The Closer You Are

May 15, 2010.  That's the date this photo was taken. Why am I standing in a beautiful meadow, posing for pictures with my daughter? Because I'm actually standing on 1.25 acres of property we had just purchased in a huge master-planned housing development. I was imagining where our new house would sit. I was dreaming of the home where our family, which had ballooned to six people, would live and grow for the foreseeable future. Exciting times those were. Out in that empty lot.

Eventually that empty lot would be excavated to hold the foundation of the house that Julie and I spent months designing as we scrutinized every little detail, making sure it would be perfect for us. And on that foundation a building would be erected over the course of a year while the six of us lived in a bedroom over the garage of Julie's parents' house. And with the help of our friends and family, we finally moved (almost) all of our earthly possessions into that brand new house and got to the task of settling in and making that marvelous new house our home.

And now... we're moving out.  And on.

Shortly after committing to building that perfect home, our family business started getting pulled into the muck of the financial crisis and economic depression. Our timing was horrible. Luckily we were conservative enough in our finances up to that point that we were able to weather the storm for awhile. Throw in some unbelievably high property taxes (like as high as a second mortgage) and it eventually became too much. We loved our house, but there was no joy in dedicating so much of our shrunken income to our living expenses. So almost exactly two years after moving into the house that took so much planning and patience to obtain, we put it on the market. Downsizing was the only option.

Which leads us to now, almost exactly one year after we listed our house for sale. We're in the final weeks of preparing to hand this house over to another family and move into the next house that we'll call home.

We really did painstakingly design every square inch of this house with us and our children in mind. It really is "our" house. In some ways it feels like we've barely lived here, but in other ways it's hard to imagine anything but this house being our home. Despite all that, though it may be surprising to some, leaving this house isn't that big of a deal. It's just a house. A thing. It sheltered us, but it's just brick and stone and wood and cement. The same stuff of which our next house is made.  I care far more about the lives lived inside the house than the house itself.

Plus this gives me all the more reason to dive into my favorite show on television, This Old House. I can't wait to give Julie my list of projects I want to tackle...

Move That Bus!

It's been six months since we started living in a van down by the river.  In that time, we've made some progress on the new house.  Needless to say, we're more and more excited as each new step is completed.

Question of the Week: Small Successes

Every Sunday, the Multiples and More blog poses a "question of the week." This week they want you to "name 5 small successes in your life from the past week." In other words, what were your victories? What did you get right?

Most successes in my life are the direct result of serendipitous luck or divine spousal intervention. I'm sure any successes from the past week were similarly had, but who knows, maybe I did actually accomplish something myself. Let's see what ended up in the win column...

1. Poopless Beds - I wouldn't even call this a small success. This might be our greatest accomplishment of the last six months. The solution was simple: putting Truman and Amelia's zip up pajamas on backwards. (Thank you for that lifesaving tip, Angie. Have you ever considered starting your own blog?) Of course, as the laws of nature require, every action has an opposite and equal reaction. Since the twins can no longer spend their mornings smearing poo all over their beds, they have redirected their efforts towards mastering the art of vacating their cribs with nary a sound. And then of course removing every single item of clothing from their dressers. Every single item. But hey, I'd rather refold clothes than swab shit any day. Oh wait... there was the carpet caca incident... I'll let Julie tell that one. No poop in the bed is still a victory.


2. Showing of the House - We finally had a house showing on Sunday. That's a success in and of itself, but I didn't really have anything to do with it. Getting the house ready for a showing -- now that's a monumental triumph. Technically Julie deserves 95% of the thanks on this win, but I will take a little bit of the credit. Sometimes just staying out of the way and not impeding progress is the best contribution I can make. I'm good at doing the heavy lifting and the jobs that involve power tools. And if a task requires a discerning eye and attention to detail and hours of refinement -- I'm your man. However, if you need brute force, "good enough" cleaning -- like cleaning an entire room from top to bottom in 20 minutes -- I'm the key ingredient in the recipe for failure. For example, consider a bookshelf that needs a touch up. I can't just straighten the books and dust it off. I need to remove all the books, dust and polish, and replace the books organized by subject, author, size and color. So when it comes to preparing our house for a showing, my "help" can easily become a hinderance. This weekend though, I didn't get picky about cleaning projects and I handled the brunt of keeping the kids fed and out of the way. Like I said, Julie gets most of the credit, but I'm still counting it as one of my successes.


