Selling out.

The girls have been asking since we got home from our trip to have a "late over" with some girlfriends. We don't do sleepovers (for now), but we thought it would be fun to let some friends come over and have a movie night and stay up late.

They made plans and friends were invited. The party was to be tonight from 4-8pm. They would make homemade make-your-own pizzas, eat popcorn with Reese's pieces in it, wear pajamas, and watch Jumanji. Everyone was very excited. 

Aaron left early for work this morning, so the kids were all up to see him off at the unholy hour of 5:30.  I am no fan of early mornings, so once everyone was ready for school I decided to put our morning together to good use. We read scriptures, the house was picked up, beds were made, and the dishwasher was running by the time they got on the bus at 6:45.  I ran errands with Corbin all day, and we got home just in time for Corbin to take a late nap while I waited for my little party girls to get off the bus and start making pizza dough. 

Cue phone call from our realtor's wife around 2:30. We had a showing for 5:30pm. 

YES! A SHOWING!
Right at party time.
Hmmmm, perhaps they could they do it earlier?  Like right now?  Later?  Tomorrow?
Beggars can't be choosers, Meg. Take it, you dummy! 

I made a snap decision to take the showing and postpone the girls' party. 

Ok, so the house was clean, but not "please examine every detail of my home kind of clean", so I dedicated the next 2 hours to making sure everything was perfect, from wiping down trash cans and and kitchen appliances to windows and recoiling the hose in the yard more neatly.  I vacuumed every room and even de-pooped the chicken coop.  It was an insanely busy (and schwetty) 2 hours and my body literally aches from mopping and toilet scrubbing and dusting so ferociously. 

But my oh my did my house sparkle when we left. We were out the door 30 min before the showing with not even a footprint on the freshly mopped floor.  I was quite proud of myself for pulling it together so beautifully with 4 children at home.  

Until I saw the sad looks on my kids faces in my rearview mirror.  

Going out to dinner was not gonna be enough to make up for canceling their big plans.  Nothing would make up for it. 

They were very disappointed. 

I explained that we had a new date for the party and it would "be here before you know it."  

They were good sports, but I felt like crap. 

"This is just part of selling a house." I reminded myself. "You have to keep it crazy clean, and you have to make sacrifices to leave the house for showings." I HAD to postpone the party.  Didn't I? 

We went to Chuck E Cheese for dinner (Now how's that for a sacrifice?  Gross. Every kid in there was coughing. All of them. They should just instal a nebulizer in the corner that takes Chuck E tokens so that between games kids could get a hit of steroids so they can breathe again.  They'd probably make a fortune.) and stayed out until 8. 

The showing? Well guess what? I got a text from our realtor's wife that said the people were a no show.  

I'm so disappointed. 

Not because I thought these people were sure to fall in love with my home and make an offer. 

It was because I chose poorly.  

I had canceled Reese and Quincy's party and chose to spend all afternoon washing walls and dusting light fixtures and cleaning light switch covers and making sure that all of the baskets and books were lined up just perfectly.  I'd sent the children outside, and had declined requests to "play bike delivery" and do "underdogs" on the swings.  Instead, I hosed off the patio and tucked in the chairs and tied up a rogue grapevine onto the pergola.  

And for what?  I ignored my kids all afternoon while I surrendered myself a slave to chores and fantasies about our future home. 

And the showing didn't. even. happen.

In the end, I have nothing to show for my afternoon but a spotless house (that was probably clean enough when I started), ignored sons, and really sad daughters. And Soren got up on all fours and started rocking back and forth today and I didn't even take a break to catch it on film.   

I don't know about all of this. 

Selling this sweet little home is a double edged sword.

We can't wait to get into a bigger space with acres to roam that we can really enjoy and live out long wished for dreams with our children. 

In order to get there, we need to sell this home first.
So, I missed living today to make tomorrow dreams happen.  I'm not sure it was worth the sacrifice. 

Here's to hoping my home sells quickly. I don't want to lose more days like today could have been.

A Saturday in the car and a Sunday on the shore.

