Stephanie and I spent the kid’s naptime today starting construction of the twinkle’s own backyard Minas Tirith.  Or maybe Rivendell, given the “rivers” that run adjacent to our property.  We were just about to start the floor of the watch tower before Devin woke up.  Note: the slide escape route isn’t actually attached just yet; I put it there for show.

And of course, here’s Maya’s room.  She’s obsessed with… well, just about everything, so we opted for a Nature Walk theme.  Again, Stephanie made all of the wall-tastic adornments.  Note: check the tree closely in the large version (click on the picture).

Since I’m posting pictures of our decor, why not continue with the kid’s rooms?  Sure!  Here’s Devin’s room – faithful readers will no doubt recall that Devin is obsessed with all things aeronautical.  Stephanie made all of the doodads that adorn the walls.  I found the cool airplane mobiles online.

It took 9 months, and it was probably less painful than birthing a child, but we have finally done what we set out to do back in January.  We've sold our house on Montview Drive, and purchased our home for the next 20 years.  Our stuff will be getting moved into the home in about 24 minutes, in the meantime we will be getting ready to head off to the airport.  Yes, somehow we managed to close on a house sale, a home purchase, travel with 2 children and 2 dogs up to Charlotte, remotely contract for fence construction and also get some work done in between diaper changes, dog feedings and general chaos.

Now, we get 10 days in Paris and Amsterdam.  It will be a much needed break for Stephanie and I, and as much as I would like to stay "disconnected", I will probably be checking in to deposit pictures every couple of days or so - Steph still has a bit of homework to get done, so that will give me some time to upload pix.  And, I don't want a repeat of the Greece trip of '06*.  We'll see you in Paris!

*That was a the one where I had to go to Miami right after the trip, and my laptop got stolen with hundreds of pictures from our trip.  I only saved about 250 that I had previously uploaded, so this time I'll be proactive in getting the pix saved.

Things are moving along, albeit slowly, with respect to the closings on our house and home.  Due to some !#$*!$ neighbors who bought houses they couldn't afford, and !#$!$% lenders who loaned money with too much risk, and !@$#% federal government that failed to provide oversight and @$%*@! Wall Street pricks with too much avarice, the first unofficial appraisal for the house was lower than it should be.  Luckily, it was unofficial, so the buyer is getting another appraisal, hopefully from an individual who uses common sense.  We had to file an amendment to extend the due-diligence period by 5 days, so we will hopefully know where we stand by October 10th.  Which would be good, since 4 days after that all heck breaks loose in terms of our personal schedule.  I'm hoping we don't have to maneuver too much to get this to work out, but I'm steeling myself for the possibility.  Keep us in your thoughts and prayers.

In the meanwhile, the kids have been pretty good lately.  Nothing super stellar to report as we've been engrossed in the housing market garbage for the last few days.  I'm home with the kids myself this weekend while Steph is off to visit her sister, so perhaps I'll come up with some gems from the weekend.

So the past few days have been, for lack of a better word, crazy.  Last weekend we went to see Sesame Street Live (yes, I have videos but I've been too busy to edit them down for posting--read on).  We happened to be there with our realtor, who helped us score primo seats.  During the intermission, she got a ring-a-ding-ding on her cell, and it was an offer on our house!  After some hand-wringing due to technological delays with our realtor and her email and the buyer's agent's lack of understanding of how to spell, it took a while to get the offer.

Fast-forward two days later, and we have the offer in hand.  Given the state of the real estate market, it was of course a bit of a low-baller, but we expected that.  After counter-me-this-counter-you-that, we struck a deal which was amicable to all parties, and we are currently in escrow on the sale of our house!  Closing is on October 14.

To you gentle readers who are in the know, you probably are aware that this falls dangerously close to our highly anticipated trip to Paris/Amsterdam.  If you didn't know, well, consider yourself enlightened as to our calendary* situation.  Luckily for us, we already had a buyer's agent and had spent considerable time scoping out our options and schools and what-not, so finding the house was really a matter of having the right one on the market at the right time.  Wouldn't you know that we found it?

That's right, only a few days after entering escrow on our current house, we located the perfect home for us and the family, in a great school district, in a great suburban location that is quiet, wooded and nestled in among near-by schools and conveniences.  We are very happy with the pad we have chosen, and we're hopeful that everything comes together.  Believe me, when I relay to you the sequence of events that will occur in three weeks' time you will understand that these cogs are more intricate than a Swiss Master Clocksmith's finest work.  Well, perhaps not, but I digress...

