Yep, its my world…come see how it all goes down.

And we accepted it (after a few negotiations)!  We are beyond thrilled!  After less than 6 days on the market, we are really glad all our hard work paid off.  

So after getting the offer last night, we boogied on up to Dallas this morning, and we’ve been checking out neighborhoods and houses all day.  We headed up here so quickly because our closing date is in 30 days.  We have a month to buy a new home and get all moved in. 

This is where the fun really begins!

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Things have been a little hectic around here, you know, with trying to keep the house picture-perfect and show ready with a toddler running around, so while I try to find a new rhythm, I thought I’d share some of the things I’ve been loving around the blogosphere lately.  Enjoy!

• Blogger Dad debates whether or not to get his son a My Little Pony, a very girly sort of toy.  This guy is hilarious.  (He does end up buying the toy, and by the looks of it, his son loves it!)
• Edie from Life In Grace writes about why she’s not a feminist.  (I absolutely love her tagline, “Living a dream we don’t deserve.”)
•  Elizabeth from EJ & Henry compares the ice cream truck to Jesus.  She also writes beautifully about something I had never really thought about before, that God has loved each of us and has had plans for us since the very beginning, and that everything we are going through has always been part of His loving plan.  I find tremendous comfort in that.  Nothing is being overlooked.    
• Nicki from Domestic Cents has a list of 30 things she does to spend less money.  These are incredibly simple things that, when combined with other frugal ideas, can really have a big impact on your spending.
• Kate from Censational Girl…just go over and browse her entire site.  She is so talented and imaginative and creative and just overall awesome.   

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Matt and our realtor putting the sign in the yard to make it official

(that is not our house in the background, that’s the neighbor’s house…a good blogger would have thought about that and stood on the other side so as to actually get our house in the shot…a good blogger, I am not)

Wow.  What a crazy busy week it’s been around here.  We busted our little bottoms to get this house decluttered, semi-packed, cleaned, staged, and ready to sell, and it is now officially 0n the market. 

Our realtor came this morning to take pictures and put the sign in the yard.  We had a huge storm come through our area on Thursday night, and yesterday morning we discovered just how bad the storm was.  Not only was an upstairs window broken by the golf ball size hail, but also both our front and back yards were covered with leaves thanks to the large trees we have.  All of those leaves had to be picked up before Matt mowed the lawn, so yesterday afternoon he went out back to start working on it, armed with the leaf blower to make quick work of the little leaf problem.  However, the leaf blower had different plans and decided to die and stop working roughly 15 minutes after Matt started.  It’s Friday afternoon, the realtor is coming Saturday morning, so other than postponing the pictures and the listing (which my sweet husband knew I did not want to do, because he knows how terribly impatient and anxious I am), the only thing to do was break out the rake and get to work.  So Matt worked a lot, then I came in and did a little, then he finished the raking, then did all the edging, mowing, and mulching.  He worked so hard, was able to get it finished just as the last rays of sunlight were fading (at around 9:00 pm), and it came out looking great. 

So now our house is on the market and I all I have to do is keep it looking this perfect all the time.  Right.  I believe you will recall how fantastic I am as a housekeeper, so this should definitely be interesting. 

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Here is my weekend in review:

On Saturday night we went to a BBQ restaurant for dinner.  Just as we started eating Nate pointed to the wall behind me, smiled, and said gleefully, “Doggie!  Doggie!”  I turned around to see a deer head, with antlers and all, mounted to the wall.  A correction of “No, Nate, that’s not a doggie, that’s a deer,” only got a laugh and what I’m certain was an eye roll on his part.  (”Oh, you silly woman.  Of course that’s a doggie.”)  He’s so happy to see doggies, or any animal that will substitute for a doggie, he doesn’t even mind if it’s missing it’s body and stuck to a wall.

Today, Matt’s brother, Chris, came over and helped Matt move lots and lots of boxes and other furniture into a storage unit that we are renting while our house is on the market.  We’ve been working all week on boxing things up and thinking about what we could move to storage in order to make our house look as nice as possible while it’s on the market.  (And holy cow…2 1/2 people can generate quite a lot of stuff!)  Our realtor is coming tomorrow night for us to sign the listing agreement, and then she’s sending a house stager over on Tuesday to help us with all of the decorating stuff, so we wanted to have as much out of here as possible before they both came over.  Looks like hopefully by the end of next week our house will officially be on the market, and then all we have to do is sit and wait for all those offers to come rolling in.  Right, they’ll just come rolling in right away, won’t they?  All those offers?  Yeah, that’s what I was thinking, too.

So a huge, gigantic thank you to my brother-in-law for coming over and helping us out today.  I really do think moving all that stuff out of here will make the house show much better.

Oh, and one of the things the guys moved today was my elliptical trainer.  I snapped a shot of it will Matt was breaking it down.  Here you can see little Nate footprints from where he was climbing on it trying to help Daddy.  You can tell two things from this picture: how often I actually use the elliptical trainer and how great my housekeeping skills are.

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For a long time I have wanted to write a post about cloth diapering, but while I was thinking about it and not actually doing any writing, Simple Mom went and put together a wonderful, everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know blog series on Cloth Diapering 101.  Really, she’s covered everything, and she did an awesome job. 

And now she’s doing a huge cloth diaper giveaway!  If I can’t be the winner, I hope it’s one of you!  Go check out Simple Mom for everything you ever wanted to know about cloth diapering, then check out the rest of her site…she’s definitely one of my favorites.

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For a few weeks now whenever Nate gets hungry he walks over to his highchair and stands there, and that is our cue to get him a snack.  Over the last few days he has discovered that if standing next to the highchair gets results, maybe climbing up into the highchair will get quicker results. 

While having your child climb up into his own highchair sounds like a good idea, let me assure it is not.  First, the highchair is on wheels.  Him trying to climb up it, then have it slide out from underneath him, resulting in a baby face plant on the floor would be bad.  Second, once he actually makes it to the seat he stands straight up in it, bounces a few times, then eventually turns around to sit down.  Like I said, all of this is done on a chair that’s on wheels.  Plus, I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t take much to get that chair to flip over backward.  Then there’s always the distinct possibility that he could fall at any point along this ascent and bust his head open on the side of the kitchen table.  Yes, very bad.

The allure of the forbidden is very strong for this boy, as the more we tell him not to do something, the more he must do it.  So he spent lots of time yesterday climbing up into his highchair, which is of course because we spent lots of time telling him not to.  And no longer does the highchair climb simply mean “I’m hungry,” but more and more it’s becoming “I think it would be fun to disobey Mommy and Daddy right now.”   

Then, to continue with our little theme we having going here, on Saturday Nate and I were upstairs while I packed a few boxes.  He was playing with his toys in the playroom, where we also have a love seat and a coffee table, while I was in the master bedroom.  I came out of our room, and what should I see but Nate standing on the coffee table, bouncing up and down a little, looking as if he were at a club downtown, 10 minutes before last call, dancing on the table after having consumed a few too many adult beverages.  (Not that I would know anything about that.*)  He was just beaming with pride at this new achievement, so I felt a little bad as I choked back my laughter and told him that we do not stand, bounce, or dance on tables. 

So my boy is a daredevil who doesn’t like being told “no.”  These next 17 years should be very interesting.

*I have to remember that my in-laws read this blog, so I would like to state for the record that I have never actually danced on a table, drunk or otherwise.  Really.  I promise.

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