Blah

- We got the preschool confirmation papers in the mail today. Tear.
- We looked at an apartment today. I'm thinking this apartment living might not be too bad.....two bathrooms, washer and dryers in each unit, 2 pools, fitness area, walking trails. To hell with buying a house! LOL!
- We looked at a house tonight, it was ok. Not our favorite...on to the next.
- Trying to find the abstract to our house, not fun.
- In case you were wondering, DirectTV and the DSM Register will put your service on temporary hold, nice huh?
- Karma is a bitch, just saying.

Overly cautious buyer

So Steve doesn't think I should call our buyer the crazy lady, in case she reads my Facebook statuses or my blog. I don't want our neighbors to think she is crazy, I'm sure she is a perfectly nice person and was just being overly cautious when buying a house. It is a nerve racking experience and you want to make sure you are doing the right thing. I can't blame her. So I'm not calling her the crazy lady anymore, she is now the overly cautious buyer. (who drove by our house tonight....stalker)
They are going to do the home inspection in the next week, she gets to be here...we don't. She gets to be in our house for an undetermined amount of time....do you see my problem with this? Can you see her going thru our things to think about other items she all of a sudden wants to include in her purchase price? No, overly cautious buyer you cannot have my highschool yearbooks, my NKOTB tapes or my first born child....I have to draw the line somewhere!

oh man.

So Friday afternoon we got the call that the crazy lady wanted to come look at the house again Saturday morning. We got up cleaned the house before 9:30 then Presley and I headed to Target while Steve had fun for an hour with crazy lady and 6 of her friends/family (after she called and asked us to removed any air fresheners in case someone was allergic!). Presley and I walked up to the park and played since the weather was SO nice and Steve did some fishing with his brother.

I love this picture of her......this look is completely Steve!

She is so happy outside, but it wears her out!

We had lunch on the deck, had a couple hours of 'quiet time' and then went back outside and did some more playing.......buckets filled with water, bubbles, balls.

Samantha and I went to see Hunger Games last night at 9:30, I'm normally comfy and ready for bed by then so this was a little crazy for me! LOL. The movie was good...the book is better! I was home by 12:30 and was able to sleep in until almost 9:30!

We got an offer on our house at 11:00 am this morning.....which was way low, so my nerves had settled but by 2:00 she came up another $7000, but still too low since we had to pay 3.5% commission for her realtor. About 4:30 she finally came back, basically with our asking price but she wanted us to included some items (both TV's, gas grill, outdoor heater, washer and dryer, couch in the basement plus some shelving we had in the basement). We are keeping the couch and our main TV, the other items are old or completely replaceable and not that expensive. So it's SOLD!

We have no where to go and have to be out by April 25th. Looks like we'll be renting an apartment for a while!

We did enjoy this day (besides the sick feeling, pacing and leg shaking all day from this nervous situation), we took a picnic lunch up to Saylorville to enjoy another wonderful 80 degree day. We played a little soccer, see her high kick (maybe a little too high for regulation soccer)? I think we have a little soccer player in our future. She is not afraid of the ball!

We walked around, watched the water at the dam and climbed on rocks.

Look at this face!!! I love it and want to squeeze and kiss it!

We came home and basically spent the afternoon outside again! She played so good and so long by herself. The neighbor Bella and the other neighbor boy Paxton were playing and Presley didn't want anything to do with them, she wouldn't say hi, she didn't want to share her buckets of water with them. Nothing. She didn't care that they were having fun without her at all! We went on a walk and went to the playground again. The girl was worn out! Great but stressful weekend! I really don't want to think about the amount of work we have to do in the next 4 weeks, but I really can't procrastinate either.

I really should be packing or something. Maybe I'll worry about that tomorrow.

Five Question Friday

1. If you were free to just hop in the car and drive, where would you go? Or, if you could hop a plane and go anywhere, where? South, I think you all know I like the sun in 85 degree weather. I'm not complaining about the weather we have been having here, it is awesome!

2. What's your most recently read favorite book? Hunger Games by far, hopefully I can finish the second book in the next week. Strongly recommend them for easy reading, intense, can't-put-the-book down kinda reading!

3. What's your favorite Spring Break memory? I only remember two 'spring breaks' I remember is going to Jamaica my senior year of high school. Why my parents let me go, I'll never understand (oh yes, I do understand....b/c I was a good kid, I swear)! It was fun, but it was a totally different atmosphere than what I was used to. I didn't drink so being around excessive drinking, smoking pot, wet tshirt contests.....was out of my element, but hell it was Jamaica!

Then I went with three girlfriends to Los Angeles in college, that was fun too. We got to see and do a lot of different things. Santa Monica pier (where we got our palms read....she told me I had no real role models in my life (who the hell did she think she was??) and that accounting was not what I should be going to college for....she was right about one of them, I didn't graduate with an accounting degree!), shopping on Rodeo Drive (yes, I actually bought something at the Tommy Hilfiger store and thought it was so cool that my receipt actually said Beverly Hills, CA 90210!), and toured the NBC studios. Very good memories of this trip!

4. What do you put in your child's Easter basket? Or, for those w/o kids, what was put in your childhood basket? Since P is still little and doesn't fully understand the concept, we have just been doing small gifts and candy in her basket, along with finding about 6 plastic eggs around the house. As she gets older hopefully we can make this a bigger production and a little more fun.

Growing up (and even now) we still dye eggs and search for the eggs and our baskets around the house on Easter morning. We've never been the outdoor Easter egg hunting people, normally it's too cold and that doesn't sound like fun. My dad has put together scavenger hunts for us too, hints that lead us from one to the next. He can be very creative!

