Tired!

OMG what a loooong day (I say as I write this late Tuesday night). I am honestly so tired that I am beyond sleep--I have entered some new realm of overtired sleeplessness!

My day started bright and early with the open house looming--I had to get the non-sick kids to school and clean the entire house before 9:30 a.m. I also made a batch of butterscotch blondies because I'm hell-bent on getting that bakery smell in the air.

So I had to evacuate the house for several hours and I decided to try and get some birthday-related errands done for Andy's big day. Of course, I was nervous doing this because I had to bring poor sick Teddy along--but he was a trooper. I think now that the antibiotics are in his system he's feeling a little better.

So we did some present-shopping and had lunch--then I felt that I really needed to get him home to rest. I dropped him off and continued my birthday errands, including a trip to the grocery store for the chocolate fountain fixin's--I did manage to pull that off!

I think Andy appreciated it!
I know Pickle enjoyed it!!
Then I tried to get some study time in with Patrick who was in the next round of the spelling bee (county level) tonight. I was so tired that I fell asleep in the middle of asking him a word!

After a quick dinner and Andy's present-opening we headed off to the bee. Good news! Patrick has made it to the next level again! This time it will be at the state level! The winner of that one will go on to the National bee in Washington D.C.! Have I used enough exclamation marks in that paragraph!?! !!!

You wouldn't have believed these crazy-time words get got--vorlage (pronounced for-lagga), Baedeker, pangolin, realschule (I don't even know how you pronounce that one!) It went on for hours...and hours... It was nuts!



Big congratulations to Patrick! He also won a Borders gift certificate and got a nice t-shirt. He is very proud!

So here I am just now getting to my computer for the first time today--I had almost 100 emails waiting!! Thank you all for the birthday wishes for Andy and I apologize once again for not getting around to any blogs--I am crossing my fingers the rest of the week won't be so crazy and I can start to catch up!

Happy Birthday Andy!!

Wow--I can hardly believe it, but my oldest son, Andy, is fifteen today. FIFTEEN!?! How can that be??

It seems like just yesterday he looked like this:

Two days old.

And this:

One year old.

But now he looks like this!

I'm depressed!

Plus yesterday he started driver's ed classes which makes me depressed and scared!

But it's also exciting that he's growing up--he has so many interests and is good at so many things--there's never a dull moment with Andy!

You know what he's doing right now? He's playing the theme from The Office on the piano--he just taught himself tonight and he's playing it perfectly!

Unfortunately, I don't think he's going to have the most exciting birthday this year--for one thing, I have to evacuate my house for another open house, plus Patrick will be in the next phase of his spelling bee--oh, and did I mention that I took Teddy back to the doctor and that, in addition to the Influenza B, he now has pneumonia? Poor Teddy. I'm glad I took him back though--I feel better that he's on antibiotics now.

Andy has requested the chocolate fountain for his birthday like I had for Patrick--and I will try, but I'm feeling so overwhelmed I just don't know. I guess when I'm driving around during the open house I could try to get the supplies--but that means I'll have to take poor Pneumonia Boy and the unpredictable Drama Queen to the grocery store--that doesn't sound like such a good idea!

Oh well--if we don't end up with a great celebration today, we'll try to make up for it over the weekend. In any case--Happy Birthday Andy!!

P.S. Please excuse those older pics--I had to take photos of my scrapbook as my printer/scanner is one of the many electronics I've got stored in my car!

So Long Ferrets!

We have tons of pets--but I don't think I've discussed our ferrets too much on my blog. We've had them forever--I think about eight years, which is considered pretty old for ferrets. Although they're fun pets--sort of like a combination between dogs and cats, they are VERY smelly. I find that it's a constant battle to keep their cage clean so I eventually moved the cage to the basement so their weird musky odor didn't infiltrate the entire house.

Anyway, now that the house is on the market and I have to keep it clean and fresh-smelling 24/7, I decided that there's no way I can stay on top of the ferret odor situation--so they are taking a "vacation" at our very nice and very accommodating neighbor's house! Luckily, they have ferrets too so they know what they're getting into! I can't even begin to say how grateful I am that the ferrets aren't here right now--as much as I like them, my stress level just couldn't handle them right now

Here's Andy getting the ferrets ready for their getaway. That's Baby on the left and Creampuff on the right.

And here's Pickle saying goodbye to them as Andy loaded them into the travel kennel. You can tell she's about to lose it...
She lost it!
Poor Pickle!
I didn't exactly share her sentiments!

Oh--did I mention that over our big Open House Weekend, Teddy came down with Influenza B virus? UNCLE!!

