Here it is...I only remembered to take this picture while driving away after having been there for several hours...we love our house...we have lots of little and big projects to accomplish, but we love that it's ours...
Some random shots--Kate in front of the fireplace...
The house is on the left, but there are 3 hugs orange trees that line the curb right in front...there's nothing better than fresh-squeezed OJ in the morning...and since the neighbors apparently don't feel the same way...all the more for us--they are over-flowing! We have done a lot of demolition work in the past few days...we have little idea what we're doing, but we know we can learn...everything we do we follow by saying, "what now?" To which the response is, "I don't know, let's look online." We've done a lot of painting, and a lot of demo work in the laundry area and the master bedroom...we have some gaping holes to show for it, but who cares? We'll figure it out!
Here's our front porch as we left after hours and hours of work yesterday...don't step on a nail! More pictures to follow...I never to think to take pictures...
Lauren's birthday is the day after my dad's, so for 4 years my dad has had his birthday party rolled together with a little girl--he probably doesn't mind....and these birthdays always get celebrated right at Fathers' Day and my parents' anniversary...it's usually a busy weekend. Lauren turned 4 on the 18th--hard to believe. It's getting hard to celebrate a birthday the weekend before or after, and explain to a little child that it's not actually her birthday, but that were going to have a party with some presents and cake...oh well. Here we are on Fathers' Day at our multi-event celebration.
We only gave her a couple of things on Sunday, but she was plenty spoiled by her grandparents and uncle. We held out most of our stuff for Wednesday so that her actual birthday would mean something. She also had a little party at her preschool the day of her birthday...I was (and still am) right in the middle of packing and moving, so "home-made" wasn't going to happen...Kate and I stopped at our favorite donut shop, and for $1.50 Lauren and her classmates got a donut hole cake with some confetti sprinkles thrown over the top...add some milk, strawberries and Chex mix, and there she had an instant preschool party. Kate LOVES going to Lauren's school...she pulled a chair right up to the table and was just one of the big kids... I let her open 1 present the morning of her birthday...just so she understood "today's THE DAY!" That night she invited a friend and we had dinner and games at Chuck E. Cheese (by far, the worst pizza ever made...no joke, but fun for the kids). We bought way too many tokens, but Lauren, Kate and Mia had fun popping them in whatever game they walked by... Mia couldn't get enough of Chuck E. Cheese and kept following him and touching his clothes as he was trying to walk away...
This was quite the sight--3 little girls "playing" skeeball...watch out!!! They were hucking the balls at the holes...they kept throwing tokens in because they loved watching the tickets come out at the end...this was my favorite picture...guess you had to be there...it really was funny (and slightly dangerous to all present!) Happy Big 4 Lauren! We love you! (Note to my mother-in-law...yes that yellow dress/shirt that Lauren is wearing is the same yellow 2T dress you sent to Kate just days before...Lauren hijacked it and insisted she wear it...I insisted that she then had to wear shorts underneath...it'll be well used--thanks!)
I honestly don't have time to sit at my computer right now and blog...that's as good as my excuse gets right now, and it's true...my hands are full, and my head is full. I know several people that I can count on for a post almost daily, and I don't know how they do it...But I'm going to catch up a bit right now.
We closed on the house on Friday...we are homeowners. I found that once we crossed into June, I could feel that I was really, truly excited...because close of escrow was so close. We were in escrow for about 6 weeks, and so it didn't really seem real until June came. What a long process, that's all I can say...but I'm glad it's over...the next check we write will be to ourselves to start paying for the house...that feels good. When our agent called and said, "congratulations, the house is yours!" half of me wanted to jump through the roof with excitement, and the other half said, "oh crap." When Andy walked in the door, I asked him, "so, how does it feel to owe $800 and something thousand dollars?" (what it will be at the end of the 30 years...certainly not our purchase price! We took possession of the house today (the ex-owners had a few days to move out, and then rented back from us a few days...so this was the first day that we could have walked in with our own key. But we didn't...that'll come tomorrow when I meet our first contractor at the house tomorrow to get started on a first-of-many projects. We're going to paint and clean, and possibly do some re-plastering in the next week and a half, and then we move on the 28th...good bye little pink house...we have truly loved you and all that you've done for our little family...we've loved your rent, we've loved your yard, we've loved your 3-car garage, we've loved loved loved your central heat and air (which is fantastically blowing right now...you'd never know this place has central AC at first glance), we've loved your prolifically-producing lemon tree, we've loved watching our 2 kids gets big here, we've loved the 3 Christmases we've spent here, we've loved helping our 96-year old land-lord find her missing tooth in her bowl of popcorn (Andy might disagree...it was his job)...this is the longest we've ever lived anywhere, and this little pink house has been such a blessing to us, and we will miss her (at least a little). May you be as good to K** and her sister as you've been to us...
