A crazy week

The process of buying and selling a house is not for the faint of heart. Dang it is so much work, most of which has fallen on poor Phil since a lot of it required manual labor/heavy lifting. So he took on the physical work while I handled caring for Paul. That said, I know we are lucky to be able to buy a house before selling ours so we can declutter/move things to the new house!

We moved a lot of stuff out of our house on Saturday. This before and after picture doesn't do it justice but gives you an idea of how much got moved out. Not pictured is the office which was full of furniture from upstairs/other areas of the house - the office is now empty.

Our house will get staged this week, photos will be taken on Wednesday after the cleaners come through and it goes on the market on Thursday. We will head to the lake after work on Thursday and hope/pray that our house sells that weekend. If it doesn't, we'll allow showings up until 6:30pm on week nights and will either hang out with friends or at the new house until Paul's bedtime. I don't think anyone would want to see the house after 6:30 on a week night anyways since it's very dark at that point, especially after "falling back" this past weekend.

We've decided to replace the upstairs carpet in the new house so all the stuff we moved out of our current home is sitting in the living room of the new place. We meet with the carpet people on Thursday afternoon and hopefully the new carpet can be installed ASAP so we can empty out the living room before the big move.

So our current house feels empty/echoy and our new house feels like a hot mess. For a type-A person who craves order, this all makes me feel kind of "twitchy." But I am reminding myself that 2 weeks from Friday, we'll fully move into the new house and can get settled! I don't like to wish time away but I would like to go to bed and wake up on Thanksgiving when we are moved/settled into our new house. I say settled because we are the kind of people who unpack right away! Plus since we rented boxes for the move, we don't have the option to pile them up - they need to be emptied within a week of moving so they can be picked up by the company that provides them.

One fun positive is that we went shopping for a new guest bed/headboard for the guest room. It will be delivered at the new house on 11/16 so my parents can stay there the weekend of Thanksgiving. I'm so excited to have a dedicated guest room/bathroom as we have a lot of out of town family/friends. It was very hard to host people in our tiny current home but now we are set up well to host family!

So in short, send us allll the good vibes that our (adorable) house sells this weekend so we can focus on the move! I'm looking forward to a weekend of relaxation at the lake - especially for Phil as he has not relaxed much in the last 6 weeks! We'll get some extra sleep since my mom can help with Paul in the morning and we'll be well-fed by my mom! I'll talk to you on the other side of this week/weekend - hopefully I'll have good news to share next week!

We Found a House - Finally!

I was beginning to feel like this day would never come, but we finally found a house! Last week was quite the whirlwind. Our realtor texted me on Monday afternoon to let me know a listing that was a good fit for us came on the market. We were free that evening so went to see it at 5. After looking at houses for 2 years, we quickly know when a house is right for us - and this one was! While it's a 1925 home (most homes we look at are built in the early 1900s), it had newer windows, forced air heat (many homes had a boiler heat system which we hoping to avoid), central air, and a great layout. The house was significantly renovated about 11 years ago so that's why it has newer windows and some modern updates like forced air heat.

After seeing the house, we talked it over and decided to make an offer that evening. We figured the owners would wait to accept it until the following day as they had more showings set up on Tuesday. But they ended up accepting the offer that night! They have 2 kids under 3 and didn't want to put up with more showings. We also had offered a bit over asking price so came in with a strong offer.

The photos below are a bit blurry but give  you an idea of what the house looks like.

It's a 2-story home with great curb appeal. While I love the look of stucco, the vinyl siding is much more low maintenance. I love the window boxes!

The house is about 2,500 square feet. We wanted to stay below 3,000 square feet and were hoping to stay in the 2,100 to 2,500 area. We like that the main level has a very open floor plan and is bright and sunny. The windows also have plantation blind window treatments which is another nice perk!

We also really liked the kitchen. Down the road, I will probably hire someone to paint the cabinets white as I don't love the 2-toned darker brown/cream color. But that's something we'll tackle several years down the road.

The kitchen opens up to a dining room and there is a little window seat area in between the kitchen and dining area with built-in shelves.

Upstairs, there are 3 bedrooms. The master bedroom has a walk-in closet and a master bath which is another rare feature in an older home! We were hoping for 3 bedrooms upstairs as we are hoping/planning to have 2 kids so they will each have their own room. Additionally, there is a guest room and bathroom in the (finished) basement as well as a family room area down there. It will be nice to have a guest suite for my parents since they don't live locally!

