Christmas in Coloma

It rained this past weekend, and we spent most of the time cutting the oak branches into smaller, more movable size branches. We wonder when we will walk around here without noticing all of the "project's" that need done. Our plan is to work on the inside of the house during the winter, then in spring start working on the yard. Or, umm, acreage. Yeah, that can't be a quick job (think tractor).

I dreamt about Sabalo last night. They had repainted all the walls and expanded a hallway (poorly) and put in cherry cabinets. Crazy that I even worry about what is happening at that house. They got to just move in and start living. We've been here going on 4 weeks and we still park outside.

After being cooped up in the house for several days we decided to take the kids to the old gold rush town of Coloma for the Christmas festivities on Sunday. The rain cleared around lunch, I dressed the kids in scrapbookable outfits and off we went to poke around. I *love* that the kids got to see Santa and Mrs Claus without having to stand in line at Sunrise Mall.

We ate lunch, then after blowing our budget on lunch Greg and Maren went in search of an ATM.

Declan, Teagan and I wandered around looking at the adorable little town. This was the bakery.

Here the kids are stamping their letters to Santa. They wrote their own letters. Ironically they both wrote the same thing, that they had been good this year. Neither of them asked for anything in their letters. I, on the other hand, asked for a tractor. The Pony Express picked the letters up. We met back up with Pony Express at the house where Santa was.

This is the little house that Santa and Mrs. Claus were in. It used to be the Coloma Post Office. The kids gave their letters to Santa themselves. That must be a riot reading what kids write.

Maren wouldn't have anything to do with Santa. Couldn't even be bribed with a candy cane. I had to hold her for a quick shot.

I think I'll do an update of progress on the house post next. I'll take pictures of how it looks now versus when I last posted pictures. This way we can see all of the things we HAVE done!

This is what we woke up to this morning! We were really excited until we saw many, many broken branches on the oak trees to the right on the walkway. In fact, while we were outside, we could hear the branches cracking under the weight of the snow. Then, to make things just a little bit more exciting, we had no water... we figured the pipes must have froze. Turns out that a branch fell on the pump, breaking a pipe. $346 later, we have water once again ($6 in parts).... Ahhh, the finer things in life.

This is the backyard from the master bathroom.
This is from the bay window in the master. Just happened to catch a few deer in this picture.

I moved the van so a branch didn't fall on it. This was the view from the driveway back towards the house.

Goodbye, Sabalo Way!

Declan's class had a Thanksgiving Presentation. He is in the back row, next to impossible to find. Bless his heart, he was so nervous!

Here is the Pilgrim, on his way to the stage.

I don't honestly remember how many attempts I made at getting a picture of all 3 kids with the 'For Sale' sign. This is just one of many, many things that I can't remember. October and November were a complete blur.

This is one of the dozen or so loads we made with our little utility trailer. I'm following Greg in the zippy Passat. The girls are squeezed in the backseat with Christmas wreaths between them.
The buyers of our house kept bumping their closing date closer and closer. In the end, we were completely out by the 16th of November. That was the day the carpet was being installed at the new house. We moved most everything into the garage at the new house and hired movers to help move the big/heavy things. We had them put it all in the dining room, since it has hardwood.

We slept in the pop-up at camp driveway while we worked on getting the house ready to move into. Mainly getting the heat working. This proved to be yet another exciting

Okay, my scrapbook gal's.... this is ALL of my scrapbook supplies (with the exception of furniture). I told my Mom this load could NOT go in the ditch. Turns out it took me all day to load the trailer then it was too late to take the load to the new house. My scrapbook supplies spent the night on the trailer in our driveway. I barely slept a wink LOL!

Okay, I'm going to post this and will be working on my next post....

Stand by.... looking for the USB cord....

I will be updating soon. Just looking for the USB for the cameras......

End of October photos...

This post is going to be random... I have about 11 minutes before I have to get the kids from school. I've been meaning to post some of these for awhile, so here goes:

Our 3 sweeties swinging in the yard. Don't let those sweet faces fool you, they can drive an otherwise sane person to drink 2 glasses of wine! Don't ask me how I know this.

We had 1 big storm a few weeks back. The girls wanted to go out with the umbrella and play in the rain. They had a blast!

We decorated Halloween cookies and ate them. Well, I let Maren eat mine since she licked all the frosting off it.

Halloween costumes: Declan - Optimus Prime, minus all of the accessories that give the indication that the costume is Optimus Prime.

Teagan - Cinderella. Complete with blinking glass slippers that gave her blisters. I asked her if the shoes were going to be okay for Trick-or-Treating and she told "yes Mommy, I just can't walk in them...."

