Bonus Floaters

We had our first showing of the house on Monday and of course, the house was wrecked (since neither of us have absorbed the reality that this thing is actually on the market) and Brent was out of town leaving me completely alone to hide the mess in 45 minutes. By the end of it, I had sweat dripping off my nose but managed to do a pretty good job - i.e. shoved everything in baskets and threw in the storage room. Hell, I even hid dirty dishes in the fridge. Anyway, I loaded the dogs and kids up into my van in the pouring down rain and drove away upset that I didn't have enough time to run the vacuum over the carpet.

Heh. That turned out to be the least of my problems. Because when I got home, I realized I had scooped the cat turds out of the litter box and dumped them into the toilet. In my psychotic rush to get everything done, I forgot to actually flush them down. Lovely. Welcome to your new home. Have wonderful sniffage and enjoy the scenic beauty of our powder room. You pay top dolla.

Whatever. At the moment, I'm so excited to see my Vadge tomorrow! I'm actually leaving today for Jacksonville to pick up Lauren and to stay with my aunt and uncle for the night. We sail away tomorrow. And, while the whole purpose was to get away for a minute to myself, I'm already sick about leaving the kids. I used to think that the goodbyes would be easier the older they got, but it almost seems like it's a little harder. I know we are going to have fun. I'm dreading walking out that front door though. Sad.

Big News!

Okay, 2 things...

First, our house is officially on the market! Hooray! I've only been trying to put this piece up for a good 3 years but a series of events just always left us hanging with "bad timing" and while I'm not sure that it's perfect timing right now, at least it's up! The market sucks, so we have low expectations - but we just want to see what it does. Where are we going? No clue! I have an idea of where I hope we land, but things are so shady around here that you never can tell which new neighborhoods are on the verge of collapse.

Here is the link to the realtor's slide show for our home: http://shirleymarbach.point2agent.com/Listing/VirtualTour.ashx?ListingID=11700913

Seeing it this way makes me feel sad that the house might think we are abandoning it. I love this house. I will always love it because Brent and I started our life together in this house. I brought my babies home here too.

Secondly, and about as equally exciting, I get to be reunited with Vadge in less than a week!!!! I can't tell you how giddy and hyperventilatish it makes me feel! Lauren and I booked the thing a little over 2 weeks ago on a spur-of-a-moment whim. She texted me, "Do you want to go on a cruise?" And of course, I said "Hell yes!" We had the thing booked in less than 5 minutes. In fact, we actually looked up what ports the boat was stopping in AFTER we had already booked it! We didn't care. We would have jumped on a turd if it floated away and meant getting a much needed break! We are so excited. T-minus 5 days!

Happy Valentine's Day!

I hope you all had a good Valentine's Day! The kids love getting balloons. They spent most of the day lunging their bodies through the air and tackling these balloons. We even ended up putting tiny holes in the dumb things so they would hurry up and deflate and we could gain some of our sanity back. Brent got me my favorite pears, an ipod thing for my car, and roses. It was a cute day!

SNOW!

I've been trying to commit myself to blogging more but I avoided my blog unintentionally again this week! Maybe it's the cold weather. Maybe it's the dullness of getting back into the swing of things after such a great time during the holidays. I know that I'm absolutely still burned out from the monstrous responsibility I had during Brent's travel schedule last year, and while thankfully it's slowed down to a small trickle, I still feel like I need some time to myself. Anyway, I apologize to you lovelies that check my blog more regularly than I have been updating it lately. I'm totally sorry! Please don't give up on me. Pedal. Metal. I promise.

Anyway, WE GOT SNOW! You don't understand how excited we were! Brent and I haven't seen snow since we lived in Atlanta and I sure never thought the kids would get to see it in their own backyard! It rained all day on Friday, and by the early evening it was sleeting. After a couple hours, the snow was in full effect and had turned into nice, big floaters! We just couldn't believe it!

Of course, we had to get the kids up since I knew they probably weren't going to get this opportunity again. I'm so glad we did too because we had such a blast! We got into a full-on snowball fight and the kids were screaming with excitement. They were loving that they got to throw stuff at each other and didn't get in trouble. It was so cute. I NEVER thought we would get to see snow here!

Pretty quickly, we remembered the intense pain of frozen, red fingers and how numb they get! We took time-outs in the garage to warm our hands with the space heater and had to put socks on the kids hands because we don't even own gloves. The dogs wanted nothing to do with the snow except to quickly venture out and turn some of it yellow.

After we put the kids back to bed, we heard "Dat cool!", "Awesome!", and "So pretty!", bellowing over the monitors for a good 20 minutes before they fell back asleep. They absolutely loved it! It was such a perfect gift for a momma that dreamed of seeing her babies play in the snow! I will never forget it!

Randomness

I've been such a slacker on my blog lately! I don't know what my deal is. Anyway, I've been wanting to post a bunch of random pics that kind of fell through the cracks over the last few months that were cute but never really fit into a post. Let's see what I can dig up...

A couple nights before Christmas, Santa came by on a firetruck and threw candy to all the little kids. It's one of the things I love about living in a small town. Our big city Santas never did that. Now though, every time the kids hear a firetruck, they want to go outside and wait for candy.

The top picture of Wyatt at the bar looks kind bad... like, "Here's my toddler at a bar and I'm so proud!" But this bar is a tradition in my family. It's a local seafood bar called Hudson's and my parents started taking me and my brother there when we were about this age too. I have the best memories sitting up there with my bro feeling so cool, peeling shrimp, and being elbows deep in clarified butter.

Apparently, Callie thought the cat needed a little glam and I guess Gracie was okay with it because we found her like this, napping behind the TV cabinet.

This is a picture of the best baby girl, sleeping in a big bed for the first time ever. We were in a hotel in Jacksonville that night. Wyatt slept with daddy and Cal with momma. I probably watched her sleep for a good hour before I fell asleep too. I couldn't stop looking at her.

This, of course, is the most flawless and perfect man in all the land.

Happy 3rd Birthday!

(Free crappy photo from restaurant)
Oh my babies are 3! Wow. I hate how fast they're growing up. 3 sounds so old to me too. When your kids turn two, it still feels like they are little. But when they turn 3, they seem closer to 5 than being newborns. I can't deal. I'm looking forward to all the new milestones and things, but I miss my itty bittys too. I find a little bit of comfort knowing that I can still have another one if I can't stand it anymore. But for now, just the idea is good enough. (I have a feeling that the 3s are gonna kick my butt harder than the 2s.)

Their birthday was precious. Callie's birthday wish list included a birthday cake, some flowers, and this certain kitty toy. All Wyatt asked for was a Momma hippo to add to his growing hippo collection that dwells in his crib. They opened presents in the morning, played with their toys, and recovered from the weekend getaway. My parents came over in the afternoon with more presents and then we all headed out to dinner.

We took them to Hibachi hoping they would love it and kinda crossed our fingers that they wouldn't be too scared of the fire. I think Wyatt's exact comment was "DAT COOOOOOOOL!" so it was a huge success! The waitresses sang them a little birthday song and beat on drums and stuff while the kids tore into their birthday icecream. Wyatt ate enough food to feed an elephant and still had two pieces of cake when we got home. They were so cute and it was great to see how they really did feel like it was their special day. As I kissed Callie goodnight she said, "Nice day, Mommy!" and she was right. It was such a nice day.