For Sale

Our townhouse was listed on MLS this morning at 10:30am. (with no pictures until this afternoon).  We had asked last night if we should be prepared for showings today.  The realtor had said it was unlikely, but to expect them for Saturday and Sunday.  So I was a little shocked to get a phone call at 10:40am requesting a showing for 11:30am.  They had requested to see it 11:30am, but since the kids and I were out running errands and did not leave the house showing quality clean, we had to push it back to noon. We rushed home, straightening and staging things as quick as possible.   Luckily Jack fell asleep in the car (and it was cool enough to keep him there for a few minutes with the windows down), so I only had one little munchkin to "help" me straighten up.  I didn't get to clean up quite as much as I would have liked, but it still looked pretty good considering the short notice.   I'll be curious to see if we get any feedback from the showing. 
I have a feeling the next couple weeks could be very stressful for us (me especially)!  Keeping the house perfectly clean with the kids is going to be challenging. 

House Hunters: MN edition

It doesn't surprise me much that House Hunters is not real.  If we had to choose one of the houses we visited last night, I think I would have cried.  We ended up seeing 4 properties (2 we requested were sold, pending inspection). 
The first, which online we had loved, was a disappointment at best.  The main floor was okay.  The three bedrooms were on the small side.  The downstairs, which was billed as a family room, was disgusting.  It was pretty much an unfinished basement with potentially asbestos flooring.  The one bright side of this property was the very large fenced in backyard. 
The 2nd place we saw was much better.  The upstairs was lovely.  The fixes/updates they had done were nice and it was very clean.  And then we went downstairs.  The 3rd bedroom was tiny.  Like I'm not even sure a twin bed would fit in it comfortably.  On the positives, it had a decent backyard, nice landscaping in the front, and a hot tub.  Another negative besides the tiny third bedroom was it location near a semi busy road. 
The third place we saw made us laugh.  It was like stepping into a time warp.  It was built in 1962 and nothing had been changed since then (including the furnace, air conditioner, and all major appliances).  It's one positive was it had a good layout.  If it wouldn't have needed to be completely gutted, it might have been a good pick.
The final place we saw was okay.  The house was built around the same time as the third house.  It was a little dated, but clean and well taken care of.  The yard was very over grown and would need a lot of work before the boys could play in it.  There was a lot of traffic noise from the extremely busy street nearby. 
So we're going out on Friday to see some more places.  Hopefully we'll have better luck then. 

Realtor

We've got ourselves a realtor and a to-do list a mile long.  Not sure if we'll make my self-imposed first of August date to have the place for sale, but I think it'll be close.  I just sent the realtor the list of the properties we want to look at this morning.  We're not in a super big rush to see houses since we probably can't make an offer until we have our place on the market officially, but there are a few places we've been watching for awhile that we've been watching for a couple months.  If we don't get to see them, I feel like it'll always be the one that got away instead of a house we may not even have liked. 
Our to-do list right now:
Declutter kitchen
Finish decluttering bathroom
Paint Master bedroom (Tim is doing this as we speak)
Declutter Master bedroom and closet
Clean Master bedroom closet
Touch up paint in the boys room
Clean boys room carpet
Declutter boys room
Declutter living room/dinning room
Clean wood floors
Clean carpet downstairs
Declutter downstairs
Get storage unit (we've decide on where, we just have to go sign-up)

Completed List:
Paint kitchen
Pack DVDs
Pack Books

My stress level is in the red zone right now.  We've decided we want to move in the next couple months, which is a good thing.  We found out today that we will need to sell our town house before we are able buy a new house.  I'm actually okay with that because I don't want to be worry about our town house anymore.  It'll be a big financial hit for us, but in the end, probably not much worse than what we have paid if we had been renting the place for the last 6 years instead of owning it. 
There are quite a few houses in our price bracket that would be a good fit for us, so we don't really want to wait very long to get our town house on the market. 
Overall, we've done quite a few improvements in our time living here.  So to get sale ready we need to get a storage unit so we can declutter and do a little bit of painting to clean things up.  It's going to be very challenging with two very active boys to keep things clean and organized around here all the time. 

Frustration

My part-time job is being a major PITA lately!  There have been some major changes going on in the last few months, including laying off about 1/3 of the management team, including my direct manager who did my scheduling.  No one has looked at my time off requests in the last 8 weeks or so since my manager last worked.  All 4 of my time off requests for June and July I was scheduled on. 
Since the manager who does my scheduling works mostly days (when I'm not there) I haven't able to talk to him directly about it.  So I've been leaving note about these issues and getting no response.  So I've been talking to my supervisor, who was able to take care of one of my days with issues, but forgot about the other one.  And now is on vacation for a week.  Lovely.
And to make things more complex, I can't even just have any random associate how wants hours fill in for me.  Only a small percentage of the other employees are trained in everything they could be asking me to do on a shift and they are general scheduled when I am too.  For a job that's suppose to be low stress, it's definitely not!  To make things even more fun, our staffing amounts have been lowered and the store has several major construction projects going on. 
In other stressful events, Tim is convinced we should try to move in the next several months.  We have negotiated staying in the same city (for now at least), just finding a home with a big back yard and a better use of square footage than our townhouse does. We'll lose money, but in the long run, it'll save us money.  We're looking into whether renting our place out is an option or if we need to sell our place first. 

Birthday Party Planning

Finding a birthday party theme that appeals to both a two year old and a four year old birthday boy is challenging.  One of the few shows that both boys love is Shaun the Sheep.  Planning a Shaun the Sheep birthday party is very difficult because there is no party supplies pre-made.  (And I even looked into trying to import stuff, the don't even seem to have it in the UK.)  To make my life a little easier, we decided to make it a Shaun the Sheep/Farm/John Deere party.  Where to go from there, I'm not entirely sure yet. 

So far, my only purchase has been farm animal plates in primary colors from Hobby Lobby.  (I'll have to take a picture, they're really cute!)  I didn't love the napkins, so I'll just pick up some in similar colors. 

 For the tables, I'd like to do either plastic gingham table cloths or do white plastic with fabric gingham runners (not sure if this is too big of a project for how much we have going on in the next three weeks.) 

I'd really like to do a fabric bunting "Happy Birthday" sign in primary colors (so that it'd be usable again.) 

I'd like to get some metal pails for silverware. 

I bought a double drink dispenser (similar to this one)last year for the boys' Cars party.  I think we'll use it for lemonade and ice tea.  Otherwise for food, I think we'll grill hot dogs and have a variety of sides. 

I'd like to get a farm themed cricut cartridge so I could cut out a bunch of animals, but I'm not sure it's worth the money.  I may just check if Archiver's has any die-cuts and just do some there. 



Update

My weekend without kids went well.  My girlfriends and I rented a cabin in Clear Lake, IA  to celebrate our friends upcoming wedding.  The weather was beautiful the 2nd day, so we got in some beach time.  It was great to have the time to relax and catch up with my friends (but I missed the boys and Tim like crazy!) 
The boys spent the weekend celebrating my brother's birthday on Saturday and driving down to visit Tim's parents/celebrating our nephew Ben's birthday.  It was the first time Tim had packed for the boys overnight.  Although his packing was quite different than I would have done, they seemed to have everything they needed.  Tim did tell me at one point that he appreciated how good I am at anticipating what we might need.  (Example: he didn't think to grab a sippy cup, diaper & wipes, and stuff to keep the boys busy with when he went out to dinner.) 
When I came home Carter told me that next time I go on a vacation I need to bring him with too.  He claims not to have missed me, but would bite every fruit snack in half to share with me since I got back.  Gross and so sweet.