Little Update

Long story short: I'm exhausted. I have been cleaning the house every waking moment to accommodate the open houses and showings. One thing is sure--keeping a house spotlessly clean is a full-time job! I can't keep this up much longer!

The good news is that someone might be interested--it's too early to know for sure, but please keep your fingers crossed for me. Otherwise the non-stop cleaning might kill me!

I'm also baking cookies non-stop--I want my house to have that homey cookie smell. So it's actually a good thing I'm cleaning so much so I can burn off all the calories from all the cookie dough I'm eating.

And another apology for not doing much blog visiting lately--I have been storing our laptops (and phones!) in the car as part of my decluttering spree, so until things settle down here I have very limited computer access. So when I'm not cleaning, I'm driving around aimlessly with a car full of electronics waiting for people to leave my house. Bear with me!

House

I thought since I am completely immersed in house-selling, I would show a few pics of my house (which hopefully won't be mine much longer because it will sell right away--right!?!).

They sent a photographer over the other day and these were the pics he took:

This is part of the living room and dining room:
"Sun room":


Family room:
Master bedroom (I like pink, okay!?):

Please wish us luck! Our first showing is today (Friday) and then we have the weekend-long open house.

My friend bought me this "house selling" kit which is a statue of St. Joseph that you are supposed to bury in the yard and then recite a couple of prayers--we will be having the ceremony in the morning!

Please join my friend Candid Carrie and check out all the crazy Phriday Foto Phun!!

More Calgon Needed!

Oh boy--my stress level is over the top!

I'm pretty sure I'm actually "losing it."

Here's how my day started: First,the usual chaos--getting the kids dressed/breakfast/out the door...Within about five minutes before I was going to take Gooser to school I was brushing his hair and decided that it was looking too long and unruly--so I decided to give it a trim (???).

So there he was standing in the kitchen in his coat and I took the kitchen shears (???) and attempted to trim about an inch off the bottom.

I butchered it.

It was AWFUL!!!!! It was long, it was short--it was all over the place. He ran to the bathroom and started crying. I realized I couldn't send him to school in this state so I called the school nurse and basically said that he needed a personal day. I knew I had to take him to a professional to repair the damage that I had done.

A little later in the morning I was doing my workout and I saw out the window that they were putting up the "for sale" sign on my lawn. This sort of freaked me out! I think it made the reality of the craziness with this real estate transaction really sink in. My trainer looked panicky and immediately tried to give me a massage.

After the workout, I managed to take a shower because--and this is really gross so prepare yourselves--I hadn't showered since Sunday. Because Pickle won't nap! And I never have time!

Oh--I left something out--while I was working out, Gooser got into the Krazy glue that I had left on the counter (I was trying (unsuccessfully) to repair an egg cup.) He got it all over his hands and all over the counter--but it could have been worse.

Interestingly enough--there was a "Krazy glue incident" with Teddy right before we moved into our current house--so maybe it's a good sign? Yeah--that's what I'm telling myself--it's a good sign!

So then it was off to take Gooser to the local kid salon for an Extreme Makeover.

The lady was understanding as I explained my stupidity and begged her to keep his hair as long as she could because that's the way Gooser wants it.

I was pretty happy with it when we left the salon, but later I was looking at him in the kitchen and I realized that he is now sporting the exact same haircut as Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men.

"Heads or tails? Call it."

He looks cheerful enough enough in that picture, but later he said "Mommy, I looked in the mirror and my hair still looks bad."

The rest of the day involved an emergency trip to the saxophone repair shop, an emergency trip to Walgreen's and a last-minute frenzy of packing and loading the Pod as it will be picked up in the morning. I think I permanently injured myself moving the air hockey table.

If you have any spare Calgon--please FedEx me some!

Sabotage!

I was having a major stress-out day yesterday trying to get things around here in shape for the big open house this weekend--I had a cleaning lady here helping me clear out my over-the-top messy utility closet, the carpet cleaning guy was here and my trainer was here so I could stick to my resolutions and have a workout. Meanwhile, Pickle is going through some kind of "touch point" and has, not only refused to nap for the past 4 days, but has been waking up in the middle of the night hysterically calling for me and then refusing to go back to sleep. She's going through a huge language explosion right now (maybe that's the touch point?)--when she's calls me in the night she says "Mommy! I need you! I need you so much!!" Pretty cute--well not the keeping me up all night, but what she was saying.

