It's Official

Whew. This is my first real opportunity to take a breath, sit down, and relax in more than a week. The relentless push to finish all the little things to get the house ready to sell has required every single second Scott and I could spare. We are immensely grateful for the help of my parents, Scott's parents, and our friend Kat, all of whom willingly rolled up their sleeves and dove in, spreading moth-ball-smelling tar on the driveway, sanding and staining and painting and gluing and weeding and patching drywall and fixing closets and cleaning out refrigerators and organizing the pantry/utility area and sorting out the storage closet and shed and keeping the kids out of the many messes we had to make to make the house beautiful. This is a HUGE THANK YOU to all of you. We couldn't have done it without you!

What a difference a little Minwax Shine + Stain makes on those kitchen cabinets! It took longer than I thought it would, but with Kat's help on Saturday, we finally got them all done.

Last night Scott said, "I had no idea selling a house was so much work." Amen to that. I have done it before with my parents, so I remembered how challenging it was to keep the house clean to show. But I didn't remember anything about pre-listing work except renting a storage unit.

This room was totally transformed by me taking down my craft table, moving the filing cabinet back into the corner, and by "revitalizing" the floor. I was up past midnight last night dust-mopping, cleaning, scrubbing, and revitalizing these floors, but it sure is gratifying to see how well the photos turned out. Apparently "shiny" sells. The floors and the cabinets are now as shiny as possible.

(Both photos are official ones from our listing online. As always, click to see a larger version.)

So, here's what's been going on around here, in the midst of that.

Our house is officially for sale, as of this morning.

Elli has another loose tooth.

Anna bashed her nose on a tile floor last night, just days after taking a bash to the nose from a swing. So far, we see no signs of permanent or doctor-required injury, but we remain vigilant. This girl sure is accident-prone!

Scott took Sam on a canoe trip that turned into a raft trip when the river level rose dramatically that morning. The highlights for Sam were peeing into a campfire pit, going through a tunnel, getting to eat his very own bag of chips, and going on an adventure with daddy.

I took the kids to a new playground on Friday for a picnic lunch with some people from church. They really enjoyed it. Sam said he "had fun playing with his boys."

Scott preached on Sunday. You can read my post about it on his blog, and listen to MP3s of two of his messages, too. I thought he did a very good job.

We found out Thursday there has been a scheduling error for our vacation. We can't check in this Saturday like we'd planned; we have to wait until Sunday. Since we're headed to Lake Michigan in August, there aren't many hotel rooms available in our price range. So now we have to scramble last minute for plans for Saturday and Sunday until we can check in. I'm sure we'll figure something out, but it's a real pain and a real disappointment.

We found three more houses to look at! Unfortunately, all three are in a different school district.

Elli drove a power wheelchair around in a sprinkler at her technology program last Thursday. They covered the chairs with vinyl tablecloths. Ah hah! Stow that idea away for future use.

I have a large laundry basket full of papers and miscelleaneous that I can no longer procrastinate sorting through. Or maybe I can. I could work on cleaning and painting trim, touching up our master bath, and touching up the kids' bedroom. And folding laundry. And paying bills. And planning and making lists for our vacation. Hmmm. I think I CAN postpone that project a little while longer!