The backyard is really nice as well. There  is a deck off the dining room and a stamped concrete patio that the sellers put in a couple of years ago.

After looking at houses for 2 years, we knew no house would be perfect. So the "not ideal" aspect of the house is that it's on a hill. So we'll have to walk down some stairs to get to the garage. We have the corner lot so Phil will have to do a lot of snow removal and since we are on a hill, the sidewalk on the north side is on a hill... We have a corner lot now so he's used to moving a lot of snow but the hill/slope of the sidewalk will add a challenge!  I told him that Paul can help him in 10 years or so! ;)

Also, the garage is much smaller than our current garage. It's a 2-stall garage but it's going to be a tight fit for our 2 cars. But that is city living for you. Garages in south Minneapolis are smaller and you access them through the alley. We'll have to add some sort of storage shed for things like our lawn mower, snow blower, stroller, etc.

We've got a hectic 2 months ahead between buying this house and selling our home. Phil doesn't like change or spending money so buying a house is, well, a nightmare for him. I'm hoping he feels less anxious once we are in the house. I think anticipating change is always worse than just dealing with it. But by Thanksgiving, we should be pretty settled!! Outside of updating some of the paint colors, the house is very turnkey so that is another nice perk.

I'm hoping we love this house so much that we stay here until our kids are done with high school but we'll see what happens over the years to come!

Weekend Highs and Lows

Happy Monday friends. There were some highs and lows, but all in all, it was a pretty good weekend. Not one I'd really want to re-live, though. Ha. Here is a summary of the highs and lows! I'll start with the lower points and end with the highs!

Lows:
- Assembling this God-forsaken water table. OMG. The company that designed this did NOT consult parents or have anyone attempt to put this thing together. It was horrible to put together. You had to screw a lot of things together but they did not pre-drill the parts so it was difficult to get things properly lined up and took a lot of elbow grease to assemble. About half way through, Phil got out his drill and pre-drilled the plastic to make these easier to screw together. I pity any single parent who tries to assemble this because it definitely a two-person job.

- House hunting angst. Oh man, I will save you the long, drawn-out story about our house search but suffice it to say that after looking for a house for 22 months, Phil changed his mind about the area we are targeting. We were looking at 2 different neighborhoods but after seeing a (beautiful) house in one of those neighborhoods on Friday, he decided to just doesn't want to live there. I was prepared to convince him to make an offer as this house had so much of what we want in a house and the owners have taken such good care of it.

- Paul has a cold and was especially clingy at various points of the weekend. His naps also were not great. Being sick plus not sleeping well is a nasty combination in a toddler.

- I didn't sleep well either due to a multitude of reasons. I went downstairs to read for 20 minutes around 2 or 3 am the last 3 nights after tossing and turning for 30+ minutes. Leaving the bedroom to read helped but that's the last thing I want to be doing at that time of night.

Highs:

- On Saturday morning we went for a long family walk after having a big talk about our house hunt. Honestly, I did not want Phil to come on this walk with me and Paul because I was so frustrated with him. But the 90+ minute walk was very good for us. We walked through the neighborhood we have agreed to focus on and when we got back home, I felt much better about things. Phil felt so bad about the house hunting process and how difficult he's been. I knew he felt really bad when he said, "hey, you should take a picture of Paul and me." Phil HATES having his photo taken so he never suggests that I take a photo of him!

- Phil also agreed to increase our price range for our house search which will give us a better chance of finding what we are looking for. Our price range is still well below what we can afford so we are not stretching ourselves by increasing our price range.

- He also agreed that we can hire a house cleaner. This is something I've wanted to do since having Paul but he always felt our house was small enough that we could clean it ourselves. But this weekend he conceded on this. I could not text my previous house cleaner fast enough. Ha. They are coming on Tuesday. I am ridiculously excited about having our house cleaned by someone else. We are gone 50+ hours/week between working and commuting and the weekends feel so busy with chasing a toddler around. It's going to be a game-changer to have a house cleaner again.

- Paul played with the water table on Saturday morning and he loved it. Seeing that smile made the awful assembly worth it!

- Paul and I had a play date with 2 other moms and their kiddos on Sunday morning. We went to a park that also had a little wading pool. It was so hot and humid so we spent most of our time in the pool. We were too busy wrangling our kids to take any photos!

- I also had a fun girls dinner on Sunday evening with 3 college friends. Paul was very crabby and whiny so I was not sad to head out and miss the tail end of his day. ;) But I left at 5:30 and he goes to bed at 6:30 so Phil only solo-parented for an hour, and a good chunk of that time was spent feeding him dinner.