As I mentioned, we close escrow on our current pad on 10/14 and vacate by midnight.  As soon as closing is over, the kind folks at Bekins Moving will show up, pad down the joint and pile our 12,000 lbs of stuff (yeah I hardly believed it myself) into a trailer.  Said trailer will be removed to the Bekins Storage Facility (hopefully not a nearby Wal-Mart parking lot) where it will sit.  Meanwhile, we will check into a local room and board facility for lodgings for the night, and then we'll wake up bright 'n early, and Karyn will knock on our door to watch the kiddos while we close escrow on our new home.  Then we'll pop by the new home, show it to the kids, and then take off for Charlotte...  And, a few days later we "take possession" of our new home and Bekins will show up to unload all our 6 tons of junk.  All while we are away, as Deb will be overseeing the installation of our stuff.  Kind folk, Deb.

So then after vacating, we'll be back in the saddle of unboxing and setting up shop in East Cobb... Look for us in November.  Until then, we'll be busy boxing and taping.  And boxing and taping.  And boxing and taping some more.

*made up word

We’ve been having intermittent problems with the reception on our HD20 DirecTV HD DVR, but since I’ve been on vacation for 10 days and then business traveling for a few days, I haven’t had a chance to look at it.  Normally, we just attribute problems to the quirks of the HD DVR.  Today, after a lot of rain, we were not able to reacquire the satellites and I was finally getting pissed off about it.  At 9:30pm this evening, I was fed up and went outside to physically inspect the dish.  Turns out with all the rain we’ve been having, the bushes along the side of the house were overburdened with the water weight, and were bent far over the dish.  It was dark, and I actually had to poke around in the bushes to find the dish!  After 15 minutes of Scissorhandian artistry, I have hopefully exposed the dish yet again to the Southern Skies.

On a side note, all the plants are just bursting at the seams.  The Leland Cypress in our front yard is pushing 15’ in height – probably 4’ of growth in a year!  The rain this season is just fantastic!

Here is the new foam-tastic decor that Stephanie has done for Devin's room.


A pile of clouds and a...um... DC-9?



The DHL 'Copter, a Great Year (2006) blimp, and a few balloons. You might notice Stephanie and myself in the larger balloon.

...a Space Shuttle!


Maya on a hang-glider! This is one of my favorites.


A host of other planes (you've already seen the 728 prop plane piloted by Devin).

A snazzy bi-plane with swish trails.


A close-up of Mom & Dad in the balloon :)

A close-up of Devin in the 728 Prop.

Steph has been working on new decorations for Maya and Devin's respective rooms. What follows are pictures of what Steph has created out of foam, pipe cleaners, heart and soul. What a job, eh?

Yesterday the kids turned 1 1/2, so it's check up time! One quick shot and then no more until they turn 5. I'm sure they are not upset about the prospect of having to go without the needle for a bit. Maya outweighs Devin by about a pound, and she's also about an inch taller, and she lords it over him like there's no tomorrow. Little does she know that soon the tables will be turned and her not-so-little (but still Little) brother will have the upper hand.

Interestingly, we told the pediatrician that we were planning to move away and she didn't really seem phased. No pining about missing her twins, no asking if we could stay with her practice... so I'm convinced, nay, I didn't need convincing, let's say I'm more resolute about our plans to leave that practice. We originally picked that group because of our interview with the Head Doc In Charge, and we hardly ever see her, so there's no love lost there.

On the Home Fo' Sale Front - not a lot of action I'm afraid. There are a few homes up on the block in our 'hood, and our's is only slightly more expensive than the cheapest one - others are $15k+ more than ours so that's good news. And the one that's cheaper than ours doesn't have the full 3 baths (just 2.5) and no "in-law" suite. We just talked to our realtor yesterday, and she says that the other realtors haven't had any traffic either which is good for us - it means our house doesn't suck, there's just no traffic. But we have put out some flyers, and buried St. Joseph in the back yard... I'm just hoping he didn't get pooped on.

Well, a few more days and our house will be officially "on the market". We've had a busy few days here at the first of the year! We got the POD loaded and off to the storage unit, after a brief, disappointing display of un-neighborliness. Turns out they didn't like having the POD on the street, and instead of coming and knocking on my door, they decided to call the police and complain. So my nice neighbors allowed us to drop the POD in their driveway (they've been out of town for a few months anyway).

So the POD is off, and today we had our yard sale and unloaded almost everything! The remainder was sent to the Salvation Army for better use. Our house is immaculate. The floors/walls/cabinets/rugs/furniture are all nice and clean. We repainted the front door, dropped a few flowers around, cleaned up the backyard... We are ready to sell! All we have to do is bury St. Joseph...