Week of August 16th

Last week was quite a momentous week for us.

Earlier in the week we were able to fit in some play time with friends.  We have been trying to make that happen as much as possible as everyone will be in school very soon and on various schedules.  It will be much more challenging to get the kids together to play.

At COSI's Farm Days

Friday brought the big day, Jack's first day of Kindergarten!  Jack was beyond excited!

Tuesday afternoon we went in for an open house at Jack's new school and we were able to tour his new classroom, drop off school supplies, and meet his teacher.  Later, Mark asked him how the open house went and Jack said it was, "trucktastic!", which is pretty much the highest honor bestowed by Jack.

The night before his first day of school Jack was so excited he could hardly sleep, I was in tears thinking about putting my baby on a bus and sending him off to school for the day!  I'm happy for him and his new adventures and proud of his enthusiasm, but it is such a shift in dynamic for me!  It's quite different sending your child off to school for 2 1/2 hours at a time 2 or 3 days a week, the way we have for the last 2 years of preschool, and sending your child on a bus with a packed lunch for a full day of school!

After spending the last 5 1/2 years together it's strange not having him around for the majority of the day. It's strange thinking about other people having such a big impact on Jack's day-to-day life. It's weird not having both kids with me all day, them being able to play together, going places all together, eating together. It was pretty quiet around here on Friday. It's nice that Molly and I will get this time together, one-on-one.  She's never had that the way Jack had for his first (nearly) 3 years of life before Molly came along.

AND, as evidenced by the school bus picture above, Jack talked me into his riding the bus to school. I had planned to drive him back and forth to school, but he insisted upon riding the bus.  Insisted!  He was sad about not being able to ride and it was the thing he was most looking forward to about school so I relinquished a little control (not easy for me!) and encouraged his independence by allowing him to ride the bus as he preferred :(

Jack had a great first day of school and is looking forward to his return on Wednesday of this week when he will begin his regular, every day school schedule.  Because they do a staggered start for kindergartners he only attends one day during the first five days of school.

Shortly after Jack arrived home from his first day of school we headed out to the closing of the sale of our home. That's right, we sold our house!

I haven't talked about the fact that we were under contract/sold our house because in my mind, it's not a done deal until the final paperwork is signed.  Because of that, it has been a stressful 6 weeks! (On top of a stressful 5 months, which is really when this journey began.)

We listed our house for sale by owner (stresssssful!) on a Monday leading up to the July 4th holiday weekend.  We didn't get a whole lot of inquiries on it, but we did have one showing on Thursday of that week.  The lack of inquiries/traffic was scary and disheartening, but we did suspect it being a holiday week had something to do with it.

Fast-forward to the following week and we had tons of inquiries on the property!  We did 2 more showings and received two offers!  We negotiated and signed the paperwork to accept one of the offers and officially went under contract 2 weeks after we had listed!  Then we had weeks of dealing with the inspection (and more negotiating), appraisal, waiting to hear the final word on a closing date, moving the last few items that were still hanging around including our playset which takes some organization, etc. SO STRESSFUL!

On Friday afternoon, we took one final walk through, snipped a few cuttings from our hydrangea bush that I love (I'm hoping to grow some at our new house from the cuttings!  I don't exactly have a green thumb so we'll see how that works out :/ ) and then went to sign the paperwork, collect our pitiful check (but hey, we actually got SOME money out of the sale, we were prepared to have to bring money to the table), and hand over our keys.

It's bittersweet.  On one hand I am SO SOOOOOOO happy to be done with that chapter of our lives. The weight of this whole house buying/selling/owning more than one property was a lot to bear.  Not to mention we have been preparing for this move in one way or another for yeeeeaaaaaars now.  Years.  There was a lot of blood, sweat, and tears that went into the sale of that house and it hasn't been our home for several months now, even before our actual move, really, considering the packing and preparing that went on.

At the same time, I'm a little sad to close the book on that chapter of our lives.  That was our home for nearly 9 years.  When we bought that house we weren't even engaged yet.  That house saw us get engaged, married, and bring home two babies.  It was home.

It's also exciting to move on to a new chapter.  Being on the other side of this mess makes me feel even more grateful that we made the move and put in all that work.  It was worth it in the end.  It still doesn't quite feel like home here, but I know that it will eventually.  We have lots of work ahead of us until it will feel as much like home as our old house, but we have time (and space!  So much more space!)

Closing out our eventful week (or two days, really...), Saturday we went and bought me a new car!

Say hello to mom car 2.0

The purchase was planned-ish.  I've been putting off buying a new car for a while now.  My old car is very clearly reaching the end of it's life and I've just been pretending that it's not because that's what I do when I don't want to deal with things until I have to.  Obviously we have been trying to avoid major purchases considering the house situation.  Well, some expensive repairs came up and we weren't about to sink more money into the car so it was time.  We've been shopping for a few weeks (and I've been borrowing my mom's car!) and Saturday we brought this pretty Dodge Charger home to stay.  Yay!

So yeah, we've had just a few things going on.  I'm hoping that's the end of excitement around here for a while.  I (and our poor savings account) need some time to recover and settle in with the changes we have had.


Here's what we're eating this week:


Sunday:  Grilled Hot Dogs with Sweet Corn and Watermelon

Monday:  BBQ Chicken Quinoa Salad

Tuesday:  Grilled Chicken Fajitas

Wednesday:  Caprese Panzanella Salad

Thursday:  Leftovers

Friday & Saturday: Out


I'm linked at Menu Plan Monday hosted by OrgJunkie.com