3. Answering the Call of Duty - I completed the single player mode in the new Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. I know, awesome, right? It took several hours (though a real gamer could probably complete it in a couple of hours) but I'm old and any game that uses more than two buttons is technically out of my generation's wheelhouse. Now, I know what you're thinking -- beating a video game is a success? Well, yes, it is. The mere fact that I fed, bathed, played with, read to and put to bed the kids and still had time to play a video game is some kind of success. Granted, the time spent in front of the TV could have been spent on the treadmill and my inactivity probably contributed further to my ever increasing atmospheric displacement. Wait, was this a success? Hmmm. Well, I was drinking Michelob Ultra while I shot up the terrorists. I'm counting it. Sorry, my list isn't open to appeals.


4. Page Turning - OK, this is the smallest of victories. I read a few pages of the book I've been trying to tackle for months. To a normal human this would not be a success, but seeing as how I go weeks or months without reading anything beyond my computer monitor, I'm definitely counting a few turned pages as a positive. I'll be working on this more and more in the coming weeks. I used to be an avid reader, back in the day, but unfortunately it's an indulgence that's fallen by the wayside. In fact, I read so little now that even when I do set aside time to read, I find myself rereading pages two and three times because I can't stay focused. I've lost the ability to shut down and immerse myself in a book. My mind constantly wanders. I'll get back there, though. Someday.


5. Early to Bed - This was an unexpected success. Despite years of bad parenting, Jameson went to bed early (before 9:00) twice this week. Hopefully this is an oft repeated success. Jameson is our hard one to get to sleep at night. He's a night owl, like his mom and dad. Let's face it, he's our first born and we didn't know what the hell we were doing in the early parenting days. Kids need schedules? What? That's crazy talk! Well, anyway, Jameson has had the privilege of being our guinea pig offspring and now routinely stays up until ten or eleven o'clock at night. Sometimes later. Things have progressively gotten better. He goes to sleep much quicker than he used to (in the early days it would sometimes take over an hour to get the kid to sleep) and we're slowly moving up his bedtime. That's a good thing for us and eventually it's going to be a necessity once he starts school. So two nights this week asleep before nine o'clock is definitely a success.

So what an awesome week, eh? Can't wait to see what earth shattering accomplishments I'll be bragging about next week. Maybe it will include more treadmill and less gaming.

Third Time's a Charm

We've got the land. Now we need to sell the house.

If there's going to be a house here...


...there's a lot of this to do here.

Real Estate Demand on the Rise

There is one real estate area that has been completely unaffected by the current economic slump. In fact, demand for parcels in this market have never been higher, though there are noticeable spikes during story time. This red hot market, of course, is my lap.

House Update

Not coming to see our house isn't good enough anymore. We've pretty much gotten used to the fact that no one wants to come see our house. The Non-Buyers out there have had to step up their game a little bit. Last Thursday, we had a viewing scheduled. These were going to be the first people to actually see our house since we listed it. We were excited. We called for back up. We cleaned the house from top to bottom. We rearranged our schedules and made special babysitting arrangements. We went to bed late and got up early to make sure everything was perfect. It was like we were getting ready for prom with the slight hope we might get lucky.

And then they cancelled on us a couple hours before the showing.

Bravo, Mr. and Mrs. Non-Buyer. Bravo. You really got us that time.

At least we had a clean house. For a couple of days.

House Update

Offer Accepted... Now What?

Good news: our offer on the house we want was accepted by the seller. Now we just need to sell our house... FAST. I don't know if that's possible in this market, but we'll hope for the best. Thanks to everyone for the crossed fingers, prayers and sacrificial chickens. We may need to move on to sacrificial goats for this next phase.