Due to a bunch of things out of our control, we got a 4 hour late start on our drive, and the kids and I ended up killing some time in walmart while Aaron ran into work to take care of a few quick things.  No worries for us, vacation is vacation! We hung out with Mr M&M, shopped for flip flops, sand toys and road trip snacks.  I think Aaron was motivated to work a lot faster knowing the kids and I were in walmart spending money.

The kids rocked the drive.
Photo proof from Transylvania. It's kind of a scary place. I kept the windows up and reminded the children to go to college.

We crossed the Mississippi river.

And finally arrived at our hotel 12 hrs later. We only had to make one stop on the way there. Awesome little travelers!  We had talked about renting a beach house in Seacrest or Seaside for the week, but couldn't decide if it was worth the money. Then a friend of mine called to tell me she had booked 2 rooms for a week in a Marriott hotel in Destin with her employee discount and had decided not to use it. Instead of canceling, she transferred the reservation to our name. We had 2 rooms 2 min from the beach for $39 each per night.  Totally worth the trip!  Thank you, friend!

The kids went straight to bed Sat. night and Quincy and Reese both threw up on Sunday morning, foiling our plans to go to church in Florida!  I was worried it would last all week and ruin our vacation, but everyone felt fine by noon.  We went for a drive.  The kids really wanted to get their suits on and go swimming. We decided to make it a teaching moment and told them that even though we couldn't go to church that morning, we could still observe the Sabbath and find an activity that would be a little more reverent, so we took a walk on the beach and ended up flying kites.  In the end, I'm not really sure how much more "reverent" it ended up being, but at least we made an effort to make Sunday feel different and more special than the our other vacation days, and that was the point.

The beach is the best place for flying kites. There is constant wind, so it requires no effort or skill to keep a kite in the air. When one of the kids would get tired of flying theirs, we just hooked the string to the end of a chair or my purse or Soren's bucket seat (that he slept in almost the entire time), and the kite would stay up in the air on it's own.

The sand is very white and the beaches are remarkably clean in Florida.

I am LOVING this little toothless smile, right now. It's like a cartoon.

I think Sunday ended up being my favorite day of our trip. It was just a magical day of, uninterrupted, happy, quality time together with my favorite people. Good day.

When we got back to our room, we discovered that leprechauns had followed us to Florida and left a box of Lucky Charms cereal bars in our room.  Those sneaky sneaky leprechauns...

Spring Break/St Patrick's Day

We kicked off Spring Break by celebrating St. Patrick's Day at the school.  The kindergarteners always bring in leprechaun traps.  I love this tradition, but I've gotta say I was pretty shocked at some of the traps that the "kindergarteners" had made.  Parents, please do your kids (and the other moms) a favor and actually let your kids make the traps.  There were all sorts of fancy schmancy glitter covered pinterest worthy traps with so much spray painted gold deco-podged rainbow brilliance that I sort of felt bad for the kids.  Leprechaun traps should not cost money, and they most certainly should not include a hand tiled trail of rainbow candy pressed into pristine marshmallow fondant landscape leading to a colored chocolate waterfall that looks like it came from Rick's bakery.  Fine for the holiday if you wanna go all out, but don't send it with your kid to school labeled as their creation.  The child with the chocolate and fondant trap's parents were the worst offenders by far. The kid wasn't even allowed to touch the dang thing because her mother was hovering over it like a royal guard. 

Quincy knew exactly what materials she needed to make her trap and had it put together in about 15 minutes.  She used two styrofoam bowls, tape, and pennies. 

She pressed double sided tape all over the inside of both bowls, stuck the pennies inside ("because leprechauns like gold money the best"), then taped the bowls together to make a closed capsule with a door.  Leprechaun sees the money, he goes inside the bowls, his feet stick to the tape and he's trapped inside. Genius. After using frog tape to tape the bowls together, Reese said, "hey, that looks like a leprechaun hat!" so Quincy covered the whole top bowl with tape to make it green, and then used some electrical tape from the bin to make a sash.  My contribution was the square in the door so it looked like a buckle. Done and done. 

