I didn’t leave the house today. Not at all. I’m lazy. I also got a lot of stuff done though. It’s amazing how much stuff I need to do sitting right here on my computer. Like sell stuff on ebay and craigslist. A lot of work goes into that. You gotta take the picture, resize the picture, upload the picture, type a description, etc. I also had to make a CD for the photo shoot I did last week. I also had to catch up on my blog. I also had to respond to the 100’s of emails I got from all the free stuff posted on craigslist. It’s endless. The babies are super cute as usual, I played with them in their room for awhile before napping and they are too funny. Elijah now blows “explosive” raspberries, and it’s so funny! I videoed it and I’ll have top upload it to the site. They are still not crawling, but are pretty good at getting around. They had bananas, applesauce and green beans today, and gobbled it all up. Elijah like to put his fingers in his mouth as he’s chewing so it gets messy really quickly. I also fed them edamame and they liked that too, but then Elijah spat it all back up into one green pile. It was gross.

Today was a very productive day as far as stuff I got done and also for the house. We got 3 offers on it, all full price, but all of them had weird things attached to it. One person wanted a 20% seller finance, which means we would be the lender and wouldn’t see the money right away. I said NO to that one! The 2nd one, the buyers backed out of a previous deal with another house after inspection and didn’t choose the “seller friendly” inspection contingency, so I declined that one. The 3rd one was the cleanest and really straight forward. I will be in the clear next Monday after the inspection goes through. The people have been to our house 3 times now, so I think they really want it. It was hard to make this kind of decision without Michael, but I think if he was here, we would’ve selected the same person.

In addition to that, I got all our stuff posted on craigslist, a lot of them were free stuff and I was able to almost empty out the garage. It’s amazing what the internet can do! I still have my stereo equipment to unload as well as the computer table. I’ll probably be dropping the price on those.

Michael is doing well in Germany, he is staying with our friends, Matt and Ari. He went to a party w/Matt’s doctor friends from work and said that it was fun trying to figure out what people were saying. Most of them were polite and spoke English when he was around so that he could join in on the conversation. LUCKY!

We had a very stressful morning! All this moving and what not and the thought of 4 days alone with the babies really made me grumpy. Michael’s flight wasn’t until 1pm, but we had some stuff to do before that. We dropped the babies off at daycare even though they were still a little sick. I have stuff to do!!! I was going to go into work, but decided against it so that I can get the house stuff done since that’s been on my mind. We had to stop by the realtor’s office to get a power of attorney form in case we sell the house over the weekend and Michael will be gone. Then we went to the airport and I dropped Michael off. It was sad to see him go! I stopped by work to sell my Al Franken tickets, then went home to do lots of misc. stuff. I had a pretty productive day, made lists of things that still need to get done and tried to run as many errands as possible. It’s days like this that make you realize how much time and energy babies take up.

The boys did really well in daycare today but, like usual, Rowan didn’t sleep. He fell right asleep as I drove home, but had to wake him up to stop at Safeway to get dinner. He wasn’t very happy. Elijah was Mr. Happy-Go-Lucky and didn’t mind it at all. I finally put them to bed and heard snores pretty quick!

So, it was a good call on our realtor’s part that he didn’t put the house as “STI” in the computer (subject to inspection), so we aren’t “tainted”. There was a lot of activity on the house, lots of folks came over. Turns out the woman who came last night wanted to put an offer on the house and have mutual acceptance tomorrow, but her son needs to see the house and can’t until Saturday. HA! Can you believe this? The realtors talked it over and decided that she needs to have her son see it first before putting us through another offer. Geez, what is with these parents and their controlling children?

In other news, I fed the boys green beans today and they both loved it! I was kind of surprised since I had mixed reviews with broccoli. I found it very convenient to buy frozen organic veggies, then just steam it in my rice cooker and then put it in a mini food processor. I don’t make a whole bunch at once, I guess I should, but I don’t have any food trays yet. I also made applesauce and it went over better than the last time I made it. I don’t know why they didn’t like it last time.

In the evening, I went to a friend’s house for an Usbourne book party. It’s like a tupperware party but for children’s books. They have some really nice board books and tactile books for babies/children. I bought 5 books, one of them in German. The sales lady was a little over the top, and I found it hard to spend money on books that you don’t see. She would always say “tell me which one you’re interested in and I’ll tell you if you should get it”. And for 95% of the books, she would say it’s wonderful, so it’s not much help. I think everyone mostly bought books that she brought because we could see it, feel it, read it, etc. And then of course was the sales pitch of “you should be a consultant”. Luckily, I had an excuse that I was moving so I was off the hook. I was originally going to think about it and order online, but she kept pressuring me to fill out the order form right then and there, kind of like a car salesman. After everyone left, I hung around to talk to Sarah since we haven’t seen each other in a really long time so we got caught up. I think I stayed until almost midnight!!!

