Family Fuller

We had the inspection on our new house and a few minor issues came up. There are other issues we already knew about – knob and tube wiring, old plumbing, etc. We are getting some estimates to fix the problems but we don’t think it will stop the sale of the house or anything.

The house is located in an area called Loyal Heights, which is just north of Ballard in North Seattle. It is just a couple blocks away from Colin’s preschool and elementary school. It has 3 bedrooms/2 baths, with a partial basement and great yard. Here are some pictures:

This is looking down the street facing south. Our house is down across from the white car.
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The front yard (I just realized I didn’t take a picture of the whole front of the house)

The front porch and side yard

The living room from the front door – notice the mirror over the fireplace, just like in our A2 house.

The dining room off the living room

The kitchen – kind of an awkward, long shape – but it has a dishwasher!!!

Basement family room. The water heater and washer/dryer are to the right.

Basement shop/storage room.

Colin and the backgammon game.

Colin’s room/office off the kitchen. We are hoping that Colin and Holden might want to share a room in a little while, then we can have an office.

Hallway that comes off Colin’s room.

The boys bathroom

Holden’s room

Hall to our room

Our room

Our bathroom

Backyard and garage – I didn’t get to take any more pictures because the boys were falling apart at this point in the inspection (see next photo after the backyard)

They were both so tired by the end that they both fell asleep – Colin right on the floor

We are very excited to move in – probably in mid/end of October.

We just upgraded to a new camera – and by upgrade, I mean technically a downgrade, sort of. We got a Canon Powershot D800 (I think it’s called) – it’s much smaller than our previous camera, but the image quality is fantastic thus far, so hopefully we should have much better photos going up here in the future (might have to do a side by side comparison to see who wins, Nikon or Canon).

I also wanted to follow my first post in a while by adding in a couple of quotes I’d written down from Colin in that same vacation timeframe, but never posted:

• When we asked him what he wanted for lunch one day: “I want to go to Mexico”
• And upon completely demolishing a piece of watermelon: “I’m a juicy watermelon boy!”

I don’t know where he comes up with this stuff.

We took back our offer after the inspection on the last house. We said we would be willing to buy the house if they reduced the price significantly (by 20%) – of course we never expected them to do that. They said no way, but have since called us back to see if we wanted to negotiate. We don’t – there is so much work, we just can’t imagine paying nearly as much as they want.

We have seen a couple more houses with potential, but the big drawback for me is that in each case there are two bedrooms on the main floor of the house and the third is always in the basement. I really don’t want to be so far away from the kids and I also don’t really want to sleep in a basement. We are slowly learning that if we wanted to have a second floor or a big enough first floor we would have to make a significant increase in our max price. The other option is to have Holden and Colin share a room. We might just have to wait a bit to see if we can find the right house – but it is hard to be patient

We saw Colin’s preschool on Friday, it is very nice – so much to do and learn. If I was Colin I would love it. It is a co-op so I will be working one day a week in the class. I told Colin that and he replied “I want you to come everyday” so it will be hard the first few days I have to drop him off.

Mozart is Colin’s music of the moment. We listen to it EVERY time we get in the car. He keeps humming the first song and asking to hear it over and over. He also likes some of the opera on the CD. He plays his violin all the time at home – with a pen as a bow because I broke the real one. One string also popped off. He gets his little chair and sometimes puts it up on the fireplace and pretends to be in an orchestra. He is always very serious when he plays.

Holden is becoming quite a mover. He scoots and rolls all over the place. The other day I was IM’ing Chuck and Holden was rolling around on the floor when I noticed a missing Sponge Bob sticker. I said to Chuck “I think Holden just ate a Sponge Bob sticker” – joking. However the next day I found the perfectly preserved sticker during a diaper change – so he did in fact eat it. Later that same day I caught him with a big chunk of Sevi fur in his mouth – gross. Baby proofing will be soon.

Mom – this is the picture I thought looked like me when I was little.

Holden had his first turn in the high chair a few days ago. We haven’t started solid foods yet, but we will in the next week or so. I guess we are going to have to let him cry it out soon too because last night was not pretty. I think we were up every hour and Chuck is on his way to London right now so he needed rest and so did I as I am going to have to be the only soother for the next few days.

On top of that our new flat screen TV that we got 2 weeks ago broke. We got the warranty/service plan from Best Buy and they said they could come out to look at it September 10th. September 10th? What did I pay $150 for? So our new TV could sit and I could listen to Colin ask 100 times a day why it wasn’t working for a whole month? So after dropping Chuck off at the airport I lugged the huge box back to Best Buy in the rain with both kids. Since I had to do that I figured we deserved and upgrade so we got the 40 inch instead of the 32. And then the cable was out.

After that I thought we needed to go to Trader Joe’s for some groceries…huge mistake. It was so crowded and not kid friendly at all, unlike the A2 Trader Joes. Colin was running all over saying “how about these? This looks good.” I turned around and he was running his hands all over the raw meat section while nearly getting run over by a cart.

All in all though, Colin was very good all day. In the car he was trying to read something in the back seat and he kept saying very politely “Mommy, could you stop so I can read this?” Finally he said “Mommy it is really hard to read while you are driving and you keep driving. You are making me crazy.”

