Pictures of the New House

I'm going to see how many pictures I can post of the new house - I'm not sure how much "new" storage I have on here so we'll see how it goes. Enjoy - I'm so excited...only 62 more days to go!! (I think that might be one of the biggest numbers I've ever seen...:-/)

Our beautiful house!

(minus a beautiful lawn...wonk wonk. Have to wait until spring)

Looking at the front door. Basement access on left, 

hallway/kitchen left of that, master to the right.

(angels singing)

Our My walk-in closet!

Dining/kitchen area from living room 

(girls' rooms/bathroom to the left through arch)

Hallway to bathroom (first left) and two bedrooms

TBD who gets which one. Morgan is choosing ;-)

Panoramic view of the open area of the first floor

(master left, kitchen right)

Adam's office 

(ha ha ha - WILL be his office and almost only project in this house)

One of our favorite things - no "fixer" projects in this house for a long time. The office is a project we anticipated with any of the houses we looked at and considered buying. Adam wants to put a backsplash in the kitchen but that's a "pretty project," not a "fixer" project. Oh and we have two little girl bedrooms to paint but again, pretty stuff. Not maintenance or fixer stuff. The countdown begins - 62 days!

Hello, DePere!

We had a good weekend. No no no, we had a GREAT weekend. We put in an offer on the new construction on the east side of DePere Friday afternoon. We waited with bated breaths because we went low. These builders do NOT take anything lower than list price and we were sort of hoping we could go a little under and ask for a few other things thrown in and come out a little ahead (we needed a fridge and oven...we wanted a later close date...few other things).

Saturday morning brought happy girls, nervous parents, and then boom - a counter offer! It wasn't great. It wasn't awful. I was upset b/c I wasn't sure if Adam would go for it or if he'd say nope, let's go for the other house (cheaper). Thankfully, he agreed that we should counter again and go for it. We countered and gave the builder until the end of Saturday (7pm) to get back to us. We gave him his full price so he could keep his reputation of not accepting less than full price but stuck with a few of the other concessions we wanted.

Saturday 6:30 came and went. 6:45 rolled around and while we were playing around celebrating Morgan's birthday, Adam looked up from his phone and said, "We got it."

YOU READ THAT RIGHT - WE GOT THE HOUSE!!

I can't tell you how happy I am to know that I was 31 and able to have our dream home. Yes the lot is a bit smaller than we wanted originally, but since everything else was exactly as we'd hoped, it will be great. Our realtor was shocked we were able to get the concessions we did and we went and picked out the appliances needed tonight.

It's late and I'm tired but we're so thankful that we will have our dream home (that's only 4 minutes from Adam's brother! I LOVE the idea of close cousins (and maybe sometime soon we'll have more close cousin time!)) December 27th. We have a showing at the Iowa house on Friday after a serious drought but we're not getting our hopes up at this point. Happy? Yes. Hopeful? Not really.

Pictures tomorrow if I can figure it out. I wasn't posting pictures forever b/c I had run out of room/storage but I was able to change my heading picture so maybe they gave me more. :) Either way, we're coming, DePere! It's going to be a great 2014!

Birthday Weekend Extravaganza

Today marks the last day our big girl will be THREE. Tomorrow, she'll wake up a 4 y/o child. This birthday has been a little easier to take b/c she's already a preschool aged kid and this won't change with this birthday whereas when she went from 2 to 3, she went from toddler to PreK aged. (don't talk to me next year when she would be asked if she's in kindergarten for real when she's 5). Maybe it's b/c I'm ALL CONSUMED with the house buying/looking/etc process right now and that's why this birthday is all tame and such in my head.

Today is Al's birthday (FIL). Tomorrow the big kid turns 4. Sunday is my dad's birthday. And there you have the birthday weekend extravaganza. We are taking the girls to the Children's museum in the morning, lunch out, and then dinner with a BIG COOKIE CAKE at home later. She's going to be SO very excited. Lucky duck. And I'm not going to lie - I'm looking forward to checking this museum out - it looks pretty amazeballs.