House Update

We put an offer on a house today. Unfortunately, we had to put a contingency in the contract because we haven't even put our current house on the market yet, let alone sold it. We made a good offer, just a few thousand less than the asking price. The house is for sale by a woman who apparently just got done with a nasty divorce and needs to downsize. We've concluded that the home is priced drastically below its market value and we get the sense that she wants to be done with the sale ASAP. When I say "below its market value," I mean WAY BELOW. Let me put it this way, this house has almost twice the square footage of every other house we've considered in our price range. Without our house on the market, getting our offer accepted  will be tough, but from what we've seen lately, most buyers are throwing out low ball offers even if a house is priced where it should be to begin with. Hopefully she'll appreciate that we're making a serious offer up front. We'll find out by 5:00 on Wednesday if that's the case. Even if she accepts it, with this being a contingent offer, we need to get our house sold NOW so someone else doesn't swoop in and steal this bargain. Julie won't let me link to the actual listing for you all to check out. If we actually buy the house, she doesn't want all the serial killers in my blog readership to know where we live. I'll at least post a picture, though.

House Hunting, Part Deux

About this time in 2007 we decided we should start looking for a new house. We always knew we'd eventually need something bigger than our current three bedrooms, and with twins on the way that time was coming sooner rather than later. We thought it would be a relatively simple process and hoped to find a new house and sell our current one all before the twins were born. Well, as everyone knows, the market collapsed and we didn't exactly have buyers flocking to our property. After looking and looking for a new house. And looking. And loooooooking. We decided our best option was to build with Beazer in a master planned community in what we considered the ideal location in the Dayton area. We couldn't find an existing home that we were both excited about, so building seemed like the best choice. Plus, building gave us more time to sell our house and save up for the down payment. In addition, Beazer gave us an option in our contract to back out of the purchase if we hadn't sold our home. They in turn had the option to try to sell the house on the open market while it was being built (still giving us the first right of refusal should they receive an offer from someone else). Well, long story short, the contract option allowed us to back out of the sale when Beazer suddenly decided to pull out of Ohio entirely. That was great news for us. Not so for the dozen or so people that had just built houses there on what was supposed to be a 600 acre, 900 home community. Who knows what will happen to it now...

Anyway, we were glad to be out of the whole deal. Wintertime with a two year old and newborn twins is NOT the time to be trying to buy and sell houses. We yanked our house off the market and basically went into hibernation mode concerning real estate. Now that things are beginning to thaw, we're jumping back in the mix with a new strategy (and hopefully better results). We ditched our agent (and the commission expense) and decided to sell our house on our own. We'll funnel that savings into our list price and hopefully speed up the selling process. We haven't listed it yet, but, putting the cart before the horse, we've already been looking at houses for almost a month now. We spend hours and hours every week combing through online listings. Every Sunday we hit the road and try to visit a half dozen or so open houses.

Which leads us to tonight's blog. I had in my head the idea that I would be blogging today about how impossible it is to find the house. I can't imagine how many houses we've looked at in the last twelve months. Sixty? Seventy? Over one hundred? I wouldn't doubt it. But in all our looking, we've never found a house where we've walked in and thought, "this is it." We've found a handful of houses that we thought were "it," but we always seemed to have to talk ourselves into thinking it. In the end, usually after "sleeping on it," we never convinced ourselves to the point that we'd actually make an offer. It can actually get quite depressing. Never finding a house we both really liked is what led to signing the contract with Beazer originally. And it's actually how we ended up in this house when we built it in 2004. In fact, we often lament that our fantasy solution would be to add a bedroom to this house and move the whole thing further north, closer to Julie's work and both our families. We love this house, but apparently we were never going to find something comparable in the right location.

So tonight's blog was supposed to be a question to all of you out here on the internets. Is it possible to find the "perfect" house? There has always been a deal breaking flaw with every house we research. No yard. No privacy. Bedrooms too small. No basement. Poltergeists. No office. Kitchen too small. Bad smells. Poor construction. Weird looking neighbors. Water leaks. Power lines. I could go on. We're we being too picky? Probably. I thought maybe our dream home just existed out of our price range, but even that wasn't true. I looked out of our price range and still no dream house, just more disappointments but with more square footage and bigger price tags. So does the house exist? All indications were that it didn't.

Until today.

Almost on a whim we decided to look at a house at the very top of our price range. It's listed at a price significantly higher than anything else we've considered to date. Up until now, it seemed like a lower price house was our best option because then we could invest more money in making it our "ideal" house. We were wrong. Our best option is the house we saw today. Unlike every other house we've ever looked at, we walked to our car today with both of us saying, "we have to buy this house." This is it.