Writing this out was helpful as there were more highs than lows. It's hard to properly convey how frustrating our house-hunting process has been but I feel like Phil and I made some progress this weekend and I'm hopeful that narrowing our search and increasing our price range will result in us finding the right house for us. I will be so glad when we find a house and can be done looking. People will often say how fun it is to house hunt. I do not agree at all, but inventory is so low and we are looking for something very specific so that makes our house search more challenging! I'm trying to trust it will all work out! Luckily our current house is just fine but once we get pregnant with a 2nd child, we'll really need to find something as our house is too small for 2 kids.

What were some of the highs and lows of your weekend?

Weekend Recap

Gosh it's been a long time since I did a weekend recap, but we actually had plans each day of the weekend so I have something to talk about for a change!


On Friday night we met our realtor at a house that was coming on the market soon. It checked all of our boxes and I really, really loved the location and the layout. But the basement smelled really musty and the seller's disclosure indicated that there had been water damage. The seller said it was remedied but Phil did not think it was properly remedied since it smelled so strongly.

Snuggling with my little man while he drank his pre-bed bottle

After sleeping on it, on Saturday morning we decided not to submit an offer. Water damage can cause major issues and we didn't want to take on the risk of the future repairs that might be needed down the road. Plus the house didn't have a "true" second bathroom with a bathtub/shower. The 2nd shower was in the basement but it wasn't in a closed off area - it was in the laundry room area so it would need work to make it a true second bathroom with a shower. I was disappointed that the house didn't work out because I loved the layout but I know it's better to be patient and wait for the right house to come along.


Later that morning I was supposed to meet up with a former marathon training partner for a walk with our boys who are only 3 days apart. But it was super humid and already in the upper 80s so we opted to meet at a coffee shop instead. Paul does not handle the heat and humidity well so I knew that he would not be happy on a 3-mile walk! It was really fun to catch up and watch the boys interact. Paul looks soooo petite compared to Lochlan, though, as he's 99th percentile for height and has about 5 pounds on Paul.

Future running partners!

On Saturday afternoon, we tried another solid before putting Paul down for his 2nd nap. This time we tried yogurt. As you can see, he was not a fan but he at least swallowed some of it which is more than I can say about the sweet potatoes and oatmeal we tried the previous 2 weekends! I'm thinking/hoping he'll enjoy foods that he can feed himself but he needs to be sitting up on his own before we can let him feed himself bits of food. Hopefully he masters that skill soon as puréed foods or foods that you feed him on a spoon are clearly not a hit.

Must you torture me?

Why, mom, why?

While Paul napped, Phil and I team-cleaned the house. After his nap, he spent a lot of time rolling around and playing with toys on his blanket. He's gotten way more interested in Oscar lately and she's been getting closer and closer to him.

On Sunday morning we got together with some of Phil's high school friends. It was supposed to be a baby shower for a HS friend and her husband, but she ended up having her baby at 35 weeks last week due to preeclampsia. We decided to get together even though the new parents couldn't be there as we hadn't seen this group of friends in quite awhile. It was fun to catch up over a yummy brunch. There were 3 other kids ranging from 1 to 4 years old. Paul had fun watching them as he loves other kids!


On Sunday afternoon Phil went golfing with one of his HS friends and Paul and I hung out at home. We both napped and I watched the Vikings tie with the Packers. Our kicker had a horrible game and missed a 35 yard field goal with seconds left in overtime. Doh!


When Paul got up, he played in his jumper for quite awhile. He loves this toy so much! Our friends lent it to us. We've been so lucky to be on the receiving end of lots of borrowed items which we really appreciate!

We also worked on sitting up as this is a skill Paul has struggled with due to his big head! Ha!

So much personality!

For dinner on Sunday evening, I made this Instant Pot Wild Rice Soup. It may have been 90F and super humid, but it was fall in my kitchen. If you have an instant pot, I highly recommend this recipe as it was super easy. I added 2 chicken breast and left out the mushrooms since Phil doesn't like mushroom (womp womp). The chicken breast fell apart and made the soup extra hearty. I had to add an extra 1.5 cups of broth to thin out the soup since the shredded chicken made it extra thick. It was easy and delicious!

After dinner, I pumped, read for a bit, and went to bed. I was tired after a full but fun weekend!


What did you do this past weekend? Has the weather been unseasonably hot where you are? It's going to cool off this week and I CAN'T WAIT. I'm so over heat and humidity.