Home, Sweet Home

We are now in the process of buying this house.

I am about to go to the inspection. It has everything we wanted in a house- including room to grow. Except one thing- oh yeah- we went out of our price range. It was very uncomfortable for me to agree to that, so we will see how it goes.

Unfortunately for Ryan, its not a super-manly ranch with potential to be his ultra-modern dreamhouse. Its a little more traditional than that, but luckily so for resale value (Just in case the whole budgeting our money thing doesn't work out for us)

Somebody ain't livin' right.

The house sold yesterday! And we weren't the buyers! We were supposed to put in our offer this morning, and as of yesterday it is under contract.

So. Who wants to go househunting for me?

Hey you guys

Hi friends! I thought I should tell you the big news- we actually CLOSED on our Pennsylvania house last week. What a relief!

As for finding a new house here, we are still looking for one homely enough for us. So if you know of any homes around here for sale, let us know. We are looking for something that smells like old people and needs lots of work... Our real requirements are: decent neighborhood, big yard, place for ryan to make lots of noise (workshop or garage), and cheap enough that we can actually buy it.

Ok, fine...here's our top pick of the moment. It's kind of the American Dream if you dream in the year 1978. The good news is- they got rid of the rank that I smelled the first time we saw the house (apparently there was a dead bird in the chimney, and they tried to cover up the scent with some nasty air freshener- even worse!)

we might make an offer on it, but that doesn't mean much these days. This would be the 4th home we would be making an offer on. Thank goodness those other ones fell through, because this might not look like much but check out the 2-car garage on one side, and the drive-in 1700 square foot basement/workshop. I mean, who even cares what the interior looks like? Are you with me, ladies?

A note to Ryan: disregard any sarcasm in this post. Really, I want the house. Badly. I know you can fix it up pretty.

Recap

Since I've been so bad about blogging lately, here's a little recap in pictures from the last couple of months.

Starting with this week's pictures. If finally started to cool off here the past couple of weeks, so ava takes advantage of a chance to wear a coat. She and Win are still best friends. Her favorite phrase is "Win's coming soon" which she says day and night. And the day was perfect for a game of family football. Here Ryan and Chase discuss strategies....or something.



Ava was a fairy for the Trunk or Treat at church, then since she has 2 costumes, she was a witch on halloween night. Those pictures to come.
And below, is Ava's second birthday. She turned 2 on september 21st. She was so cute and excited opening her presents, including her shirt and baby stroller.

Baby X and His Manhood

I decided to post the results of our ultrasound ( a boy, in case you couldn't tell from the second picture) Isn't he cute? Stay tuned for a baby name poll, if I can ever figure out how to do that.

No Pictures, just excuses.

so I don't have any pictures for you today. I mean I have some but they are in a camera at Toni's house. And even if they were here I might be too lazy to transfer them to the computer with all our pictures, then transfer them upstairs to the only computer with internet access right now (ryans). Blogging has gotten so complicated lately for me.

Really, though, some day I will get around to

I just wanted to give you all the updates on each of us since we haven't been keeping in touch lately.

All of us wish our house in PA would sell. I'm sure my parents wish it would, too, so we can move out of their house someday. We are currently averaging 1 offer a week, we just received our 4th offer and we are hoping to receive a 5th offer, too. Unfortunately, for all the activity on the house, nothing is actually working out. we have people bidding low because they can't afford the house, bidding low because they think that because the real estate market is bad enough that we will give away our house, people making a reasonable bid then getting scared away by a leaky roof.....we shall see what happens with #4 and hopefully #5.

Ryan returned home from visiting Utah for his mom's birthday and his cousins wedding. He had a fantastic time and, as is always the case when he spends a little time in his home state, has decided we should move there. He is working from home right now, which we love. And we aren't moving.

I am feeling good in the 2nd trimester and I can't wait for my ultrasound tomorrow to find out what we are having. I also caved to wearing maternity clothes last week. much more comfortable.

Ava is cuter than ever. She is still loving NC and still shrieks with joy whenever she sees her cousins (which is every day).

She has also been doing her best to pee anywhere but the potty. The potty training in a day method turned into 3 days for us, during which ava made no progress at all (but she managed to pee on every pair of pants I own). I got tired of sitting within 18 inches of a potty all day, so now we have daily training "sessions", which also yield no results. This is the drill: when she has to go, she asks for a diaper. Then I say no, and between 5 and 45 minutes later, she gets frantic and starts peeing on me or the floor. usually me. So, midstream, I set her on the potty and then she gets a reward. I thought I should try to do this now, before I have a newborn to deal with, but this is much harder than I expected.

guess who peed on the potty?

ta-da! she peed on the potty. But no, I did not take a picture while she peed. she has had only one success (to many, many accidents). This photo shoot was during a less-than-fruitful attempt.

An extended Vacation

For those of you who don't know...we are here in NC for good now. Ryan started his job almost 2 weeks ago and he is loving it. How could we leave when the beaches look like this?


Here is Ava at the 4th of july parade.







































Cute Noelle!

Reunion

I've been on blogging hiatus for quite a while now. Here's a brief overview of what we've been doing. First, we came down to NC for a family reunion.
The reunion was complete with friendship,
crazy family members,
babies, matching T-shirts
and a clown called Peppermint.

Myrtle Beach

Ryan's family reunion this year was at Myrtle Beach! It was the best one yet, in my opinion. And Ava's.

Ava's new tat

This week in pictures

This week Ava started looking old

And driving
We went out on Memorial Day for coconut ice cream on waffles with rasberry sauce, my new favorite thing in our town. Ava likes it when we make a fort out of the menus.

I tried all day to get a picture of her with full view of her little orphan annie dress, and this is all I came up with. She's a busy girl with no time for photoshoots.

Has there ever been a cooler dad?

We had front-row seats to the local Cherry Blossom Festival Parade on saturday. Later that day we went to the actual festival and partook of delicious italian specialties.

Sunday we went for a family stroll only to discover that the festivities were still going on. Ava played with all the local puppies and we caught a little bit of the talent show, but then a 9-year old boy lip synching to some hillary duff song made ryan uncomfortable so we had to leave.

The Good-bye bath

I didn't even have to edit these pitures. Nonchalantly holding toys or hands in the right spot, or even leaning over at just the right angle, these are two discreet kids.

I didn't Cut My Hair
So there are no "after" pictures. But there is an endless supply of cute pictures of Ava.

I am getting my hair trimmed tomorrow to tide me over until I go to North Carolina and I can go to Salon Blu.

Walking up and down the block never gets old!