Maren - Minnie Maren Mouse. Perfect for this child. Except she wouldn't wear her ears. She did wear her sparkly pink converse though!

Must run for now, will try to post some more after I pick up the wild ones!

Cha cha changes....

This is what you see when you enter our property. I took this picture from the gate. To the left is the garage, then the driveway circles around and the barn is to the left (Maxivan is parked in front of the barn).

I took this picture back in the summer, when we first started this process. It is from the top of the steps down to the house. You can see the white lamp post just in front of Greg's car in the picture above.

This is how it looks now, this picture taken from the front of the house, back up towards the driveway. You can see the white lamp post the previous picture was taken from. Follow me? =)

I took out all those solar lights. They didn't get any direct sunlight to charge them. There must be 36 of them.

This is from the back deck towards the chicken coop.

Before:After:
They uncovered some treasures in all of that tall grass. I raked up 7 or 8 large piles of the downed grass. CRAZY amount of work for this city girl. My hands still hurt.

Greg wanted to paint the garage and epoxy the floor before we move in. So this past weekend, we sprayed the garage. 15 gallons of Kilz and 5 gallons of Semi Gloss. I swept up about 10 lbs of paint 'dust' off the floor. Greg also replaced the fluorescent lights with energy efficient CFL's. With the garage painted white and new lights, it looks like a brand new place!

Here are some of the before shots.

The only critters we've encountered are lizards and frogs. Apparently tarantulas are the most active right now, so the 1 that Greg removed must have been the only one dumb enough to show it's face in the day. The kids say hi to it every time we drive around the bend where Greg moved it to.

Sunday I spent the entire afternoon cleaning the upstairs hall bath. There is a reason I do not clean other people's houses for a living. I had the heebie jeebs so I just poured bleach on the floor, put on my rubber gloves and dove in. I think I will repaint the aqua to a prettier version of aqua and call it a day in there.

I'll post more pic's if I come across any other good before/afters.

*3* Offers on our house!

Greg and I just signed a full price offer this morning!! Please keep fingers crossed that there are no hang-ups. This seems to have gone so smoothly, I'm waiting for something to come up.... =)

Well, We didn't Close on the 16th...

But we did sign our papers today. Now, the short sale banks involved just need to be paid (via our wire transfer) and signed off on.... Too bad that Capital One doesn't do wire transfers to Title Companies, and too bad that is the bank that we transferred all of the funds to to wire the money to the Title Company. Too bad we didn't realize this until Thursday eveing. Oh well, we had to wait on them right?! If all goes as planned, we should be closing this week.

Our house went on the MLS today... and had 4 showings today while we were out! Two more have called to show it tomorrow. Hopefully we will get an offer and be moving on with life. Cross your fingers for us please.

Out at the new house today Greg pressure washed the garage and I cleaned the baseboards inside. No critter encounters. Oh, except the black widow. But Greg drown her in his beer bottle. We're going to go back out tomorrow and go to the Harvest Festival at the kids new school. Hope to meet some of the country folk! Maybe talk chickens. Or tractors. =)

Green Acres is the life for me.... I think.

I won't bore you with all the details. Lets just say we are jumping thru hoops to get our funding to go thru. We had to have the south side of the house scrapped and repainted due to the appraiser calling weathered wood and paint 'dry rot.' And we had to install the cabinet doors because he also mentioned that in the appraisal. The cabinet doors were in the process of being painted/distressed, and had all been removed. Then at the last minute the bank wanted a hand rail installed on the steps that lead down of the back deck. Okay. We're playing along because we want the house. It is weird though, to be making repairs to a house we don't own, and I don't entirely trust the lender.

Anywhoo, I took the kids out this afternoon to help Greg with the rest of the cabinet doors and while there I figured we may as well water something. Greg brought soaker hoses and we were laying them around the front walk area when Teagan sees this guy:

Greg flung it over to the other side of the street (which is a ways away) but the spider is probably back to it's home by now *shudder*

The kids were scared/fascinated. I was in flip flops. I think we'll be boot shopping tomorrow...

After that excitement was over, we got back to work. I think it looks great (except for the 6 cabinet doors I repainted yesterday with old paint, that is shiny... but we won't talk about that right now). I'm not as into the distressed look as I would have been about 5 years ago. So, they will get another coat of fresh paint, and they will match.

We put on new brushed satin hardware. Looks pretty with the granite. Bless Greg's heart, he does such a nice and perfect job on this kind of stuff. It always turns out beautifully! You can see the areas where they sanded the white paint back down to the oak.