So now we have to find a way to buy it. We've got to get pre-approved again. We have to get the house inspected. We have to get our house sold. We have to come up with the 20% down. And, of course, we have to get the owners to accept our offer. Things aren't exactly in the bag.

We're not even close to the finish line, but at least we've finally found a house we really, really want. So keep your fingers crossed for us. Say a little prayer. Sacrifice a chicken. Whatever it takes.

I'll keep you posted.

Good News and Bad News

The good news is: We sold our house.

The bad news is:  We sold the wrong one.

Huh???

For those that don't know, for the last several months we've been having a house built by Beazer in a new development in Centerville. We had a contingency in our contract that said we would not close on this new house unless we had sold our current house. This also meant that after the initial ninety days of the contract, Beazer had the option to put the house we were building on the market if we hadn't closed yet. If they got an offer, we would get a first right of refusal, meaning we could commit to buying the house ourselves before Beazer would accept the offer they received on the market.

Well Beazer called today. Once they got the drywall up, they listed the house for sale and already received an offer. With our current home nowhere close to being sold, we had to let them take the offer they received. Apparently we had designed a pretty sweet house. It's on almost an acre, in Centerville's school district and in a potentially great development. We're very disappointed to see it go, but it's for the better. Getting our current house sold has been hanging over our heads since the twins were born and it didn't seem like we were making any progress. This will give us time to ride out the housing downturn a little, save more for a down payment and take our time looking for another house. But it's still disappointing. Sigh.

House Building

Whether we're ready or not, construction has begun on the new house. Too bad we've only had three people come see our current house that has been on the market for 5 months.

Here's the progress:

Babies, Houses and Robert Goulet

Julie went to the hospital (Miami Valley) this morning with contractions and it seems to be the "real deal" this time. They are working hard to hold off delivery for at least another 48 hours to allow some medication to take affect that will help the babies if they do in fact come early. (We're currently at 32 1/2 weeks.) The twins could be here any time now, but it would be great if they can hold off for another couple weeks. We'll see. More details later.

Of course, we also had our first house showing in months today. Haven't heard from our realtor how it went. We're averaging about one viewing every two months...

Oh and of course we're also supposed to meet with our builder tomorrow because they're ready to start framing our new house. Damn you Murphy and your stupid law!!!

And God bless Robert Goulet.

I'll try to keep you posted.  Peace out.

It's Been Hectic

It's been awhile since the last blog, but with good reason. The pregnancy, the house, the race, the two year old and life in general have kept me extremely busy. Things really got thrown out of whack a couple weeks ago when Julie had to go the hospital because of labor pains. We hadn't even hit the 24-week mark, so it was way, way, way too early for these twins to be arriving. After a night in the hospital, lots of tests and a fair amount of worrying, Julie was dismissed with little more than advice to take it easy. As stressful as it was, I cannot complain one bit about the outcome. Thank God the babies didn't come that day. The good news now is we're now approaching 26 weeks and while less than ideal, early labor would have much different implications than it did the day we went to the hospital. We're not in the clear yet (Julie's being tested for gestational diabetes tomorrow), but I'm growing more and more confident that she's going to make it to at least 37 weeks (full term). It's stressful, but each week seems like another milestone.

On the house front, we've been on the market for over a month and a total of two people have seen our house.  I'd say there's a 5% chance we're moving this year and I'd put the over/under date somewhere in March of 2008.  I'm looking forward to moving, but I can't complain. We've got a nice roof over our heads as is.

The big issue this week is the half-marathon.  My training got derailed during the baby chaos mentioned above.  My race is this Saturday (13.1 miles), but until this past Sunday, I hadn't run in two and a half weeks.  The good news is that I was able to go just over 8 miles Sunday morning pretty comfortably.  The bad news is that 5 miles short of what I've got to do this weekend.  I took Monday and Tuesday off this week and I hope to do some easy running Wednesday and Thursday as my final prep.  If I can complete the race in under 2.5 hours (my original goal) I will be extremely satisfied.  If I just finish the race, I will still consider it a success.  Wish me luck.

