Is it still a blog if you don't ummmm actually blog?

Life is moving on.  Gene is established at his new school.  Half the reason for my lack of "blog" is that I don't feel at all free to blog about Gene....  Therefore if he is the one we are most focused on then the blog goes flat.  The little turkey (see??  I can't even TRY to blog about him without sounding fake....) made Honor Roll for the quarter he attended Crescent.  Now THAT was nice.

Gus is on the second week of restriction for bad behaviour.  He spends a lot of energy talking about how "stupid and dumb his life/restriction/house/family is".  This ironically leads to an extension of his restriction because once he starts this diatribe his mood darkens and he ends up dragging everyone down with him.  Hopefully, he'll never have to understand the concept of parole.

Mom and Dad are here!!  They are at Dearbhla's right now.  We should see them by the weekend!!

The basement smells like chick poo.  The newest babies are living in my carefully lined, unplumbed sink down there.  They need to be moved outside.  Ginny loves them.  Oh  HOW Ginny loves them!

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This process of closing the deal on the house has made us all quite antsy. We haven't felt this way while trying to sell... only now that we are actually selling it! The 30 days to closing have dragged and so it doesn't feel like this big climax of "selling"... the first few weeks were too uncertain (after all we've been there before), then it sank in around week three that this was a go and so just as the closing has been gradual so too has the psychological process of adjusting to having finally "sold" been gradual. It still doesn't really feel "real". No fireworks. Maybe I'll need a cigarette after signing papers though... Maybe it will feel real when we don't make that payment. Gus is dealing with the sale reluctantly (as he deals with everything in his life!) He asked me yesterday how many days more he had to come up with the money in order to buy the house before the buyers... It's certainly taken all the fun out of writing this blog.

A Little Closer

We moved our furniture out of the Buckley house. I say "we"... I did not actually move much actual furniture... Gene and Trent moved a LOT of furniture. Thanks to Shirley the house was boxed up and ready to go. Trent parked the moving van at 9 a.m. and Charlie pulled out of Buckley and drove it to Port Angeles at 3:45 pm. Gina and Gigi moved us and then drove to Port Angeles with a loaded pick-up truck. Kelly Fitz dismantled furniture and helped too as did Jody Nesbitt... Too cool.... we didn't expect so much help and it really sped the day up. On our Port Angeles end our great friends the Burns fed us dinner two nights in a row AND turned up Sunday morning to help us unload. Trent is a wreck and has a cold now and believes that he has the swine flu. All I ask right now is that if I am to die of something that it NOT be something with the word "swine" in it. (Bovine's not high on my list either.) (I mean SERIOUSLY.....) Gus took the move better than I'd hoped... there were so many people at the house that I think he found the whole day to be a big of a whirlwind (we all did, really... even Trent didn't have time to be sad... and nor did I...) Besides, Gus had his beloved Godparents there and nothing makes a day more fun than having Gina and Gigi around!

Moving

We are going to Buckley this weekend to get our house moved. We are doing this a little prematurely, but given that the main bridge to the peninsula will be closed for FIVE WEEKS starting May 1st we don't feel that we have any choice. It's begun to get exciting. Everyone but Trent and Gus are ready to move. Gus is having the hardest time accepting that we really are selling the house. That someone else will live there... in HIS house. I think that as this house starts to change he will be happier. I'm not sure that he realises all that we plan to do to this place. Trent will be fine once the weekend is over, but he also has a hard time letting the house go... with all that he did there. I'm ready. Although, having said that, I'll be the one who'll be a blubbering mess when I have to pull the door closed behind me.

and on with the circus...

It's early days yet, but we have had an offer on our house! We are passed excitement... We reached "mutual acceptance" on Monday. I feel such a huge sense of relief. If all goes according to plan we close on May 15th. It seems too surreal (and also a little premature) to celebrate just yet. I think we will feel the reality of it all in a few weeks. For now, we are just relieved. Trent is a little sad too... I forget that at some point we are going to walk out the door of our home for the last time. The house in Buckley is full of "us". It will be hard to walk away from it. But we can finally start work here and make this house "ours". It has never felt ours. We are also ready to plough! I will be taking a LOT of photos!

It's Monday... time to sign another counter-offer. Anyone would think that we didn't want to sell the bloody thing. Thankfully we have an amazing realtor keeping us calm. We have had crazy offers, ridiculous offers, maybe offers... Today's is a mixed bag. We hear that the people really like the house... but the 25K low ball offer is one we can't take. No point... So, we countered and now we'll wait and see... again...



In the meantime we are on the fast track to Christmas. The boys are so excited... even cool and mature Gene. He is the most worried about prospective loot because he knows more about our financial strain carrying both mortgages. I'm pretty confident that he will be happy on the big day. I plan to wrap one of his two main gifts in a disguised box labeled for me... then just when he thinks "no Red Ryder BB Gun"... I'll unwrap the "last" gift... which will turn out to be his big ticket item... Should be good to get the last word...

Going, going... not gone...

Our house deal fell through. We are not as devastated as I would have expected. Maybe after a year of doing this juggling act we are used to it. It was a really nice feeling for those four days when we thought we had a deal... We came close... but yesterday Kate (our realtor, AWESOME lady, now a good friend) called us and told us that our buyer's deal had fallen through on their sale and therefore they had to rescind their offer. We were all (including Kate) pretty speechless... but what are you going to do??

Gus, off on his holliers

Gus goes to Florida with Grandma Shirley tomorrow. We've never had a kid gone anywhere for more than an overnight... and Gus has only been on very few of even those!! I am quite nervous about being apart from him. He will be with Grandma and Aunt Lisa so he'll be in good hands. He and Alex are good friends so Shirley offered to take him with her on her visit which is a great opportunity for Gus. As the youngest of three boys he doesn't often get to have the limelight. I think that he will really enjoy all the attention and hopefully he'll miss his siblings a little. I'm going to miss him terribly. It will be interesting to see how school is without him.

Tomorrow Trent is going to take him to Enumclaw to Shirley's and also get the car out of the garage, empty the garage and pack up the truck with anything else that he can. We have to be out by December 05th and Trent learned today that the next two weekends are booked up with work... which is of course a good thing, the timing is just bad. So it looks like we will be moving in one weekend... over Thanksgiving. I'll go to Buckley next week and the following week for a few days and box up as much stuff as I can.

House, house, house

Well... we are all up in the air again. It looks like we might be getting an offer on our house. The people who want to buy ours need to sell theirs... and they got an offer. If they accept the offer then they make us an offer on ours. It's torture just waiting, but this is the closest we've come to selling in over a year! It's hard not to start spending the cash... God know's there's plenty to spend it on in this house. We plan to do the kitchen, heating and concrete work first... then bathroom, then MAYBE windows, doors and siding.

(oh please, oh please, oh please....)

And the answer is...

No sale. They either don't want the house enough or can't afford it. Either way, we can't accept such a low offer, even in this soft market.