Updates: Courtney's room and The House

Drumroll please.....Courtney has actually been keeping her room clean!  And she has been doing it on her own with no reminders, persuasions, punishments, yelling, loss of toys, or loss of privileges. Mindboggling that "a place for everything" actually works!

On Saturday we went under contract for buying The House.  Today we had the home inspector come.  Funny, it took $450 to meet our neighbor...he lives about 6 houses away from us right now.  There were a couple issues, the main one being a roof in need of repairs.  The owners will take care of that and a broken window.  The owners have kept very good care of the house and it shows.  We'll see about getting the few issues fixed and we should be good to go for moving in on December 4!  Our landlord told us he will prorate our rent for us since we wont be in this house for much of the month.  If everything keeps going well we will get a new home for Christmas!

(We did find and kill a black widow outside the garage, but we'll just hope he was an orphan...)

What happened?!

Kyle was home from work today and he helped me work on cleaning out Courtney's room and the toy room.  We didn't make it to working on the boys' room yet(but I did their room about a week ago...so you'd think you could tell.) When the kids got home from school, they went upstairs and Courtney was ecstatic.  We made the organization very simple in her room (and got rid of lots of clutter toys) so she can keep it up on her own.  The first thing she said was: "What happened to Ben's room??"  Ummm, nothing chica.  The difference is that YOUR room is now clean! Benjamin took one look at his room and said: "Did you leave my room like this to teach a lesson?"  No.  It took all day to do the other rooms!  

Any votes on how long Courtney's room will look this good?  She has a couple friends that are over all the time and the three of them together can make quite a mess super quick! (Although Courtney can definitely hold her own, too.)

House update

So this morning we are placing an offer on The House.  We feel good about it this time.  Before I guess it just wasn't the right time for us to offer, but now we feel ready.  Nervous, but ready.  We'll see how this goes!

Johnny says...

I told the kids that when they clean up their rooms we can decorate for Halloween.  We've had numerous kids visit the house and that doesn't help the cause any, so it is taking awhile.  We've been discussing this for a few days...so now when we drive around and see a house decorated for Halloween, Johnny says, "Look! They are ready for Halloween!  Their rooms are clean."  And of course, he says the opposite too about unadorned houses: "Uh oh.  They aren't ready for Halloween.  Their rooms are a mess!"  LOL!  We are decorating tomorrow.

Huh...no sooner did I post

...and our realtor emails us that the house is back on the market.  Now what do we do???

House shopping update

Someone has placed an offer on our "dream house".  But we're ok with that.  We just weren't ready to buy a house yet.  We want to wait a little longer and save some more money first and find a house we are head over heels for.  I liked this one a lot, but I didn't feel a great urge to place an offer...unfortunately. We are trying to let the Lord help us decide which house to get and when.  That's why we started looking in the first place!  

I'm just glad we don't have to rush the process, like we did in Oklahoma.  We still own that house, but we have had renters and they will be there for another year.  They are taking extremely good care of the house and I feel good with that.  I still hate the thought of owning two homes, but at least one isn't empty and we are receiving rent payments.

Now if only we could find Broken Bow prices on Santa Fe homes, we'd be in heaven!  

OK.  So Debbie didn't like that last one so much.  How 'bout this one?  Not bad, I say!

Crazy Uncle John

This is my first video upload direct to my blog (I think). Thought John's kids might enjoy this lovely view of him in case they are missing him.

Sparkle the Pumpkin

Courtney went to the pumpkin patch this week and got this pumpkin.  The stem fell off and she was distraught....so we decided to take advantage of the situation so she glued hair over the top where the stem used to be.  Uncle John (who is with us for a few days) thought his boys would like to see Courtney's crafting because they like to do things like this too.  He actually suggested a video of Courtney showing off her work, but she vetoed that idea!  

I don't usually get much into political discussions, but this one made me laugh:

The Daily Show