On top of all this, Jameson is the real focus right now.  Since Mom has had to make some lifestyle changes to take care of herself and the twins, it's changed my role with Jameson. The two of us have spent more time than usual together lately and it's been great.  We had to cancel our Labor Day camping plans in the interest of Julie and the twins, but we did get a chance to go up to the campground for a day. To say Jameson and I had an awesome time would be an understatement.  I was having such a great time that I was truly upset to go home that night. Jameson loved it.  We played football, hide-and-seek, tried out our new bike trailer, collected sticks, cooked out, watched a talent show and generally got the most out of our one day at the campground. And after watching all the trouble that the "big boys" could get into, Jameson still hasn't quit talking about Ky-0h (Kyle) and Tent (Trent).  Here are all the pictures from camping.

In the eternity since my last blog the pictures have been building up. Enjoy!

Jameson loves dem suckers.

Quality father-son time catching a movie.  99.9% chance it was "The Incredibles."

Just a couple pictures from the backyard.  Every time we go outside, Jameson begs me to cut the grass.  Once a week is more than enough for me.

This had to be Jameson's favorite part of the day at the campground -- playing catch with dad and cousins Travis and Kyle.

Hide-and-seek isn't Jameson's strong suit since he wants to jump out of his hiding place laughing as soon as he knows you're looking nearby.

Some swing time with Aunt Emmie.

How could he not want to play with the "big boys." I literally had to hold him back.

These bike trailers might possibly be the greatest invention in the history of ever.

And this is just a picture of my wife's latest night stand read. Should I be worried???

Trivia

The worst time to decide your bathroom needs to be painted a different color?

a) When you have sick two year old running around who would throw a tantrum even if you just told him he could eat candy for every meal for the rest of his life.

b) When you have a wife 5 months pregnant with twins and unable to be around paint fumes.

c) The night before you're first home showing since you put your house on the market.

d) All of the above.

What a night.  And morning.  I finished painting around 4:00 a.m.  Jameson was up and at 'em three and a half hours later.  Uggh.  More on the get-the-house-ready-for-the-one-prospective-buyer-who-shows-up-at-your-open-house projects later...

FYI for you potential house painters out there:  Contrary to popular belief, your hand does not get steadier the later it gets and the more Pepsi you drink.

The good news is, I somehow didn't cop out on my half-marathon training and ran 6 miles this evening in 68 minutes.  Not only is that the longest distance I've every run, my goal time was 72 minutes!

Lots of pictures to post tomorrow, but for now, here's one of my wife Julie (left), 5 months pregnant and my sister, Amanda, 9 months pregnant.  My poor, round wife.  Only 4 months to go...

Catch Up

Time for an update on the babies, the house and the half-marathon.

Babies:

Julie seems to be doing well as long as she's getting enough sleep.  That, of course, tends to be easier said than done.  Everything looked good at her last doctor's appointment and we have another ultrasound scheduled in two weeks.  I'm really looking forward to that visit.  I can't wait to see how much they've grown since week 15.  Having twins adds a new level of stress to the pregnancy, but I do enjoy getting to see them at our required monthly ultrasounds.  We're already past the halfway mark -- I can't believe how fast it is going.

FYI - There's been another lead paint recall.  This one affects several brands from Mattel.  Click here for the affected products.

House:

Nothing to report, yet, on the new house.  We did meet with the designer to pick out things like carpet and cabinets but right now it's still just a lot.

Unfortunately, there's also no news to report on the current house either.  Two and a half weeks on the market and not a single nibble.  We've got an open house on Sunday.  I'll be happy to have even one person see the house.  Maybe I can convince my cousin Chandra to buy our house.

Training:

It has it's ups and downs.  The farthest I've run so far is only 5 miles (just over a third of the distance for which I'm training).  It's gone surprisingly well -- I've already dropped a few pounds and I feel pretty good after most runs.  Unfortunately, I've caught the bug that Jameson had (see the whole story here).  This lead me to take today off when I should have been running 6 miles.  Hopefully I can make it up tomorrow on my scheduled off day.

Every night after I give Jameson a bath, I read a few stories to him before bedtime.  Recently he was kind enough to return the favor.  Interestingly, the only word in this story, repeated over and over on every page, was "orack" (Lorax).  AND I usually read three different books to Jameson each night whereas I had the same book read to me three times in a row.  I think I got ripped off.