Moving to the South Side

It all happened so fast.  We now own two houses.

My grandmother passed away three months ago.  My uncle was living in her house, but a few weeks ago he moved to another place.  We wrote an offer to purchase my grandmother's house from the estate a couple of weeks ago.  We had the closing yesterday, so now it's ours!

When will we move?  Well, There's quite a bit of cleaning that needs to get done at the new house, so as soon as that gets done, I will start to gradually move the 'non-essentials' over the course of probably a week.  Then we'll take a day probably the weekend after labor day and move all the big stuff.

We still have a few things left to do on our current house, but it makes more sense to finish them after we are moved out. [refinishing floors, refinishing kitchen cupboards, and a few little things.] 

Where will we be moving?  We'll be on the south side of Eau Claire, but still in town.  Between Golf Rd. and Hamilton Ave. not far from State St.  For the first time in my life I will live on the 'south side' of Eau Claire.  Our new house will be just 2 miles from our storage shed where Kevin goes every day.  We'll be much closer to where I do most of my grocery shopping, and we'll still be close to a Menards.

The house needs quite a bit of work.  Another fixer-upper you might say.  We have so many ideas of things we want to do, and sometimes stay up late drawing maps of the house, and talking about all of our ideas.

At first I was sad to be leaving our current home just when we've gotten it mostly fixed up and nice.  Now I am just so excited to have a bigger place (going from a 2bed 1bath to a 3bed 4bath) with a bigger yard, and the closest neighbors are across the street instead of 10' from our bedroom window. 

What will happen to our current home?  We're hoping to have everything finished and put it on the market by the end of September.  We can't actually sell it until Feb. 1st 2012 because we took the first time home buyer tax credit.  We just want to get it up sooner so that people can see it before winter.  If someone were interested in renting it, we may consider that option until we are able to sell it.

So, needless to say, we have a crazy couple of weeks coming up.  I've started boxing a few things up and sorting things to get rid of.  I forgot how much work it is to move.  When we moved before it was just Kevin and I and we were going from a small apartment that couldn't hold much and we were newly married so we didn't have much either.  Now we have 2 kids and a house + garage full of stuff.  Let the fun begin!

Cutest Kid or Facebook Junkie?

So, Evelyn didn't win the cutest kid contest.  Another girl (who was cute too) won by almost 30 votes.  Kevin and I were talking about the results the other day, and decided that this other girl only won because her parents must be the kind of facebookers that are friends with everyone they ever met or knew in their entire lives.  Kevin and I on the other hand, have both purged our friends (a couple of times) and limit them to people we are actually currently friends with.  Kevin has 222 friends and I have 158.  103 of those are friends we share.  In order for us to have won the contest, we would have had to have gotten every one of our mutual friends to like Evelyn's photo.  Most of the people we are friends with are not facebook junkies either, and don't like other pages just because one of their friends tell them to.

I pretty much knew going into it that we wouldn't win, but thought I would give it a shot anyway.  It was a good ploy for the photographer to get lots of people to like her page.  Before the contest when I looked at her page, 175 people liked it.  Now there are over 500 people connected to her page.  At any rate, Evelyn's still the cutest in our book (besides her sister of course).  And we wonder how she would do in a contest judged by people completely unrelated to the children.  Guess we'll never know.

Those Eyes

Yesterday I stopped and found myself staring into Evelyn's eyes.  She was goofing around and being silly, and I noticed the joy and excitement that shone through her eyes.  I had to just stop and stare into her eyes for about 5 minutes while she played.  I guess I've never really taken the time to just sit and look into her eyes - those beautiful eyes that every stranger comments about.

Since really noticing her eyes yesterday, I have been watching them more closely.  They are such a means of expression.  The way they well up with tears when she is hurt or upset, the way they light up when Daddy comes home or treats are mentioned, the way joy and excitement shine through them, the way she discerningly stares at a stranger or something unfamiliar, they way they look at you when she gives a hug or kiss.

Her eyes show a lot.  If she got enough sleep, if she's trying to tease, if she likes something, if she doesn't like something, if she's not sure about something, if she's ready for bed.  I could go on and on.  I guess I just haven't taken the time to enjoy some of the little things about Evelyn, like her eyes, and now that I have I really enjoy it.