These would be the babes of both of our families!
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Dinner at the park
Last night we got to meet a good friend of ours that we went to college with at the park and had dinner. It was wonderful to get caught up on what's going on in our lives, to hear about how baby #3 is doing so far, and to hear about future plans in their lives. The kiddos loved playing with each other and hopefully got worn out before bedtime. We took our dinner and had a picnic by the river. I had completely forgotten how crowded the river gets with some rowdy kiddos at that time of night, so we had to do some careful watching of other kids since throwing rocks at our kids tended to be a favorite thing to do. It was a perfect day to go out and play, though. Welcome Spring!
Monday, March 19, 2012
Prepping your house to sell
Most of you know that we are in the process of selling our house. We're actually at the middle point of selling, so that's a good thing! I've had a request to blog about our house experience and I figured that was a good idea. Not only is it hard to find information on moving in general, but it's also great to get other ideas from other people about how they sold their house and what they did to increase the chances of seeing a SOLD sign in their yard. It's also a great reminder for me of why we plan to not move again for a long, long, long time!
When we bought our house, we always had the idea that we would stay in it for about 5 years before we moved on to a different house. By then we figured that we would have a better idea of things that we want in a house that we intend to stay in for a long time.
We had originally planned on putting our house on the market in February of last 2011. Daddy T had done a lot of projects to our house and we still had a lot more to do in order to make it "show ready." We had our realtor come to our house (we stuck with the same one who had sold us our house) and walk through and give us his opinion of what a buyer would say as they walked through the house. We wanted him to be critical. He gave us a few things to do, so we tackled those projects. We worked almost every weekend in February and got really burned out. We were to the point where our children were really missing us and we didn't want that. So we decided to take a step back and slow down the process a bit. Because of that, we didn't get our house on the market until October of last year, but that's okay. It has worked perfectly for us because we wanted to live in the subdivision where our new house is located but could never have done that until now. God's timing is perfect!
One Saturday morning in February, my friend Danielle got up bright and early, left her boys with her husband, and drove 1-1/2 hours (plus lost an hour because of our time zones) and helped me box up, get rid of, and depersonalize. It was great! I needed her to help me figure out what to get rid of because she wasn't partial to anything, while I was! We got a lot of compliments on her staging. We worked all day long and the house looked great. We took down pictures, replaced certain items that revealed my personality (minus a few things) and recycled things that we have. We simplified, made rooms look "less full" and went through and chose toys that needed to be put into storage.
A few weeks after putting our house onto the market, our realtor had a female realtor come walk through our house and tell us a few things that could be changed in the staging to make it look more appealing (such as a wreath on the front door, flowers in the master bath, etc.) She made the comment to me that most guys will roll their eyes at her suggestions but when the house sells right after it, then they see that it was worth it. She was correct. Daddy T thought it was a lot of stuff that didn't matter. However, what he didn't realize was that most girls walk in and want to see a well put-together house. The better it's staged, the faster it will sell, theoretically.
As we go through houses, we feel bad for not purchasing it because we know how much work and effort went into getting it "show ready." But that's a post for another day!
When we bought our house, we always had the idea that we would stay in it for about 5 years before we moved on to a different house. By then we figured that we would have a better idea of things that we want in a house that we intend to stay in for a long time.
We had originally planned on putting our house on the market in February of last 2011. Daddy T had done a lot of projects to our house and we still had a lot more to do in order to make it "show ready." We had our realtor come to our house (we stuck with the same one who had sold us our house) and walk through and give us his opinion of what a buyer would say as they walked through the house. We wanted him to be critical. He gave us a few things to do, so we tackled those projects. We worked almost every weekend in February and got really burned out. We were to the point where our children were really missing us and we didn't want that. So we decided to take a step back and slow down the process a bit. Because of that, we didn't get our house on the market until October of last year, but that's okay. It has worked perfectly for us because we wanted to live in the subdivision where our new house is located but could never have done that until now. God's timing is perfect!
One Saturday morning in February, my friend Danielle got up bright and early, left her boys with her husband, and drove 1-1/2 hours (plus lost an hour because of our time zones) and helped me box up, get rid of, and depersonalize. It was great! I needed her to help me figure out what to get rid of because she wasn't partial to anything, while I was! We got a lot of compliments on her staging. We worked all day long and the house looked great. We took down pictures, replaced certain items that revealed my personality (minus a few things) and recycled things that we have. We simplified, made rooms look "less full" and went through and chose toys that needed to be put into storage.
