Woah.

Oh my goodness, friends. How is it possible I overlooked the trauma that is unpacking & settling in after a move? I was focused on packing -- me, plus four peoples' stuff and a zillion boxes. I got through it and got 'er done.

The moving was next -- not too shabby when you hire 3 guys and 2 trucks to make it happen, and happen it did! Only 5 hours and (almost) everything we owned got from Point A to Point B. Nice.

But this unpacking and settling in madness? Why didn't anybody warn me? I thought I needed the time off from work for the packing and the actual moving, notsomuch the endless unpacking and billion projects that have consumed my every waking (and some occasional slumbering) moment. And the sad part is my incredibly awesome backsplash isn't even a project that's anywhere near the vicinity of my "to do list." ((sad face))

It doesn't help that we waited until after we were moved in to list our old house for sale. Don't get me wrong -- I'm super glad we did because I wasn't too keen on random people showing up during the middle of the day, interrupting my routine with the kids, not to mention what would have been feeble attempts at keeping the house clean 100% of the time with two small kids. But it means that not only the unpacking and new home tasks are on the docket, so is old house room & closet painting, drywall patching, hardcore cleaning, yard beautifying, carpet replacing, overall preparing to get that house in sellable condition.

Whew.

Somebody should'a warned me.

And as you might imagine, there's only so much I can do at the old house with two littles in tow. Which means the brunt of that mess has fallen on hubs. So he's there, working himself crazy, while I'm here with the kids. Trying to unpack. Installing ceiling fans and pendant lights and drawer pulls. Putting bar stools together. Attempting to make this house our home.

And it's been stressful, to say the least.

Of course I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the lovely attitude that has reared it's ugly head, compliments of my soon-to-be 5 year old. Not once, but twice I enjoyed hearing her tell me she doesn't like her new house. And why is that exactly? It's no fun.

Really?

Really. The sad thing is, I get that. I know how she feels. Daddy's gone and mommy's working feverishly to get 1,103 things off the list. There's no fun in that if you're a kid. One whose mommy has zero patience and an unfortunately misguided temper in the midst of all this chaos.

The good thing is this is all just temporary. We meet with the realtor next Wednesday to list the house, so it has to be ready by then. After that, we'll just be in serious prayer for a quick sell so we're not sitting on two house payments for too terribly long. The bad thing is there'll be a big push to get everything done over there by Wednesday. Add in the fact that I work 9 hours on Saturday and 7 hours on Sunday, and hubs' time to work on the other house sans-kids is diminished considerably.

I must, however, give a major shout out to my mom who has been a HUGE help in getting things ready at the old house. She's been helping with painting and cleaning, which has been an unbelievable relief to both hubs and I. THANKS, MO!!! :)

Anywho, next week should be interesting since LO is on spring break, which means -- well, you parents out there know what that means. The good thing is we're making progress on both houses and eventually we'll be done with our seemingly never-ending project lists so we can get on with just enjoying our new, wonderful home!

And of course I'll leave you with some cute pics of the kids from today's various antics:

First up, LO's K4 class Easter egg hunt. Do you see the little glimpse of sibling love in this one? Say it with me: "awwwwww!"

An action shot of my girl. She's allowed to gather 12 eggs and by golly, she will be the first one to find her 12!

Meanwhile, Chase hung out on the slide... Such a big, handsome boy I have!

This morning while I was getting ready for LO's egg hunt, Chase came into our bathroom sporting LO's pink slippers... on the wrong feet. I don't know about you, but I think he totally pulls this look off!

And last but not least, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to look inside my head and see a glimpse of an actual dream I have -- often. But wait! It's not a glimpse at a dream! It's reality!! And it happened in my very home earlier this very day! LO literally vacuumed our entire living room while Chase "swept" the kitchen floor! You can't see me in the pic, but I'm sitting at the bar with my feet propped up whilst enjoying a handful of Godiva truffles and a cosmo. Haha!!!

Whirlwind Week

Whew!

This has been one BUSY week! I can't believe all that we've done in less than a week! We started with our closing Monday morning -- that went super great and literally took about 30 minutes. Then hubs and I spent the rest of the day at the house installing blinds. What a pain! The first few were pretty obnoxious but we eventually got the hang of it and it started going a bit quicker. Then Tuesday morning was moving day! The movers arrived around 8:45 AM and it took 3 men, 2 trucks and about 5 hours to get all of our stuff loaded up into the truck and unloaded into the new house. Then the real "fun" began... unpacking.

Can I just say that I'm not a big fan?