Anyway, she was a complete basket case and was doing everything in her power to sabotage my workout. She actually tried to crawl underneath me to prevent me from doing my push-ups! So I was trying to deal with her, and answer questions from the carpet cleaner and the cleaning lady--plus the realtor was calling and asking me to proofread his ad--all while trying to exercise. Truly a "Calgon take me away" day!

So I decided to distract Pickle with her Strawberry Shortcake dvd, but when I went to put it in I saw this on it:

I looked through the other dvds that we keep in the kitchen and they were all similarly taped...all except the Batmen movie! Hmmmmm...I wonder who did it?

It was a clear-cut case of Gooser sabotaging every other dvd and rendering them useless so Batman was the only one to watch. What a sneak! He confessed later and apologized. It was a pretty lowdown trick--but I give him points for creativity.

Speaking of creativity, he brought this artpiece home from school today and said he'd been working on it for the past two days.
I don't know how well you can make it out in this pic--but it's a Batman made out of Popsicle sticks and tape--it's pretty cool!


Anyway--I managed to chip/peel/wash the tape off the rest of the dvds and he swears he won't do it again. And Pickle had a decent night's sleep and was in a much better mood today--so things are back on track.

I've been moving boxes into the pod and cleaning daily--my house has never looked so good!

Real or Stuffed?

Pickle's new thing is piling her stuffed animals on top of Dr. Hoppy. Luckily he (she? we still don't know...) is a good sport and doesn't seem to mind. It's kind of hard to tell which one is the toy, isn't it?
Gooser and Pickle just love this rabbit! He hops around the house and reminds me a lot of a dog--he's actually a lot less obnoxious than my dogs!

I don't know if you can tell in these pics--but this bunny is ginormous. He's still a baby so who knows how big he will still grow? He makes a nice pillow for Pickle though!

Dutch Baby!

Patrick got a kids' cookbook for Christmas (he loves to cook) and we were looking through it the other night to come up with some recipes we could make together. One that caught my eye (plus looks pretty easy) was a "Dutch Baby" pancake. I have seen these in pancake restaurants but have never tried to make one at home--so we gave it a whirl and it was so fun and delicious!

It was so fun and delicious, in fact, that we ended up making it Saturday and Sunday mornings--a good thing too because we've been so busy packing and cleaning that once we started we didn't even stop for lunch!

The fun thing about this pancake is that it puffs way up in the oven--that part was extra exciting for the kids. Here's a pic of the puff-up (though it had deflated somewhat by the time I took the pic).
Here's another view:
And these are the sauteed apples we put on top:
The finished product--you slice it like a pie and top with the apples, maple syrup and a little powdered sugar.
And of course there was bacon! Here's the recipe--I'll write it out as I found it for four servings, but I actually tripled the recipe and just watched it in the oven since I was guessing on baking time. My giant one stayed in for about 30 minutes.

Dutch Baby Pancake with Sauteed Apples

2 eggs
1/2 cup milk
1 teas. oil

1/2 cup flour
2 Tabls. sugar
1/4 teas. salt
1/4 teas. cinnamon

3-4 apples
butter
a little sugar
a little cinnamon

Preheat oven to 425.

Whisk together eggs, milk and oil.

Add in flour, sugar, salt and cinnamon. Stir well--some lumps are ok.

Pour into well-oiled round baking pan (I used an oven-proof skillet) and bake until puffed up and evenly browned. About 10-15 minutes.

While it's baking, peel and slice the apples and saute in a skillet with butter, a little sugar and a little cinnamon.

Try this--it was so good!!

Inspection

We had the inspection on the house today and I feel totally stressed out! The good news is that everything checked out okay--but the stress part is that the owner (Mr. Howell) was there the whole time! It made me SO uncomfortable walking around w/ the inspector and pointing out the things that needed to be changed/fixed. I was a nervous wreck because the last thing I want to do is insult him.

Then to make things worse, we had a painter go through for an estimate because there's so much wallpaper removal/plastering, etc. that needs to be done. I felt awful talking about all the cracks in the ceiling while he was just around the corner!

Anyway, we got through it.

Some more good news: The fireplace "mantel" in the living room (well, it's not even a mantel, just a basic piece of wood) is really ugly and clearly not original. I had told Don about an idea I had to hire a woodworker and build a mantelpiece that reflects some of the motifs going on in the house which are sort of tapered columns and arches.

So today I asked the owner about the whole fireplace situation and he told me the pieces to the original one were in the basement! And--it was exactly the same as the idea I had drawn out for Don! I'm so excited about that!! Putting that back will be one of the first things we do.

So you just have to keep crossing your fingers that we can sell our house quickly and easily--then we can move on with our new adventure!