Hello big white house...hello dishwasher, hello garbage disposal, hello bigger Central heat and AC, hello big yard, hello huge apricot tree in the back yard, hello 3 big orange trees lining the curb out front, hello swing set that my kids already love, hello sprinklers (yeah!)...oh yeah, hello mortgage and insurance payments!
I have no pics of the house right now, but will try to remember to take some tomorrow...I have been busy trying to pack and sort through and organize, and the worst of all jobs--switch utilities and addresses...many, many hours on the phone...Here are some photos from the past week or so...
Some of these require no explanation---just the product of having 2 little kids...I walked into the bathroom to find this...Lauren in the bubble bath...I honestly can't even remember the circumstances around it...
Lauren's end of year preschool program...she has done so well, and we are really proud of her...she will be changing preschools when we move, but it's been a good year for her at JCP Again, self-explanatory...Kate likes to run nude after her bath, and sometimes it's just easier to let her...I walked into the kitchen to find this little naked helper... Once we found out we were having a boy, the girl-clothes-purging began...in cleaning out bins from the garage Lauren found this Tigger costume that she wore when she was 2...it was 90 degrees this day, and clearly it didn't fit, but she insisted on wearing it...I'd post the original Halloween picture from 2006, but it's on a CD that's packed... To reward the girls for not eating one bite of their dinner, we took them for ice cream. I felt really old when I walked into Rite Aid and exclaimed, "these cones were 25 cents when I was a kid"...Allison Syphus can attest to that. Lauren picked out cotton candy flavor...honestly the most disgusting ice cream I've ever had...but good to a 3 year old.
I can't fail to say that today, the 18th, is Lauren's 4th birthday...I will post all about it tomorrow (hopefully). It's been a multi-day, multi-event affair, and worthy of being documented with more time and energy than I have right now...
We may not have any ultrasound pics to show that he has a head or fingers or toes, but we certainly have 3 pics to show it's a boy...when the MD handed us the printout of the photos this morning, the nurse commented, "oh he didn't get a shot of the head..." Oh no, but it's a boy, and we're excited. Some of you may understand this, but while I'm really excited for this new adventure, part of me was sort of sad that it wasn't another girl...I've had a similar experience with all 3 of my pregnancies now...there's such a finality to finding out the gender of the baby, and I always mourn a little bit for what "isn't." Does that make sense? The feeling always goes away quickly as excitement sets in for what "is." Good bye Brooke...hello.......we'll see! So now we're on to picking out paint and fabric for this little boy's room...that he'll have all to himself! That thought alone makes me happy. In this family, babies #1 and #3 are the ones that will get to enjoy "solo habitation" at least for a few years...I'm going to thoroughly enjoy not having another child in the room to wake him up.
We are in the final days of closing escrow...it's been exciting, complicated and stressful. Directly after our ultrasound this morning we picked up the kids and drove out to Glendora to sign all the loan documents at the escrow office. There are 2 pages of fees...no wonder it's so expensive to buy a house...you get the house, and the loan officer, agent, escrow agent, title agent, etc. all get to go to Hawaii on our bill...there are 2 fees on there to pay the messenger and the messenger company to have our docs delivered to Irvine...that one irks me...but hopefully this will all be over in a few days, and we'll be painting rooms and mowing our lawn before we know it...
Some random shots--Kate in front of the fireplace...
The house is on the left, but there are 3 hugs orange trees that line the curb right in front...there's nothing better than fresh-squeezed OJ in the morning...and since the neighbors apparently don't feel the same way...all the more for us--they are over-flowing!
We have done a lot of demolition work in the past few days...we have little idea what we're doing, but we know we can learn...everything we do we follow by saying, "what now?" To which the response is, "I don't know, let's look online." We've done a lot of painting, and a lot of demo work in the laundry area and the master bedroom...we have some gaping holes to show for it, but who cares? We'll figure it out!
Here's our front porch as we left after hours and hours of work yesterday...don't step on a nail! More pictures to follow...I never to think to take pictures...