The appraiser is going back out tomorrow to take pictures to show the bank we did the repairs they requested. Cross your fingers they don't ask us to do anything else. If all goes well, we should close on the 16th, 1 day after the seller's short sale deadline of the 15th. Amazing if you ask me!

We left after dark. The kids were too scared to go outside, in the dark. It's dark out there. Really dark. The front porch has lights, but the breaker is broken in the tripped position, so that needs to be fixed (item # 2613 in case you are counting). They had a lot of solar lights, but they aren't bright. We'll be adding some real lighting out there. So I can see the tarantulas at night. But it won't matter then, because I'll have on boots!

Lighting comes after we have the landscaping cleared and cleaned up. While I was there yesterday I had 'Nacho' come give me a quote to clear 100' fire/safety perimeter around the house, prune and trim. $1200.00. $300 more if we want it hauled away. Yipes. That comes after we have the lids for the septic tank dug up, inspected, pumped and add risers to the lids so we don't ever have to dig them up again. Most likely a lot of things will have to wait until we sell our house.

Oh, and speaking of critters. When Greg left last night, he followed Peppy La'Pue down the dirt road to Salmon Falls Road. Peppy got a little testy near the end there, and Greg swears he went into the bush and lifted his tail. We're having the 50 gallon barrel of Tomato Juice delivered, since we can't go pick it up in MaxiVan (just kidding).

Busy, busy...

I'm posting to say I am too busy to post. Crazy. Our offer was accepted on the house, and the bank wants to COE by 10/15. We've got work to do on this house so we can list it, we've made 100 calls regarding 100 things on the new house. Many inspections. We get to pay for them all, of course. But overall, we are very excited! Will post more when I have the time. In about 4 years... =)

Before Summer Ended

Greg took the girls for a bike ride in the trailer. It was Maren's first time! She was so excited. I think she is really becoming aware that she is getting to do things she has had to be a bystander for in the past. I think Greg said they went 12 miles or so. In 100 degree heat. Good times.

A few people have been asking if we have heard anything about the house, and no, we haven't. Our offer is good until Sept 11th. The bank postponed the foreclosure until Sept 14th to take a look at our offer. According to our realtor, we are in the best possible position. When we took my Mom out there, we could tell the house had been shown to other people. I had our realtor ask if we were the only offer they had, and there are back up offers on the property now. I was upset and fretted for a day, then decided that whatever happens is exactly what is supposed to happen. And then let it go. Maybe I'm just afraid of change. Maybe I'm worried we won't like it. Maybe I'm sad to give up my wonderfully perfect for me scrapbook space.
Who knows.

But then it was all good again...

Teagan started Preschool this week. It's a small class, only 10 kids, 6 boys 4 girls. I hope more girls sign up, Teagan wants a little friend SO bad. She was excited to go, and I didn't cry on that day either!

She asked me to take 1 more picture before I left, and she posed for this one.

And then this happened...

Yep. That would be a broken arm. Fractured just below her elbow. How could this happen you ask? Well, let's just say that I doubt anyone will be jumping off the swivel desk chair anytime soon.... Teagan got *lots* of snuggles and love from me and Nana (Greg was out of town). I almost worry that she likes the extra attention so much that she'll do things like this just to get more. Almost always smiling though, true to Teagan's personality. She told the girl that was wrapping her cast that her brother would like a blue cast. I asked if they could put it on his mouth.

I haven't let anyone sign it yet, I think that will make it look junky. She goes back to the Dr on Friday to make sure it's healing right.

Some photos of the 'Firsts'

Big D started 1st grade on the 24th. Just in the nick of time too, as I felt like I would not survive another week of not knowing what to do with him.... We got a supply list from his teacher and he was excited to pick out his supplies. We ended up getting him a big boy backpack at Costco. I didn't want him to get teased for having a Spiderman one (sad huh?).

Since my Mom is here, I could drive him to school (at the butt crack of dawn might I add...) and wait there with him until he went into the classroom. I didn't cry this year! I was scared and excited for him. Looking forward to hearing about his first day. After school I took him to Cold Stone Creamery and had some one on one Mommy time.

The *REAL* Party.

Greg gets the cutest little cakes at Sam's Club that have cupcakes around them. They are perfect for birthdays.

Maren agrees. Here she is driving a car on her presents. Greg wrapped that one, yes that is blue painter's tape...
This, my friend's, is the face of *pure* excitement. She is probably squealing too! Good stuff. I think it's a Jeep with a trailer and ATC. Perfection.

She had a blast, and got lots of cars. The Loop's really know how to throw a party.