I didn't mind the packing so much, but the unpacking has been a bear! Especially in the kitchen. I haven't used it enough yet to know where I'll want to put stuff, so I literally haven't unpacked but a box or two in there. Guess I'm waiting for the kitchen to speak to me before proceeding? Whatever. I made some mad progress on the master bedroom yesterday, which also resulted in the living room and dining room being cleared out.

There are still a few zillion projects to be completed before we can settle in and enjoy this place... a garage door opener, a kitchen backsplash, closet organizers for the kids' rooms, installing fans and pendant lights, drawer pulls in the kitchen and both bathrooms, and of course more unpacking. We'll get there... eventually. ;)

Would you like to see some pics? Yes?? Great! I just so happened to take a few pics of the house in its complete state of disarray for your viewing pleasure!

Here's our morning room. You can see it's essentially a staging area for kitchen boxes. Eventually we'll get through this pile of stuff and the morning room will be a sort of downstairs play area.

The patio doors in the morning room. Yes, I've only put up one of the two blinds so far. The dumb valence doesn't have the cornice edges and I'm currently in deliberations with the blinds company about this. I'm waiting until that issue is resolved before putting up the other ones since I might be sending them back.

Our chaotic, messy kitchen! And a handsome little guy eating Fruit Loops... ;)

Another shot of the kitchen. That big pile of boxes on the left is our trash pile... blinds boxes, fan boxes, etc.

Eventually there will be drawer pulls and a rockin' backsplash in there, not to mention four barstools (in transit!) and two mini-pendant drop lights at the bar side of the island. The lights I thought I wanted arrived yesterday but I didn't like them once I saw them in person. It's these ones:

They're cute and all, but they are waaaaaay bigger than I thought they'd be. So instead, I've ordered these:

I think (and hope) I'll like these better so I can get them installed and relish in the beauty of additional kitchen lighting (and another functional light switch!).

The family room! The clock is the only item that has been put up on the walls so far. And I'm okay with that.

The office.

Another pic of the ever-so-exciting office.

The foyer area. You can see we're a shoeless home now that we've got new carpet to keep clean. ;)

The dining room. I'm just now seeing in this pic that our table looks dwarfy and small... Don't tell hubs but I think I'll start some online shopping for a new dining room set. Oh, and those are all empty boxes in the back there.

I swear I took a pic of the living room, but I can't seem to find it, so, moving on...

Here's the master bedroom. Please pardon the mess!

Another shot of the master.

The master bath is a hideous mess. Don't hate.

One of the two master bedroom closets. I didn't think our stuff would make much of a dent in that huge closet, but obviously I was quite wrong. And in case you're curious, no, our closet walls are NOT yellow. Just a bad pic with bad lighting that I didn't feel like fixing.

Here is bedroom #4 slash sewing room slash storage room.

Chase's bedroom. Pretty gnarly, huh? I need to get some room decor going on in here big time!

LO's room. Also in major need of some decor.

The (upstairs, thankyouverymuch) laundry room. You can probably tell by the hose sitting on the washer that they are not yet hooked up, much to my dismay. Not looking forward to Mt. St. Laundrypile this weekend.

The kids' bathroom. Don't ya like that I didn't even bother to pick up LO's pj's before taking this pic? I'm lazy like that.

So that about sums up what I've been up to all week! There's a lot more to be done, and I'm sure I'll find the time to fit that in between work, baseball practice and all the other "life" things going on right now. Overall I am so excited/blessed/ecstatic to finally be in our new home! I can't wait to get totally settled in and start cooking/baking in my new kitchen!!!

CLOSING DAY!!!

Today's the big day!

Our closing is in just a few hours. We will officially take ownership of our amazing dream house today! I am so excited I can't even tell you. There's a LOT to get done in the next few days, but I know we'll eventually be settled in and I'm so looking forward to that!

The kids are way excited, too! Especially since we took their beds apart yesterday (leaving their mattresses on the floor) and they were beyond excited to sleep in their "crazy beds" last night (and again tonight). The movers arrive bright and early tomorrow morning, so tonight will be our last night in our current home. I've spent almost 10 years here... almost 7 of them married to my sweetie pie, and almost 5 of them as a mommy. Hubs and I were talking last night and I realized I'm pretty sure I've lived in this house longer than I've ever lived in any other house ever in my life! It's crazy to think we brought both of our babies home to this house and we're saying good-bye to it. Kind of surreal, but at the end of the day, I'm looking forward to having a new home with the space we need where we can make new memories as a family!