The trap on the right was Reese and Corbin's creation.  They used a snowcone wrapper with a hole cut in the bottom to make a trap that works like a fruit fly trap.  They baited with pennies and later added some cereal so the leprechaun wouldn't be hungry while he waited for them. Reese was worried that if he wasn't distracted by food, he'd come up with a way to escape before she could discover him.  

Quincy made another trap to set up in her room that I didn't get a picture of.  This girl could make an excellent engineer. Her design was simple and smart: She put a bowl in the middle of the room, placed a dishtowel over the bowl and set a penny on top of the dish towel in the center.  The leprechaun would run across the blanket to get the penny, but he would weigh enough that the towel would drop into the bowl, trapping him inside with no way to climb out. 

I went to the school to meet with Mrs. Rogers for Spring Parent Teacher Conference.  Quincy is doing well and is right on track to be ready for first grade.  Mrs. Rogers says Quincy is kind to others, makes her friends laugh, and loves school.

Quincy dressed in green from head to toe on friday. She also lost another tooth. Cha-ching!

I checked the girls out of school early after the conference/st. paddy's celebrating, and we hit Sonic for happy hour slushees to kick off the week together.  Then, we went to walmart and bought 700 lbs of manure, sphagnum peat moss, and mushroom compost to add to the garden beds. (which I hauled into the yard myself, thankyouverymuch).  We planted our Spring garden (much to my dismay, since everything but the broccoli and cabbage froze yesterday.) and had fun in the backyard, playing in the dirt...evidenced by my flip flop dirt-tan. Gross much? Yeah, that's a leaf stuck to my toe.  And the red flecks on the big toes are from the pedicure I got in JULY.  Time for another, I think.

I snagged a pic of Corbin because his face was so caked in dirt, his eyelashes kept sticking shut.  Happy. I cannot wait for it to warm up so we can spend more time outside.

Later that night, while the kids bathed, I threw our swimsuits, a few shirts, shorts and flip flops in a bag (literally---a plastic bag. Our suitcases are in storage, so we filled a couple duffel bags and put the rest of our crap into a white kitchen trash bag. We're classy.) and hit the road for a last minute not-really-planned trip Destin, Florida the next morning.

How Soren feels about Winter.

Preach.

Today

1) My cousin just posted a picture of my grandpa on facebook. I miss him. The look on his face in the photo is classic and it reminded me of how he had a knack for kicking you in the rear when you were standing next to him. It's like his leg had an extra bend in it so he could whoop your butt undetected. It was quite a gift. He kicked hard!  He shook your hand hard. He hugged hard. He loved hard.

2) We had two packages waiting to be opened when we got home from our trip.  The drive home was excruciating with a tunnel closing and construction and weather delays.  The kids were amazing. I drove the last 2 1/2 hours and was reminded that not only do I dislike driving in the sleet at night, I am not any good at it. But we made it home without having to stop in any of the super scary middle of nowhere southern "towns" (Transylvania, guys. Seriously. It's a real place and we drove through it yesterday.  We would have gotten out of the car to take a better photo but we were afraid to.) Anyway, thanks to my mom and sister, we had the treat of opening packages tonight. It was such a pleasant way to end spring break!  Thank you, HolleeAnn for the huge box of goodness!  I cannot wait to put the monster shirts on the boys tomorrow.

3) Quincy's reading skills are really starting to take off. Usually, when it is her turn to read during scripture time, Aaron or I read the words and she repeats them and follows along. Tonight, all of a sudden, she just started reading and made it halfway through the verse before needing help with a digraph. My heart leaped with joy in her confidence breakthrough and my eyes met Aaron's as we exchanged a moment of pure happiness for her. The gift of literacy is so empowering, I can hardly wait to see what it does for Quincy.

4) Soren is perfect. Baby slept for 10.5 of the 12 hour drive to Florida and then slept through the night once we got there. beauty.  He did nearly the same thing on the way back.  He was awake about 1 hour longer, but happily played with toys and smiled at his sisters.  I am so lucky.