Ugh, today was a very depressing day. The family of the guy who bought our house came over this morning to look at the house. We didn’t hear back from them all day, and I thought it was a bad sign. Michael came home early and let me run a few errands. In the middle of all this, I have to get crackin’ on the boys’s birthday invitations! I went to a store called Paper Zone to pick up some envelopes, and as I was leaving, I saw a guy who looked just like John, our realtor. It turns out it was! What a strange coincidence! Anyways, we talked about the guy and his family and he said that he was going to call him right away and let me know. He said that they were going to “retrace his steps” meaning that they were going to look at all the houses he had previously looked at to be sure this was the right house. Late in the day, we got a call from John saying that they are backing out of the deal. The guys teenage daughters didn’t like the bedrooms and upstairs so they caved. I think there was another reason and they’re just not saying it. We were all super depressed and I made Michael run out and get some ice cream! A woman came by to look at the house right after we found out, but we were too depressed to show any enthusiasm.

On a happy note, Rowan finally likes broccoli! It took 3 tries, and he finally realized that he has to eat the stuff.

Today I had to take the boys in to the doctor because yesterday our realtor said that his son tested positive for whooping cough. His son didn’t have any symptoms of it except that he had a cold. He was immunized against it, so I guess he had a very mild version. There was an outbreak at his school so I think everyone was routinely tested. Anyways, so John let us know just in case and I called the doctor and because the boys are sick, they wanted me to bring them in. They checked out ok, and they’re immunized, so what we’re going to do is wait for John’s (our realtor) test to come back. If it’s negative, we’re going to do nothing. If it’s positive, they are going to be treated for it even though the tests came back negative. So I’ll have to check back in with John to see what his results are. The bad news is that both Michael and I have sore throats today. We’re not sure if that’s caused by the now active heater going on and off or if we caught it from the boys. Ever since we started taking them into day care, they have been almost non-stop sick. Mostly just runny noses and mild, but still!

I also stopped by the bank to use their change sorting machine. It was confusing so I put the coins in the wrong area. I had a lot too! So I had to take it out of the wrong area and put it in the correct place. Turns out that around 3 years of collecting Michael’s pocket change yielded $115!!!!

This evening we went to Thai Ginger as a celebratory dinner for the house being sold. We figured out that we have the best conversations when we are in the car and the babies are in the back seat, then when we are at dinner and have to constantly tend to them. Michael always has the idea that we’ll actually get to talk over dinner and he’s always wrong…

The house sale is going along smoothly. I have to get the furnace serviced again, even though we did it only a few months ago. I can’t wait for this inspection thing to be over and done with! So nerve wracking.

The boys are getting to “want” things more. For example, Elijah will be playing with something and Rowan will take it out of his hands and Elijah will emit the loudest scream ever! Then later today, they were sitting on the playmat together and out of the blue, Elijah grabbed Rowan’s sleeve and pulled it so that Rowan fell over and started crying. They are both used to falling over on the mat so it wasn’t that bad. I think it was more the shock of being pulled down.

We are also having a pee issue now, since they can roam and run during their sleep and naptimes, they are now sleeping on their tummies which causes all their pee to be in one place, and causes a lot of leaking. I’ll have to try different diaper configurations. We’re also thinking of switching to fuzzy bunz diapers since it will probably be easier/cheaper in Germany.

This afternoon I finally got off my butt and took the boys to Cottage Lake to get the birthday invitation pictures done. It was nice and sunny and fairly warm today as opposed to the really cold and crappy weather the past week. The boys looked a little puffy since they were sick, but I couldn’t wait any longer. I had special shirts made up for them. If you’re on the litterbox list, you’ll see! What I’m going to do is get postcards printed w/blank backs, then print the invitation and RSVP on labels and stick them on the postcards. Because the minimum order is 1000, I can use the cards for the invites, RSVPs and thank yous. Yes, I am cheap!

So, I spent the evening working up the invitation wording and putting in the order for the postcard. It’s going to be in pidgin, so hope everyone will understand it. At least everyone in Hawaii will!

We met with John today to go over specifics of the offer. It is a fairly solid offer, the buyer is pretty strong, so the only changes we made was to tighen up the dates since we’re trying to close on the 25th of this month! It all seems to be going too fast!!! I think I will rest easy once we get through the inspection process. Also, the husband just moved here from out of town and his wife hasn’t seen the house yet (except for pictures on the internet), so that is also another worry. Keep your fingers double crossed!

We also got a visit from Mark Haley, he had to pick up some of Aidan’s slides that we forgot to bring on Thursday. I think this will be the last time we’ll see him for awhile. Sniff! We will get to see Aidan in Hawaii for the boys’s birthday.

The boys are really sick now, coughing like crazy and have a really snotty nose. It sucks so much because I can’t take them to daycare!

Well, after 3 days, we have an offer on the house! We were so happy because we didn’t have too many people come over. It could be because it’s too new on the market? Who knows. We went to dinner at Woodinville Cafe and complained about how worried we were about selling the house. Then, we came home and we had a message from our realtor that we got an offer! We’ll go over tomorrow the specifics and how strong of a buyer they are. Keep your fingers crossed!

This morning I had another photo shoot to do, this time, for a senior portrait. I usually do babies & kids so it was a nice break. I could actually talk to my subject! He was a little stiff at first but loosened up after awhile. We did some shots inside and most of them outside. I think this was a little harder than normal because my audience is a teenager. When the audience is a parent, it’s fairly easy to please them!