Our first showing

So we've been on the market for 2 1/2 weeks now, and we haven't had any showings . . . until today - the day we are packing so we can leave for our trip to Minnesota tomorrow morning. I get a call and I have just over an hour to clean everything up (including all of our packed suitcases) and get myself, Brigham, and Hudson out the door. As I was huffing and puffing up and down the stairs, sweating, vacuuming, and yelling at the boys to please go downstairs and watch a movie, I thought, "I can't do this. We might implode." I hope this house sells soon. I need a nap.

Okay, here are some pictures from the Realtor's website.

It's on

Okay, so we're officially on the market, and I can't believe how nice it is to be finished with all of our house projects!! As Chris and I dropped in our bed late (again) on one of our last project nights, he said, "This makes me never want to own a house again." I completely agree, and I am sooo extremely excited to rent a house while we're in Rochester. I don't want to have another house until we can afford to pay someone to do these projects. At this stage in the game, I think it's totally worth the money!
I do think we need to move now that everything's nice and new because living here ruins all of our efforts. I'm seeing scuffs and dents and smudges and dust and crumbs in places that looked brand new not too long ago. I'm hoping for cloudy days, or at least for evening showings so things don't show up as well.
I'll post some pictures soon. I keep meaning to, but I can't keep the house nice enough to go around and take pictures. Hmm . . . maybe one room at a time.

It's coming along

So we're about to put our house up on the market. I regret not taking more "before" pictures of our house, since we've done quite a bit to fix it up. I'll post more pictures later, but I wanted to show these ones of our basement banister. I forgot to take "before" ones of the actual banister, but it used to be this brown color, and it had all sorts of scuffs, scratches, and bite marks (when Noah was two, he used to bite it). We carpeted the stairs and the basement last May, and then the banister really looked bad compared to the new carpet.

Chris painted it a couple of weeks ago, and I'm so excited about how it turned out!

There have been many times that I have wondered why we've waited until now to do stuff like this. Well, I'll tell you. First of all, we couldn't afford it for a long time. Second, we didn't want to do it twice - once initially, then again after our boys have destroyed it :)

Hudson update

It's high time for another one of these. I can't believe this kid's almost two!

You wouldn't think it from looking at this adorable face, but Hudson is now a walking disaster! He has figured out doorknobs and zippers, so nothing is safe from him anymore.
It took a few times of walking into the dining room and seeing the complete contents of my purse and the backpack scattered all over to realize that I needed to put them in a closet. It also took quite a few times of hearing him banging the toilet closed or seeing him tip my water bottle all over my night stand to break down and get the door knob covers. Now, if everyone in the house can remember to close all the doors, we're set.

Hudson cannot stay away from plugs, either. We put plug covers on all of our unused outlets (which he can pick out now), but I can't find those box plug covers anymore - you know, the ones that snap over the entire outlet and the plugs. Anyone know where to find those these days?? Anyway, Hudson has shocked himself more times than I care to record, but he still can't stay away from them! He's just like his brothers - pain doesn't seem to teach him any sort of lesson.

Since he's figured zippers out, he loves to his footie pajamas because he can play with the zippers. He gets the zipper down, then leaves it there, which gives him a bit of a Neil Diamond look (which I do not approve of!)

Stuff he loves right now:

His blanket and stuffed animals, namely, brown monkey,

Crackers the bear (named by Noah the brother. Also can you see those rosy cheeks? He has those ALL the time!),

and Orange Monkey. This one is actually a Dr. Seuss character, but Hudson named it himself. As indicated from the previous two pictures, Hudson also LOVES books. Just a word of advice, if you ever want find a way to his heart, offer to read him a book. He'll be your best friend.

His other favorite things to do are puzzles, cars, playdough, and coloring. At Christmas, I thought it would be brilliant to get him Color Wonder so we wouldn't find marker streaks on everything. It worked for a little while, until Hudson figured out that he could take the actual marker part out of the plastic holder and bite pieces off of it. Color Wonder is banned now.

Hudson is a fairly clean kid (well, relatively, for a toddler). He gets upset when he sees that he's dirty, including times that he sees snow on his boots and pants. He has also just recently started picking the lint out of his toes. Whenever I take his feet out of his pajamas so I can change his diaper, his feet are immediately up in the air so he can reach them and start picking. He got this from me - my parents have three or four pictures of me at this age doing the same thing.

Hudson is a great fit-thrower these days. As with most kids his age, his tantrums occur when he wants to do something and can't, or if something is done in a way different from the way he likes it done. Chris and I try to accomodate his particular ways, because we know he's just trying to get a little bit of control over his world, but sometimes it's just ridiculous.
Hudson also has to do everything himself. His most common phrases are "No me!" and "I do it!" There are many times that I have to unsnap him from his high chair so he can snap himself in, turn the water off so he can turn it on, turn the lights back on so he can turn them off, and oh so many other things.

