Finally

We finally found a house to make an offer on last week, put in our offer, received a counter offer in the price range we were hoping for, and signed the papers. We tentatively close on June 26th. The house has four bedrooms, two main floor living/family rooms and a large kitchen/dining area. It is very close to Central, and one of Josh's softball players lives right across the street. She has a little sister Ellie's age, who Ellie has played with numerous times at softball games, which is awesome.

We're super excited to go out and buy appliances, paint, curtains, all that fun stuff. We will really miss this house and the yard, but are so excited to be nearly doubling our square footage!!!! The basement has an office as well as a finished dry bar area that could use a little updating, but is totally functional space-wise.

Aside from the housing situation, here are some updates on what we're doing: The baby is due in just over two weeks, which blows my mind. This pregnancy seemed to fly by, and now with everything going on it seems to be creeping at snail's pace. I think all of the excitement of wanting to move into the house and have a room ready for the baby is making it seem like things are moving backwards. I've had weekly doctor's appointments for the past three weeks, and continue to have consistently high blood pressure. As long as it doesn't keep rising, the midwife is okay with it. Usually she'll retake it at the end of the appointment, and it will be in a completely normal range, which is great.

Last time I was in she said I had dialated to 2 cm, but that was about it. She said, "It's possible you could have this baby tomorrow, but I'll probably see you next week (at your appointment)." The third pregnancy has definitely been a lot more painful than the first two. All my muscles, bones, joints are in a constant aching state. At school the staff bathroom in our wing is broken, which is super convenient:-)

We have some baby stuff washed and ready to go, so we're semi-prepared. The girls are excited and Jaymeson points to my stomach and says, "Baby!" She does the same to herself and Josh though, so she doesn't fully understand. The bags are packed for the hospital, which I told Josh almost guarantees I won't go into natural labor. I was hoping that by procrastinating and not packing it would lead to something happening. No luck. I have nine days of school left, and six sick days, so I'm ready to go at any time. For now the plan is for the baby to stay in our room for the first however many days (depending on the arrivale date) and then the girls will share a room at the new house, while the baby gets its own room. Ellie and Jaymeson got bunk beds recently, and when Ellie is ready she'll move into the spare bedroom at the new place.

Josh finished up his softball season last week with a 14-5 record in his debut season. I'm not sure how he deals with all those crazy high school girls. Just sitting near the bench and listening to them talk makes me want to hurt someone. He submitted a letter of interest for the assistant varsity volleyball coaching job at Central, so we'll see what happens with that.

Ellie has her last two days of school this week, which I think will be sad for her. She has learned so much, and impresses us every day. She went to her first "friend" birthday party at High Roller last week, and roller skated for the first time. They also had this huge play area made out of seat belt material, which she loved. It's so crazy to see how fast she is growing. She will start 4-year old Kindergarten in the fall in Holmen, unless we can find somewhere for her to go in La Crosse, so she can go to a school closer by. When she goes to Kindergarten she should be able to go to Harry Spence if we can make it work with our schedules. It's just easier to send her to Holmen next year with the times Josh and I start and end our days.

Jaymeson is our wild child. She has no fear, and runs around like a mad woman. She has fallen off the couch numerous times, and I would bet good money that we will be making a trip to the ER for stitches sometime this summer. Since having tubes put in her ears her vocabulary has increased tremendously, which makes me glad that we made the decision we did. Not that she wasn't hearing before, because she was, but I think things are a lot more clear now. She passed the 6-week follow-up hearing test last week, and her doctor said that everything looks really great.

I need to start updating more, so I don't have pages of ramblings....sorry. I would imagine the next update will involve our new addition, but we'll see. I've added a pictures from Sunfish Days and Memorial Day. Enjoy!!!

Sold!

After having our house on the market only a month, and having only three showings, we are going to accept an offer today. We had a showing Sunday and two on Wednesday. We received offers from the people who looked at it on Sunday and our second showing on Wednesday. We took the second offer, as the person offered more than what we were asking, has approved financing, and is more flexible on a closing date.



A special thanks to Pat for all the work he did in the kitchen removing the wooden slats and glass block. The new drywall looks awesome!!!



We're still looking for a place to move to, and have seen a couple of houses we've liked, but there always seems to be something we don't. Sometimes it's the neighborhood, sometimes the yard size, etc. There are a few that we're going back to for a second showing, just to see what we think...again.



So, while we'll miss this house, and it's location, we need something bigger. I'd love to take the yard with us, but it just isn't a possibility. Hopefully the guy who is buying it will be able to enjoy it as much as we have.

Our Big Girl

We had Ellie's spring parent-teacher conference last night, and are so proud of her! She recognized all of her basic shapes and was the only one in her class to also recognize the octagon. The shape she missed was a pentagon...um, yeah, I have fifth graders who don't know what a pentagon is.

Besides her knowledge of shapes, she also knew 23 letter sounds, counted to 29, knew her phone number and address (although she did say she lived in California, then changed it to French Island, Minnesota). She knows the house number and street, which I feel is sufficient at this point:-)

She has an "advanced" pencil grip and writing skills and does a super job of forming letters and writing her name with an upper case letter at the beginning and lower case letters after that. As someone who has taught kindergarten, I refuse to teach my child to write in all upper case letters. Do you have any idea how hard it is to un-teach that??????

Her teacher said that she is very "animated" and "energetic" in class, and always willing to particpate and volunteer. You've all met Ellie, so "animated" and "energetic" can be interpretted as you'd like.

After a stellar conference she came home and ran at Jaymeson with a straw in her mouth, which then stabbed both of them in the mouth. Common sense was not part of the report card.