This afternoon will be busy as hubs and I are planning to put up 20 sets of blinds (ack!) after the closing and possibly install our garage door opener, too. The kitchen backsplash is on the agenda at some point during the next few weeks, but we've also got a good bit of work to do in our current house to get it ready to put on the market, so it definitely won't be done as soon as I'd like it to be. Our goal is to have the house ready to list no later than April 1st, so you can imagine our "To Do" list for both homes is quite lengthy and will be very time-consuming, too.

Okay, so enough house drama. Here are some pics of the kiddos!

LO was on fire at her t-ball practices this week! Check out that stance! I overheard one of the people watching her practice on Saturday point to her and say that "she must be the coach's daughter" because she was in a killer stance, poised and ready to practice her fielding. I laughed to myself... seems my girl has a bit of an athlete in her!

Love it when the kids get along and play nicely together. :)

Enjoying a hot day with some fun, refreshing water play!

Another hot day... hitting the swings after LO's baseball practice.

A bit blurry, but love my boy cheesin' it out for the camera!

For those who are interested, here's a little video clip of LO's t-ball practice on Saturday. The team practiced fielding, catching, hitting off a tee and hitting off coach's pitches. I took this video of her going to town on the coach's pitches (notice my little lefty!).

A Funny Thing Happened...

A funny thing happened during our final walk-thru at the house yesterday. Of course we had our list typed up and in hand as we walked through the house, pointing out little issues here and there that needed to be addressed. One of the items on our list was a piece of the accent mosaic tile in the master bathroom shower that was sticking out weird -- it wasn't flush with the rest of the accent tile pieces. We pointed it out to the PM and he agreed with us and said he'd have it taken care of.

At the end of our walk-thru, hubs and I were out in the pool parking lot across the street when our PM came out to tell us about something. He and I walked upstairs into the master bathroom and I was COMPLETELY STUNNED at what he showed me.

The accent mosaic tile runs on both walls of the shower and on two of the walls surrounding the tub. This is the mosaic we selected and how beautiful it looks on one of the walls of the shower:

Here's a close-up of the mosaic tile we selected:

HOWEVER... here's a pic of our OTHER shower wall. Notice anything strange?

Let me provide a close-up of that mosaic tile:

Hahahahahahahahaha!!!

Do you see it now? How funny is it that they put the WRONG accent tile on ONE of the walls in the shower! Haha! See the side by side? Notice all the browns in the bottom pic?

So totally hilarious and ridiculous at the same time! I find it so hard to believe that hubs and I stared at the shower so long, pointed out the problem with the one little accent tile that was sticking out, but didn't bother to notice that entire strip of accent was WRONG and looked totally different than the rest of them.

Haha!

I'm so glad our PM caught it so that entire wall of mosaic tiles could be replaced. Yay!

Final Walk-Thru

We had our final walk-thru at the house this morning. There were just a few small touch-up issues here and there... nothing major. It was fun to walk through all of our new home and learn how stuff works, etc. Only 5 more days and it's ours!!!

I spent some time calling all the utility companies to make sure everything will be transferred into our name, and have really stepped up the packing into high gear. Let's just say we can no longer boil water or flip a pancake anymore as all of my kitchen is essentially boxed up!

So here's a little peek of our kitchen with ALL of our appliances in. The backsplash and drawer pulls will be completed before next weekend (if I get my way). :)







Posted from my beloved iPhone

700th Post!!!

Howdy, folks! I am BEYOND thrilled to share with you that yesterday, my post regarding the arrival of my precious, beautiful new GE Cafe' dual-fuel range, was in fact my 700th POST on this blog!

What the what-what??

Seriously! How crazy is that!? If you would've asked me almost 4 years ago when I was complaining about a waaaaay undercooked steak that this little online outlet o' mine would see it's 700th post, I would've called you crazy! And yet, here we are!

For the record, this is about how big LO was when I started this blog:

She was actually just under a year old when I started. The pic above is from her 1st birthday party, which was about a month or so after I wrote my first post here on Just Another Day...

And here's my big, almost-5-year-old girl at a play date with one of her friends from school last week:

And, of course, we have also added this little miracle munchkin to the family since the blog's inception:

And let's not forget our newest addition, which will be official in just 11 short days:

What a journey it's been over these past 4 years! Thanks to all of you who hung in there with me, laughed with me through the highs and encouraged me through the lows. You readers rock! Both of you! ;)

She's Finally Here!!!

My beautiful range has finally arrived!


Talk about love at first sight!


What will I cook first on that gas range? What will be my first baked good in that electric oven?


Oh, and do me a favor and pretend that ghetto 4-inch granite "backsplash" isn't there. Instead, imagine my gorgeous 8x24 stacked porcelain tile cradling the wall around the range, microwave and countertop.