Colin’s new “sandbox” – idea compliments of my friend Kristin back in A2 – thanks

Chuck took lots of “blog notes” while we were on vacation out east so I will let him blog about that one. I will tackle the move because, and I think Chuck would agree, I had it the hardest being a single mom for about 2/3 weeks.

We got back from our vacation late Sunday night the 15th of July. Chuck’s brother Fletcher happened to be in town then so we spent most of Monday recovering and hanging out with him. Tuesday Chuck spent most of the day getting ready to fly to Seattle to start his job the next day. He left Tuesday night and the house was not packed, so what did I do? Wandered around for 2 days wondering how the hell I was going to pack the whole thing while watching 2 kids, the younger of whom decided he didn’t like to sleep anymore and if he did it was only going to be right next to mommy. So that Friday I drove up north to see my mom.

It was her, let’s just say 39th birthday, and therefore I also brought my 92 year old grandma along for the ride. Oh, and I had to go pick her up, which added 2 hours to the already 5 hour trip. So I drove up north with her, 2 kids and a dog. It went OK until the last hour when Holden cried non-stop. When we got to my moms my grandma said “Colin is very well behaved, but that baby just cries and cries” Never mind he had been in the car for 7 hours. We had a good dinner and true to my mom’s side of the family, my grandma decided to go back home with my aunt the next morning. The rest of the weekend was good, but I was getting increasing freaked out by the amount of packing I had to do. I was going back Monday morning, Chuck got back Wed AM and we had to have the whole house packed and cleaned that night. My mom came to the rescue and drove back down with me to help – thank you mom! (Oh, and a shout out to Amy and Laura for coming over to pack the week before and Jen for taking the kids for a morning – couldn’t have done it without you)

We packed for 2 days. My dad came over on that Tuesday and true to form immediately started packing up the POD we rented. I had to be careful what I put where because if it was in the dining room he grabbed it and put it in the POD. I had to pack for the 2 weeks we had before we left, the temp house we rented and then storage – it was a mess. When Chuck got back we barely even talked about his job because it was work, work, work all day. We closed on the house and in the middle of it all I took Holden to the Dr. I thought he had some swelling in his groin, turns out it was just fat…good way to waste an hour

Through it all I wasn’t emotional, except when my mom left, until that night when my friend Laura came over to take our rug. Colin started getting all upset saying “Don’t. Don’t take my rug. Don’t take it.” “I want to stay. This is my house.” Then I lost it. We still had work to do though so we all pulled it together and cleaned the house. Our friend Dave drove us out to my Dad’s around 9:30 PM. It was a long day.

Chuck got up the next morning and left for Seattle. That was another rough morning because Colin kept saying “Daddy, don’t go. I want to go with you. Stay here, don’t go to Seattle.” Then after he left Colin kept asking me where his daddy was.

Colin, Holden and I stayed at my Dad’s for 10 days. I thought it was going to be hard after that first day, but it ended up being a lot of fun. We got to say goodbye to our friends in Ann Arbor and did fun stuff with Grandpa. Colin went to the tractor show with Grandpa, we went to the Henry Ford Museum, helped Grandpa build his barn and played with cousins in the back yard.

We flew to Seattle on Saturday. The boys were really well behaved on the plane but it was still a very, very long day. Traveling by yourself with a baby and a 3 year old is rough. We practically had to strip in security. They even made Colin take his shoes off. I was sweating buckets by the time we got to the plane. Then I had to hold Holden the whole time and of course there was no place to change him, so I am in the tiny bathroom with Colin straddling Holden who is laying on the top the toilet while I crouch in the space there is left. I was never so happy to see Chuck. Colin was looking for daddy around every corner.

On the ride home Colin kept saying “Oh Seattle has trees. Oh Seattle has houses. How many houses? Daddy, count the houses. Seattle has stop signs. Wow.” When we got to our little rental Sevi greeted us and Colin instantly thought it was her house. So now we have been calling it “Sevi’s house.” We were here for a couple days without furniture and thankfully our friends Colleen and Ian made us dinner that first night. Now we are pretty settled. I still feel like we are on vacation – I can’t believe we live here now, but I am really excited. Yesterday Colin said “I like living in Seattle” and he has barely left the house so far, we haven’t done one entertaining thing yet.

This is our POD – everything we own fit in here, can you believe it? We still got it Chuck – small spaces

I have a lot of little Colinisms and Holden notes but those will have to be another entry…it’s late and I am tired. In the future I would like to post every day if possible…that would be great for the grandparents…I will try

Jess

No ifs, ands, or buts about it, we’ve dropped the ball on the blog. It’s now about 2 months since we’ve posted, but we’ve got some reasonably good excuses. As in we were on the road for vacation for 2+ weeks, then had to get back and pack up the whole house while I went back and forth to start working in Seattle, followed by me driving out to Seattle while Jess stayed with the boys at her Dad’s house, followed by moving into a new place and waiting for our stuff to arrive (it did, yesterday).

So we’re in the process of getting settled in Seattle – we’ll have an internet connection at home on Thursday, so I’d expect a flurry of posts through the rest of August (why am I promising that?). We’ve got several queued up, including a vacation bonanza of pictures and stories, followed by the various ups and downs of the move. And of course Colin is now discovering Seattle, which should provide loads of new material.

Stay tuned.