So...now that I've discussed birthdays, let's talk about what else I'm REALLY thinking about. Our potential new house. We have two very good options to choose from. Each has their own +/-s. We have HEAVILY weighed our options and chosen one. We're hoping to put in an offer today before they have their open house again on Sunday. It's so beautiful. The 2nd choice house is pretty. This one is BEAUTIFUL. I'll keep you posted but omgosh you guys. I'm so excited. We're feeling very pleased that no matter which house we get, we really can't lose because they're both great. Fingers crossed!!

Calvin Thomas!! (and more house info)

We may have found our house? I'm not sure. But I think we're sure. And after that's all said, we need to know if this is the right decision or not. Crystal ball...where ARE you!?

We don't know what to do. We're pretty sure we want this house and we can do it now. Our realtor is checking into things that we would need to change to make this happen and work for our family (ie. add a shed and dig out an egress window for Adam's office). The price is excellent and really, there are only minimal cosmetic changes we'd want to do over time (outside of the immediate shed and office for Adam).

We are downsizing which is oddly enough, a breath of fresh air for me (for now, ha...). The Iowa house and yard were too much/big. I always felt like I was barely keeping up and always behind. I'm excited for the plans we have for the basement to make it fully work for our family when the girls are bigger and need more space. For now, they'd have an awesome basement floor to ride bikes on and throw balls all over without breaking anything. (maybe we could have a pitching room for the girls...ha, Adam would be thrilled at the idea).

We looked at a new construction today that was again, beautiful. All new constructions that we see are. Tile, kitchen, master everything, blah blah blah gorgeous. Yard too small (story of our lives).

I know this makes no sense and is just a ton of rambling about houses, but we're getting really close to making a choice, I think. Maybe we'll change our minds tomorrow. For now, I'm feeling really comfortable if we were to offer on this house and get it. Our girls will be happy here, our dogs will have the space they need, and I feel like I could participate in MORE of the girls' lives on many levels if we were to be here.

All that boring housing news aside, WE MET BABY CALVIN today! Calvin Thomas (Tom & Carrie's baby) graced the world with his presence Saturday morning. He and Morgan are exactly 4 years minus 1 week apart in age. Every two years or so, another little Schmidt comes along (insert inappropriate giggle here). He's 20.25" long, 8#7oz, and a handsome little guy. We are so excited we'll be close to see him grow up. Welcome to the family, little big guy!

Ok, it's time for ice cream before Week 6 starts. Wish us luck on the house issues and we wish Tom and Carrie luck on their sleep for the next week and beyond. :)

Ready for some house confusion?

So after a looooong Saturday of looking at houses, we have some options. Long story short results in bulleted list. And go.

• Existing home about 5 minutes from where Adam's brother, Tommy, lives in DePere (rather ideal location) - we liked it. On a scale of 1-10, 10 being we'd offer immediately without a second showing and 8 meaning we'd go back for another look, I'd definitely have given this house an 8 or 9. It was nice - the yard was almost perfect, the bedrooms were split, but the garage was only 2 car, the master was a little tight to fit our furniture, and there were dings on a few doors/kitchen cupboards. Otherwise, not bad at all and within our price range to be able to swing it while still sitting with the Iowa mortgage. (read: moving before Christmas, maybe)
• Brand new build in a not ideal district for our family. The lot was sort of small but felt bigger than it was d/t where the house sat on it and the shape of the lot. Other than that, the house was perfect and we'd have bought it immediately had the stars aligned with the Iowa house selling and it was in one of our ideal school districts. Dang. 
• So...after a couple of other houses that had something wrong (ie. one house/lot was PERFECT and then the kitchen/dining area were apartment-sized at best) we are entertaining the idea of asking the builders to build the dream house on lot that was the size we want in a district we want. Boom, our realtor emailed us with four lot options already. We are still waiting to hear back about the actual size of said lots b/c anything under 0.4/0.5 is not going to be an option for our family. Down side? None of these lots are in the district closest to all our family (DePere). They are all in Howard or Suamico. Not the worst, but proximity to family-wise, it would have been awesome. This isn't counted out yet b/c of the first bullet. All in good time...
• SO...we're waiting to hear back from the WI realtor about lot sizes. We're waiting to hear back from the IA realtor as to whether or not we can somehow sway the potential buyer we have (remember? our house made the "cut" for this one family last week? we still haven't heard back...) by offering incentives of some sort to tip the scales in our favor. Hopefully it will all fall into place b/c we're excited about getting this next (last) step done. 