Still loves sugar.

Other things:

He loves music, and he gets attached to certain songs, which he wants to hear over and over and over. I've heard enough "Fruit Salad" (Wiggles), "Yeti Stomp" (Backyardigans), "Popcorn" (Bare Naked Ladies), and "Mama Mia" (Abba) to last a lifetime. On the flipside, we can usually get him to calm down when we ask him if he wants to listen to one of the above songs. I can also usually get him to lay still long enough to change his diaper or get him dressed if I sing songs. The most requested ones at these particular times are nursery songs: "Itsy Bitsy Spider" "Five Little Monkeys" "Wheels on the Bus" or "Popcorn Popping." He also requests "I Am a Child of God" on CD (NOT me singing it) when he goes to sleep.

There's been quite an evolution with Hudson's manners. Last spring, when we were trying to teach him to say Thank You, he had the intonation down ("thank" being said a little lower than "you"), but he would say "nkuh nkuh." He'd say it in his throat without even opening his lips. Oh, how I wish we had had our video camera at the time - it was so funny. Then it evolved to just one "nk." Three or so months ago, he finally started saying the actual "thank you" and he'd say it every time we did something for him. Now it's just a simple "thanks."

He's started to hit sometimes because he thinks it's funny. There have been a number of times that he has pulled his hand back to hit me, and I'll tell him, "No, we don't hit." He'll start to get upset and say, "Please!" Ah,well, at least he's polite about wanting to hit me.

He's started to fight naps the last couple of months. I still put him down everyday after lunch, and sometimes he'll fall asleep if he's really tired, but a majority of the time, he'll just talk and play. Poor kid - we haven't had room to put up the crib, so he's always been in a porta crib in Annie's room. He's figured out how to throw himself against the side of the crib to get it to move. I've learned to put all of Annie's things from her dresser and night stand onto the floor so he can't reach them when he scoots himself over. He is a great sleeper at night, though.

He doesn't like winter and snow much.

He LOVES nursery! We are all so lucky that he has the BEST nursery leaders. Just about every time we get in the car he asks if we are going to church so he can go to nursery and see Grandma Jeena.

He's talking like crazy - he says pretty much everything and he's stringing words into sentences. Overall, Hudson has a very laid back personality and he's so much fun!

Winter Walk

Since Annie and Noah had school off on MLK day, I decided to take a break from all the house projects and just spend the day with the kids. In the morning we went to the North Chagrin Reservation and took a wintery walk.

There was a bit of contention on our walk, which you can't see in the kids' smiling faces. We walked by a lake, which the kids were convinced was frozen, therefore, they should be able to walk on it. And how do you suppose those kids came to the conclusion that the lake was frozen enough to support them? They threw rocks on it, and the rocks didn't break through.

I didn't buy their theory.

After we got home, we made a picnic lunch, then ate it on a sheet in the basement while we watched "The Muppet Movie." I grew up LOVING the muppets, and I was thrilled to see how much the kids liked the movie. We made some good memories that day.

The newest production of Wicked

This is evidence of the love of Wicked in our midst. As a surprise for our two families, Annie and Hadley had been secretly practicing their own version of the musical. They worked on it for months!! We were finally privileged to see the results of their hard work!

Annie was Glinda and Hadley was Elphaba. Noah introduced the whole thing. Brigham and Hyrum even had small parts, but they were more of a distraction, so we finally sent them up to Brigham's room play with Play Mobils. And, I got to be the traveler with the green elixer! They had costume changes, props, and Grandma Jeena was their sound manager.

They worked so hard, and it was wonderful! Great job girls!

New Year's Eve dance party

I already wrote about our holiday picture woes, but I did get this one to represent our New Year's Eve family dance party. The Brimhalls hosted, and we were there with the Hanleys, the Andersons, and the Monsons. It was so fun! We had 5 straight hours of singing, dancing, and food.

Annie, Hadley, and Maisy sang tons of karaoke. I loved watching them up there singing their hearts out. We had a mosh pit, we did the twist, thriller (we tried to anyway) and we even did - do I dare admit it? - the electric slide and the macarena. I felt like I was back in the middle of a Stake Dance. But it was so fun to relive it with our kids. Although we put Hudson to sleep around 10, the rest of us were alive and kicking way past midnight. We ended the night with singing "Party in the USA." We were all delerious with lack of sleep the next day, but it was well worth it. That will go down in history as one of the best New Year's we've had. Thanks Brimhalls!!