5) Corbin makes cat calls. He says, "I'm a wolf!" about 10 times a day and actually howled "awoooo!" at every female 20 something spring breaker we encountered last week. It was pretty hilarious and da ladies loved the attention from our tiny womanizer.  I seriously don't know what to do with that child.  Perhaps I am raising him wrong. He is, after all, part wolf.

6) My mom made the children fabric rope easter baskets just like the old school one I had as a child. Love love love!

7) I'm supposed to do the relay for the Bentonville Half Marathon in 13 days. I have run ONE time in the last month and a half.  It was 7 1/2 miles, but still. I'm basically totally unprepared.  Wouldn't be the first time I hit that course after a running hiatus.  I'll do it again because I want that dang shirt, and maybe participating in a race will motivate me to get going again. I'm really excited to do the relay with Kasey and I'm excited that Emily is doing her first half!  Those girls have kept on keepin' on all winter while I slacked off and stayed home and played the "I just had a baby" card for 6 months. It's been great, and while I know I made the right choice, I feel a pang of regret when I see what good shape they're in and how well their hard work has paid off. They've been totally understanding every time I bailed on running with them. I have good friends. The relay will be a fun challenge.

8) Everyone I know is selling doTerra essential oils and I am having a difficult time finding a tactful way to say that I am not interested, so I'm unavailable to attend instead.  I was invited to classes by 3 different people this week.

9) Soren slept in Corbin's room last night and it went well. I put him to bed in there again, tonight.  It took Corbin awhile to fall asleep, and I just heard Soren wake up (it's 11pm) so I'm not as confident as I was last night that it's going to work out.  Maybe he'll go back to sleep before he wakes up Corbin...

10) It snowed a little today. Temp with wind chill tomorrow morning = 12*. Why did we come back?!
Pictures soon, but not tonight because it sounds like Soren isn't soothing back to sleep in his new bed as quietly as he needs to without waking up the wolf.  Any advice for helping infants share a room with siblings without waking each other up all night?  Corbin talks in his sleep a LOT.  I'm not sure this is going to work out, but all 4 of the children shared a room for 7 days of vacation and did well enough, so fingers crossed.

We are not winter people.

We're in Florida.
It's lovely.
So lovely, we just booked another night here, because we don't want to leave.
We watched the sun set at the beach and then ate dinner outside on a wooden porch with a beautiful view of a bayou lined with moss covered oak trees.  There was a candy store next door so the air smelled like salt water taffy. After dinner we ate chocolate dipped frozen bananas. Bliss.
It is snowing in Arkansas right now.
We're resisting every bit of temptation to stay even longer.

Linkie

I will post pics and a link to the MLS listing when we sign with the realtor this weekend, but click HERE for the For Sale By Owner link.

For Sale!

We met with a couple of realtors today. 

We hope to have the house listed sometime next week!  

Here are a few pics I snapped with my phone. There is still a lot to do, but I thought it would be fun to post some pics of the progress. 

Not much has changed in the living room lately. I took the photos out of the frames on the bookshelves.  One realtor told us to leave the gallery wall up, and the other told us to take it down.

Seeing these pics makes me realize I need to take down Aaron's tower-of-antennae on top of the armoire and probably dust up there. Also, 3 cheers for living in the south, where every realtor so far has  encouraged us to leave Jesus up on the walls when we mentioned taking the pic down.  That doesn't fly in most places.  One realtor today suggested that I do put away the pic of my "dad" (it was a stock photo of Thomas S Monson).

The girls room with the new closet doors. I've added another coat of paint to the doors since taking this pic.  The realtor will probably take a pic from the other angle, but the sun was too bright coming in through the windows and I couldn't get a good shot with the phone. PS- those little backpack hooks were the best thing I did to these beds.  A place for everything, and everything in it's place.

Master bedroom.  There's still a bed set up for the baby in there to the left of the bed that I will need to pack up for showings.

Master bath...huh, looks like I need to change a lightbulb!  This blog post is actually quite helpful :)

Hall bath (nothing really new to see there except maybe a clean floor and painted baseboards, and probably a newly acquired birdie hook.)