A few weeks after putting our house onto the market, our realtor had a female realtor come walk through our house and tell us a few things that could be changed in the staging to make it look more appealing (such as a wreath on the front door, flowers in the master bath, etc.) She made the comment to me that most guys will roll their eyes at her suggestions but when the house sells right after it, then they see that it was worth it. She was correct. Daddy T thought it was a lot of stuff that didn't matter. However, what he didn't realize was that most girls walk in and want to see a well put-together house. The better it's staged, the faster it will sell, theoretically.
As we go through houses, we feel bad for not purchasing it because we know how much work and effort went into getting it "show ready." But that's a post for another day!
Sunday, March 18, 2012
Monday, March 12, 2012
The marina
If you'd like to see video of the marina and the boats destroyed, check out this video. The sad part isn't about the boats, but it's about the number of people who actually live on those boats....or did.
Tornado damage
We are so very thankful that our house was protected through the tornadoes that came through two weeks ago. The kids and I were actually at the farm freaking out over the weather that was headed through there when my brother called me (from the big city in the middle of the state) to see if our house was okay and if Daddy T's parents were okay because he had read that it had been damaged. I was actually live-streaming the news over the mountains and then watching the farm news weather. I hadn't heard exactly where the tornado touched down in the valley until I finally heard it hit our road. Needless to say, I had a lot of people calling and texting me to make sure we were okay. It was so very thoughtful of them and I appreciated it.
I got in touch with my father-in-law and he told me about the damage that it had done on the road where we are planning to buy a house. He did tell me that his neighborhood was okay but it hit the subdivision next to theirs. My niece called to check on us and volunteered to run over to our house to check on it for us and to move our trashcan before the next round of storms. (So very nice of her!) She called with a good report saying that it didn't touch our neighborhood. Less than a mile away wasn't so lucky. Trees were uprooted, houses destroyed, marina gone, and boats sunk. When we drove home the next day, my heart sunk to see the end of our road and how it did not resemble anything like it used to. Then my next revelation was that if the tornado had stayed straight and not turned when it did, it would have come up and down our ridges and taken out our house from behind. (Not going to lie...that kinda really freaked me out!) The road where the worst of the devastation happened is still closed and not free for traffic. I think we are going with the youth at some point to help in the cleanup. Many trees need to come off of houses and away from buildings. It apparently went clear through our little town and straight into the county on the mountains. All in all, I think it destroyed about 80 homes. Thankfully, no one died despite the number of people who were home and took shelter with the EF-3 tornado hit. I saw somewhere that it had about 165 mph winds with it. Here's a few pictures of devastation.
We've been told you could hear the horrible sound from our neighborhood so I'm very thankful I wasn't home or I really would have been a lot more nervous, especially with my kids!
This is pretty much what the entrance to our road looks like:
This would be the subdivision next to where we want to move:
I got in touch with my father-in-law and he told me about the damage that it had done on the road where we are planning to buy a house. He did tell me that his neighborhood was okay but it hit the subdivision next to theirs. My niece called to check on us and volunteered to run over to our house to check on it for us and to move our trashcan before the next round of storms. (So very nice of her!) She called with a good report saying that it didn't touch our neighborhood. Less than a mile away wasn't so lucky. Trees were uprooted, houses destroyed, marina gone, and boats sunk. When we drove home the next day, my heart sunk to see the end of our road and how it did not resemble anything like it used to. Then my next revelation was that if the tornado had stayed straight and not turned when it did, it would have come up and down our ridges and taken out our house from behind. (Not going to lie...that kinda really freaked me out!) The road where the worst of the devastation happened is still closed and not free for traffic. I think we are going with the youth at some point to help in the cleanup. Many trees need to come off of houses and away from buildings. It apparently went clear through our little town and straight into the county on the mountains. All in all, I think it destroyed about 80 homes. Thankfully, no one died despite the number of people who were home and took shelter with the EF-3 tornado hit. I saw somewhere that it had about 165 mph winds with it. Here's a few pictures of devastation.
We've been told you could hear the horrible sound from our neighborhood so I'm very thankful I wasn't home or I really would have been a lot more nervous, especially with my kids!
This is pretty much what the entrance to our road looks like:
This would be the subdivision next to where we want to move:
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