Still crossing fingers...still praying for an Iowa sale...and happy where we're at for now. Adam is traveling this week which puts us at 3 out of the last 4 weeks. Then comes a welcome break. And a four year old (OMGSHE'SALMOSTFOUR). Less than two weeks!

SEVEN!

Who's shocked...I'm behind and our anniversary was Monday but we're going to pretend I wrote this Monday and carry on with life b/c no one's perfect, especially me. :)

We've made it through seven years of this crazy married life together - which puts us at over 12 years together (we both drop jaws with shock and awe at this fact - how can it be that long already??). I don't have lots to say other than I'm the luckiest gal on the planet to have this guy by my side. I couldn't imagine anyone else living this life with me and still loving me even after all the crazy I put him through (oh and vice versa. totally. in different ways ;-).

We didn't do anything superexcitingomg to celebrate and we didn't buy gifts (although Adam lied and got me a big bouquet of beautiful flowers) because we're hoping to buy each other a new house here very soon. We went out for an adult's only dinner Saturday night at a place called 8th and York in Manitowoc and it was nice. The food was good (spicy!) and the chocolate we picked up for ourselves the girls at Beernstein's after was delicious as well. We even went to a few stores and browsed without care. I know - big time fancy, no? Either way, it was great to reconnect alone because those times have been hard to come by lately given Adam's traveling schedule and our current life situation.

Happy 7 years, T! They've been the best and I can't wait to see where the next 7 take us...(can you imagine in 7 years when the girls are almost 9 and 11?!? Me neither.)

In Iowa housing news, "ironically" we went to church on Sunday and boom, 3 showings this week after the trail had gone cold. One showing was a waste of time and we were informed of that before it even happened. The first showing resulted in our house "making the cut" along with a few other houses so hopefully the family makes a quick decision and chooses ours. We still haven't heard from the last showing but it was a wife and she'd have to have her husband come back next week when he was done traveling. And for the record (as I'm sure many of you know and/or have experienced), waiting blows.

In WI housing news, we started this week with NINE houses to look at tomorrow (Saturday) and by Tuesday afternoon, we were down to 4 b/c 5 of them had offers pending/accepted. Wonk wonk. One of them was our dream home (minus the size of the girls' rooms - small) that was on the wrong lot with a garage that was too small (ha, I hear you thinking "dream? doesn't sound like it..." but everything else was amazeballs) so I wasn't terribly sad b/c I was already questioning if that one would really be the perfect fit. It had so much going for it though...so now we're at around 5-6 houses we're going to look at tomorrow starting at 11:30. One that we're VERY interested in is currently only a basement with a great view of the sky and it won't be ready until the end of December, which doesn't matter, because we just found out the basement house sold. Are you kidding me?!

But wait! You haven't sold your Iowa house!! Why are you looking at houses? Funny you should ask. Well, first of all, in case the Iowa house would sell sooner rather than later, we want to look at some and know what's out there. Second, this gives our realtor a chance to get to know our likes/dislikes for when the time comes so we don't waste time (we have a new realtor from the last time we looked at houses in August). Third, we are entertaining the idea of a second mortgage with big prayers it wouldn't be much of an overlap. We can swing it but it's scary at how our life style has/will be changing with my new salary and then a second mortgage on top of that. The cool thing about the new construction is that it would buy us some time of NOT having two mortgages...but adds commute time without question since we wouldn't move in until the middle of winter (ack). If we were to buy tomorrow (which we won't), we might still ask for a 90 day close or something like that to buy us time. Either way, we are eager to find out where life is leading us so we can complete our "new normal."

