Guilty Pleasures

For Valentine's Day this year, Tim and I got ourselves a  Sodastream Fountain Jet Soda Maker Starter Kit.  We used it constantly for the first couple months,  but started to use it less frequently thus summer.

One of my favorite coffee shop treats (when I get somewhere besides Caribou and Starbucks) is an Italian soda.  I discovered I could make them inexpensively at home with  Torani Flavored Syrup.  I'm hooked on using my Sodastream daily again.  Torani makes sugar-free syrups too.  It also tastes great in coffee and hot chocolate.  (My treat last night after the kids went to bed was hot chocolate with sugar-free coconut syrup in it.  It was delicious! )

So if you've been thinking about getting a Sodastream, I highly recommend them.  (Another random tangent, their customer service is amazing!  I thought we were having issues with one of our bottles sealing when we first got our machine.  One of their reps patiently troubleshooted the issue over the phone with me, and overnight shipped a  package of two bottles to replace the one.  Good customer service is such a rare thing these day.)  

Work books

In general, I'm not a huge fan of work books.  I think in most cases there are better ways for children to learn and practice their skills. 

Carter is a smart barely four year old that has pretty much given up napping in the afternoon.  So afternoon time has become quiet time and I've tried to find activities that he can do that need very little parental involvement, but challenge him mentally.  I'd love to set up fun, creative activities for him every day, but frankly, I don't have the time for the energy to do that.  The SCHOLASTIC SUCCESS W/ KINDERGARTEN book has been a lifesaver for me.   It has a variety of different activities, including numbers, letters, opposites, and more.  Some of it is a little too advanced for Carter at this point since his reading skills are still limited, but I bet he'll be ready for them soon.  And Carter must be enjoying them because he keeps asking to do more. 

Sold?

Looks like 17 may be our lucky number!  Friday afternoon, our realtor had called to talked to us about potentially doing a price cut in the next week or so.  Because we are going to need to pay the rather sizable difference between what we owe and what we can sell it at, we were not excited to discuss this.  She also mentioned that she thought it would be a quiet weekend for us since there are typically not that many showings on Labor Day weekend.  It turned out not to be so true for us.  We had showings both Saturday and Sunday.
After the showing Sunday morning we decided to leave for the rest of the weekend. We really needed a break from it all and some time to clear our heads.  So we headed down to the farm (with a quick detour to drive by some houses).  The boys had a great time playing with their cousins.  Tim and I were happy to not have to be constantly cleaning.  After we put the kids to bed, Tim decided to check his email.  Our agent had    emailed an offer from that morning's showing, a good offer, not a low ball like some of the agents had been mentioning the possibility of.
We've negotiated back and forth on some of the little things and as long as we pass the appraisal and inspection we should be moving sometime in the end of October.

2.5 weeks

2.5 weeks is the amount of time our townhouse has been on the market.  Today will be showing #12 (not including the 2 no-shows).  No offers yet.   Most of the feedback has been very positive.  The negatives are things we have no influence over/no ability to change.
One of the funniest so far was that they thought the deck was not private enough.  Our deck faces a not very busy residential street, but has a huge tree in front, so from the street you can't see much of anything on the deck.  Most of the townhouse  have itty bitty decks that fitting two lawn chairs on are a challenge and still face the street.  Most of the houses we've looked at around this area haven't had decks that are completely private either.  And what are you doing on your deck that needs to be completely private?
Tim was out of town last week in Baltimore for work training.  During that time we had 4 daytime showings, all during nap time.  It made for a very long week for me.  

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