him have a nap, it is HIS birthday after all.

Our open house was a little discouraging today. Only four people showed up: one lady looking for her friend who had to go home today before our open house, one couple who didn't seem too interested and one of our neighbours who was just stopping by to check out our condo for her own nosey-ness. Here's hoping tomorrow's open house is more eventful!

I got a call this morning from my mom that my grandpa is in the hospital. I guess he wasn't feeling well yesterday so my aunt went over and he had a fever so my aunt called an ambulance. They aren't sure what brought the fever on, but when they got him to the hospital they found out that his blood pressure was dangerously low (70/30, not sure how he was still conscious!) and they diagnosed him with COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) which I thought he had already been diagnosed with. Mom said he is still in emergency this morning and they are hoping to find him a bed elsewhere soon. In the mean time they are running a bunch of tests to try to find the source of the fever. I hope he pulls through this, but he is 89 and he is pretty frail. I guess we will see what happens. Also mom told me that my oldest nephew James (age 3) has pneumonia again. He has had it probably at least 4 or 5 times since he was born. He seems to be reacting well to the nebulizer, and as far as I remember he has a specialist appointment scheduled for sometime in the not to distant future. *sigh* So all in all not a good day for news :P

Condo For Sale

Tomorrow morning our condo will be officially listed. It was listed briefly on Tuesday (due to a glitch in their website) until I noticed it and called them to take it off. Of course by this time we already had a lawn sign and they dropped of our information. In the last two days we have probably gotten about five phone calls from people asking about our condo. In the few hours that our listing was on Saskhouses.com our listing was viewed 846 times. Crazy!

I am getting excited about this whole selling business. Jason had a brief appointment with our lawyer today to make sure we know what all the terms on the offer forms and whatnot mean. Now that we fully understand it, I feel a lot more confident about selling privately. We are going to take offers until next Thursday, then Friday morning we are going to our lawyer's office to open them all up and celebrate Christmas in July (that's the plan anyway).

We are planning to have three open houses. One Saturday, one Sunday and one next Wednesday. Initially I was really not looking forward to having all these people traipsing through our house, but I don't think it will be too bad. I just need to do a bunch of cleaning in the next two days. I was thinking of cleaning the oven, since we are selling it with the condo....but I am not sure if I should do it now, or before we move...or both I suppose. Not sure what a good oven cleaning product is (that isn't too toxic). It is interesting how self conscious you feel when you know that people are going to be judging you.

Here's hoping we have many offers and they are higher than our asking price :)

We have a ramp!

Here is a picture of the front of our house from last night. Sometime on Friday they came and poured our concrete ramp to the front door. It looks really nice and is subtle enough that most people probably won't even realize that there aren't stairs at the front door. It just looks like a sidewalk up to the front door. I really need to stop by our place during the week when there are people working there so I can go in and have a look around. From what I could see through the windows yesterday they have definitely started drywalling inside!

It is only 2 months and 6 days (Sept 7th) until our possession date. We were thinking that with all the appliances and furniture that we will have delivered to our new house that we are going to arrange all of those deliveries for Saturday Sept. 8th and then arrange our movers for Monday Sept 10th. That way we can have our spare bed and couch moved downstairs by the movers and not have to worry about movers and delivery people working around eachother. I am sure that I will be anxious to start moving stuff, but we will stretch it out a little and enjoy it while we can.