That all said, we continue to be ever so thankful for Al and Sherri and how graciously they are letting us all but take over their home. I mean it - we've literally taken over and I'm sure they're tired. I'm sure they're (secretly - they'd never tell us) sad that there are babies and toys ALL OVER THE PLACE (you know how kids see toys put away and instantly must recreate the chaos) among a million and ten other things they miss about their "normal." I'm positive they're tired of the dogs b/c they're high maintenance and can be annoying (but oh do we love them and their sick selves. Maddie is sick now, too, so we have double doggie bronchitis. More meds, more vet bills, joy all around). But thanks to Al & Sherri. Many, many thanks.

And off we go. I can't wait to sleep in tomorrow. We literally count down the days to sleeping in starting with ... Monday.

Getting the hang of this

We're almost done with Week 3 in WI and I think we've got this.

• I'm feeling a TON more comfortable at work and very effective with several of my self-contained preschoolers as I work towards communicatively engineering their classrooms (CEC) so they are able to communicate using pictures, signs, and words in all areas of their environment. It's a long process but the dive I've taken into it already is paying off. Huge HOORAY - I introduced a few of my ALS (aided language stimulation) boards to a few of my kiddies during structured play activities and the next day I came in, the teacher said that as soon as they went to centers time, one of the kids went directly to a center with a board and started using it while playing trucks. That's a win if I ever heard one!
• I'm also feeling more comfortable in almost all other aspects of my job...except paperwork. I haven't had a real high demand to use what I've learned about it yet but that's coming next week. For the time being, I'm going to enjoy the therapy ride I'm on and keep on truckin' through.
• Home life gets better daily...meaning that the girls are understanding our new routine and even if it involves almost 2 hours of traveling (car time, pick up/drop off, etc) daily, we're working with it and making it happen. The girls are having less tantrums and we're working on getting more sleep in their night time schedule b/c they are certainly getting less than they did in our normal, routine Iowa life.
• The dogs make me nuts b/c we don't have a fenced in yard of any kind anymore (electric or physically standing) so someone needs to be with them at all times or they need to be tied up (totally out of their norm). I feel bad b/c they hardly have any time outside while Adam travels (the past two weeks) because cooking dinner requires me to be inside and it's hard to watch dogs AND kids AND have fun at the same time. The ILs have been nothing more than a HUGEGIANTOMG help - this would be a million times harder without them. But with Adam traveling, the "hard" factor goes up some notches as usual.
• I need to learn to go to bed earlier but am functioning pretty well on 6.5-7 hours of sleep a night. Maybe that's part of the reason for this head cold I have...or it's the germs I've picked up from all my friends at school, per the normal back to school routine.
• Adam. He's doing well home officing but he's only had a week of it, honestly. He was home the first week and on the road this and last week. We miss him terribly and are so thankful he's coming home tomorrow (for one week and then travels again another week). The girls are beyond excited that, if all goes according to schedule, his plane landing time should allow him to be home in time to play with the girls a bit and put them to bed.
• The Iowa house...ho hum, the trail has gone cold and I swear everyone has decided to hunker down for the winter and not buy houses. :-( We were pretty sad earlier this week when a second showing fell through and they were comparing our house to ones $50k more - which is so stupid b/c they're NOT COMPARABLE. Almost no house at that price difference is (unless we're talking millions. which we're not. but just in case you were looking for loopholes, there's one for ya). The guy Adam called to mow the lawn this week said that our address sounded familiar b/c he and his wife had looked at it online and were interested. Unfortunately, they're not in a huge rush (although they should be. just sayin').

More from us soon. I need to start working out again but I'm so tired by the time the girls go to bed that I breathe a huge sigh of relief we made it to their bedtime with/without tantrums and ruckus, then pack up for the next day, I shower at night now to save morning time, and then it's almost 9 by the time I even consider sitting down. That means little/no workout time unless we take the girls for a walk after supper. It will all work out...as long as I start eating less ice cream. ;-)

PS Poor Morgan came home with a fever and Hadley came home with a dried face of snot. I can breathe through my nose but I'm coughing in an annoying manner. Isn't Adam a lucky guy to come home to us beauties? HA HA HA...