Swoon.

Posted from my beloved iPhone

Just Some Stuff

Just a little heads-up, folks. For those of you who follow me on Facebook, which, I guess is really just the tiny percentage of those of you who actually know me in "real life," I deactivated my Facebook account last week for an undetermined length of time. It just seemed like the right thing to do. I've always hated the way that Facebook takes the place of face-to-face relationships, and I guess I'm just to the point where I don't care about it anymore. I'm never really on there anyway, and honestly it really just duplicates utilizing a Twitter feed in my opinion. I love to check Twitter, but I rarely check Facebook. I like the daunting task of putting all of your thoughts or activities into 140 characters or less. It keeps things interesting. ;)

So anywho, if you want to know what I'm up to, please feel free to jump on Twitter and follow me!

((check out the link over there on the right ----------->))

I'm also wasting spending time on Pinterest, too, so you can follow me there if you'd like, too.

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The correct microwave was installed at the house today. See?

Yay! Unfortunately, the beautiful range I can't wait to finally see in my new kitchen has not yet arrived. :( I believe it should be in this week, and I'm dying to see how it looks!

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One other random thing to share... Last week, hubs and I went to a cooking demonstration at a local kitchen store. It was our first time doing such a thing, and it was on a wonderful subject: homemade pasta and sauces. Perfect! I was looking forward to learning a lot and enjoying some tasty dishes!

Unfortunately, the chef spent more time talking about his recently published romance novel than he did about the correct technique for rolling out pasta dough. But that wasn't the worst of it. He made NO/ZERO/ZILCH/NADA references whatsoever to any form of cleanliness/sanitation/hand-washing. He had bunches of basil leaves in bowls on each table, and asked the class to pull the leaves off for the pesto. There were at least a dozen people doing this and NONE of them washed their hands first. Then, the basil was tossed into the pesto without so much as a quick rinse!

As if that weren't enough, the chef also invited folks in the class to come up one at a time to assist him with rolling out the dough and preparing the filled pastas, with ZERO hand washing. My stomach kept turning with every person who approached the counter and started (quite literally) pulling pasta over their heads with their unwashed hands.

What topped it off for me was seeing this "professional" chef take his glass of red wine, which he had been drinking from, and toss the half-empty glass into the tomato sauce.

Seriously. Gross.

Please tell me at least some of you have some level of disgust at this so I know I'm not alone in Crazyville. OMG. It was awful. Of course I tried to overlook it and not think about it, and tried each of the pasta dishes and sauces. But they weren't even that good! Ugh. It wasn't the most helpful class, and honestly I'd have better luck pulling a recipe from Pinterest than using any of his recipes.

In true ((mom2lo)) fashion, I sent an email to the kitchen store's owner with some feedback from our experience at the cooking demonstration. She was VERY grateful for my feedback and said she had already heard similar complaints from her staff that worked with the guest chef that evening. She was so incredibly generous to refund our class tuition (almost $100 bucks!) AND offer a gift card to use towards a future class or to shop in her store. How unexpected and very thoughtful! It made me feel better to know that I wasn't the only one with the "issues" and that it sounded like she wouldn't be bringing that particular chef back to lead cooking demonstrations in her store any longer.

Tell me... would you have been thinking the same things throughout a cooking class if you witnessed the same disregard for food handling and sanitation by a "professional" chef?? Eeew.

2 Weeks

Um, we're moving in 2 weeks. How crazy is that!? Our closing is 2 weeks from today, and the movers will arrive the following morning.

Eeeeek! Are you kidding me?

I'm so excited!!!! But geez. There's a lot to do over the next 2 weeks! So much packing, so many decisions regarding the new house (purchases, furniture placement, decor, etc.), getting our current home ready to put on the market... so so so much to get done!

Our GE Cafe' appliances are scheduled to be installed today. The refrigerator should be in next week, a few days before our final walk-thru on the 14th. We went by the house yesterday and it is essentially ready! How exciting!

I'm happy to report that I've finally made some progress in selecting and/or purchasing some of the necessities for the new house. From the little things like a curved shower rod for the kids' bathroom...

 ...along with a new shower curtain liner...

...to the bigger stuff like our kitchen and bathroom drawer pulls...

...and our kitchen barstools...

...not to mention the bigger things like privacy blinds for all 18 windows...

...and the mini-pendant lights I've selected for over the kitchen island...

...that I hope will beautifully match my coveted kitchen backsplash choice...

Things are starting to come together, but this doesn't distract me (too much) from the insane amount of packing and preparations that need to happen over the next 2 weeks.

TWO WEEKS!!!

:)