The boys' bedroom...I took a few pics of this room because I don't think I've posted any in a really long time.  I need to put the curtain back on the bottom of the changing table, put new bulbs in the light fixture (hence the dark photo) and fix a closet door that was broken during an exciting game of hide n seek with friends.

The baby portraits and backpack still need to come down.

Did I ever post Corbin's bedding?  If not, there it is!  My favorite part is the top where the duvet closes with different sized/colored buttons.

Entry.

Other side of the living room.

Dining Room.

Kitchen. One realtor said to absolutely keep the french lettering above the cabinets up there, the other was disgusted that I hadn't already removed them.  I should mop.

Anyway, I need to wash walls and furniture, dust, put a few more things in storage, wash windows, and add plants.
The garden and lawn are still dead and the back yard is a land of never ending leaves. Come on, spring!

Need a 3 bedroom 2 bath 1700+ sqft house nestled in the beautiful Ozarks of NWA?
The Willy House is yours for $137,000!

Ooh Baby!

I know the blog is currently experiencing a little Soren overload right now, but my friend Tia took these amazing pics of our little guy and I just have to share them.  I can't believe it's already been six months since he joined our family.  I could pinch that nakey baby all day long.

Thank you for sharing your talent, Tia!  You're incredible!

F-E-B...R-U-A-R-Y!

Reese's 2nd Grade Musical was super cute.  Every song was about the month of February or one of the holidays in February.  It was very informative and we all know a whole lot of random facts about Abraham Lincoln.

Also, let's talk about Mr. L the music teacher.
I think he's Tobias Funke. I wish I'd gotten a better shot so you could see what I mean, but trust me, it's him.

Here's a short clip of the performance:

Between songs, children told jokes about the presidents and february holidays into the microphone.  Reese's favorite was the last one: 

Knock Knock

Who's There?

George Washington.

George Washington, who? 

George Washington WHO?! Didn't you learn ANYthing in 2nd grade?!

Her other favorite parts were when Ty Durham threw the football to Tanner in the February song, the song about George Washington and the cherry tree, and the song about powdered wigs. 

Reese, your performance was darling. I'm so glad I could come hear you sing. You must have practiced a lot to memorize all of those songs!  Great job, Dolly! 

The First

Miss Quincy lost her first tooth! 

Several more are wiggly.  The girl is about to get rich.  

Get Pregnant.

If your uterus is empty, you should watch this video.  I die over it's cuteness.
Behold: Soren's Dreamy Milk Coma. Making women ovulate everywhere.

Soren's First Swing

On a warm day in February, we spent an afternoon at Metfield Park. 

Ignore my obnoxious baby talk (I seriously don't even realize I'm doing it. But really, how could I resist?) and look at the cute baby enjoying his first time in a swing. 

He loved it.

Baby Guy

This guy turned 6 months old! 

I'm in denial. 

I'm not in denial over how cute dose wittle baby toofies are, though. 

Soren is rolling and scooting and nearly sitting up.

He weighs 16 pounds and is 27 inches tall.

His hair (fuzz) gets more red every day. 

He is the sweetest, happiest baby I have ever seen and I love him so much it's sick. 

Bella Vista Chapel

Something very exciting happened today. 

We attended the groundbreaking for the first LDS chapel in Bella Vista Arkansas! 

We have lived in NorthWest Arkansas for over 7 years and have been driving to Rogers 20 to attend church every Sunday. 

When we moved here, the Bentonville 1st and 2nd wards had just split to form a Centerton Ward. 

The number of church members has continued to grow. 

Enough wards formed that the Rogers Stake split to form two stakes.

An additional ward formed in Centerton.

Bentonville 2nd ward split and the very first Bella Vista ward was formed. 

Now, our ward, the Bella Vista Ward, has grown so much that we are ready to split into two, and we will have our own local building to attend church and worship in. 

Amazing. We have been so lucky to have lived here over the past 7 years and witness the growth of the church here in this little corner of the world as people have come unto Christ. It will be a great blessing to my family to be able to congregate in a chapel so close to our home.