5. Do you get a summer haircut? Huh? I get my hair cut in the summer all the time! LOL! This would be a negative. I wish I had more courage to change my hair more often but I just don't. I think I would look fine with shorter hair (since both of my sisters do) but what about my ponytail? I have to get my hair out of my face by the end of the day! and I don't think I look good with darker hair b/c I'm so pale, I can't go around looking like I belong in the cast of Twilight.

Wow, I rambled on a lot here...probably b/c I'm at work and not motivated!

Random

- April took the girls to the zoo on Thursday, it was a little rainy but they had a blast! I was a little worried b/c I know Presley doesn't like to walk on her own. I knew she would be good for April and having the other girls around to help is so nice! Presley does have more fun without us! :( (Lydia, Sophia, Georgia and P)

- So I signed Presley up for preschool, only 2 days a week for about 2 hours. It will be so good for her to get away and make some friends and have some structure. It does make me sad though. She isn't used to that environment like other kids her age who have been in daycare centers. I'm not sure who is going to take her that first week, me, Steve and my mom don't want to do it. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I would rather take an 8 week old baby (who doesn't know the difference) to daycare any day than drop off my 3 year old at preschool (who will throw herself on the ground screaming for mommy!).

- Presley has been calling me 'mom'. Really, what happened to mommy?

- Steve got a raise at work! Yeah, at least one of us did! LOL! They are going to give him a midyear review to hopefully make him an official superintendent! Right now they consider him an assistant superintendent, even though he does all the same work. The best part about this job is the truck and gas card they give him for work!

- They moved our desks around at work, I now sit next to a 60 year old lady...who used to be a truck driver, she is very nice, kinda southern/redneckish. She is going to start her own quilting business when she retires and I will get to know so much about quilting during this time I'm sitting next to her (boring). And she loves her dogs, I hear about her dogs every day. I really don't care about your dogs....just like you don't care about my kid. My ipod is going to get a lot of use sitting next to her.

- Crazy lady wants to come look at the house again tomorrow with her brother. The real estate agent said she seems interested in our house but that he put a 30 minute time limit on her b/c she was there too long last time! LOL. And I got an email from a friends' wife who is an agent and she has a customer looking for something exactly like our house and they want to find a time to come look at it too!

St Paddy's Day with pictures galore!

I never used to celebrate St Paddy's Day until I met Steve and then I realized you really don't have to be Irish to enjoy this day!
Some girls and I decided to hit up Chicago this year! We got there Friday night and had a nice dinner and went to bed early to be rested up for the big day!
By 9 am shots were being taken and drinks were being sipped!

We got to see some of the city on our way to see the green river and parade! I have never really been to Chicago, so I loved it all!

We got a lot of comments on our shirts too!

and finally we got to see the river! It was way more green than I imagined it would be! It was awesome, no wonder it draws the HUGE crowd that was there!
Near Millienium Park we saw the Art Institute of Chicago, thank you Ferris Bueller....I would've never taken this picture otherwise!

and we saw the 'bean'. I had seen pictures of this on other peoples blog and thought it was so cool! I was excited to get to take some pictures of it!

We totally missed the parade, which was fine with us, we had lunch at a great pizza place where we had patio side seating, (in which we got to watch a passed out drunk girl get carted off in an ambulance, good entertainment for us but I'm sure scary for her and her friends.) It's so crazy to be sitting on patios in March it's awesome since the weather was so nice! Amazing 80 degrees in March, we are so lucky!

We found a nice Irish bar, OCallaghans where we spent most of the afternoon. We met some new friends (who liked to buy too many shots!)....
.......and missed some old friends. RIP Brendan. We love you and miss you.
and all the pictures after this bar and inappropriate! The shots took their toll, we went to dinner about 7 and headed back to the hotel room about 8:30! It was nice to get to bed early to let any hang overs work their way out of us before the drive home!
Overall, great girls weekend away! and now I want to plan a family trip there....My life list has seeing a Cubs game at Wrigley Field on it, so I might have to work on this trip soon!

Five Question Friday

1. Will you run to the store or to pick up a kid looking a mess? Depends on what you think is a mess. I will not leave the house without makeup and rarely do I leave wearing my glasses.....ponytail and sweats, yes!

2. Do you finish a book if it's boring or you don't like it? I really don't like to stop reading books, but I have stopped in the middle of a book before and not necessarily b/c it was boring but b/c I stopped reading it for so long that I don't remember what happened which means I would have to start it all over again (like the really fat Harry Potter books that I never finished)

3. Beach or mountain vacations? Beach preferably. But I do love the mountains too, I spend more time on beach vacations (which is odd considering my love/hate relationship with the sun). Hoping for another Colorado trip soon (as in the next 5 years).

4. What thing/event says "winter will end and spring is right around the corner" to you? January I begin to think that spring is right around the corner and so far this year, that has come true! I deny winter all winter long. I refuse to think it is ever winter.

5. Would you prefer couples or family vacation? I think as our family grows and gets older, family vacations would be a blast...however, they are more expensive and you have to get away as a couple right? So we won't be giving up our time away either. Maybe we are selfish that way and I'm ok with that. I think too many couples don't enjoy time away or vacations together. Many mom's think they are being bad parents by leaving their kids, I'm not one of those mom's. So I'm off to Chicago for the weekend! Bye Steve and Presley have fun and see you Sunday! XOXO