For Sale

Our house went up for sale last night. It’s a bit bittersweet. This is the house that Julie and I did so much work on. We bought a table saw and learned how to put in Pergo floors. Travis and I spent weekends knocking out the back patio and building the frame for our wonderful deck. And the entire gang put so much effort into putting on the decking. And of course, Stella came home to this house. And I will always remember lying on the floor of her room sleeping with her on my chest. Breathing in the smell of her hair. It has been a good house. The listing is here. You know you’re curious you Lookey-Lou:

http://www.austinhomesearch.com/ahs/GetResults2New.aspx?id=185807

We have our first showing today at 11:45. I have a feeling it might sell fast.

This weekend was quite a bit of fun. Friday evening we were going to go out to eat as a pre-celebration for Julie’s birthday. But Waterloo south had a 45 minute (!) wait and we didn’t want to even attempt to go downtown where all the bikers were (Republic of Texas rally was downtown this weekend). So we ended up getting a baguette and some beer and eating Chicken Picatta at home. It was a pretty low key night. We watched “The Man Who Knew Too Much”, which Julie hadn’t seen and which was actually somewhat comical. My parent’s used this as an object lesson in obedience and “How to Behave in a Foreign Country” growing up. It was nice to see it as an adult and not take it seriously. And experience someone else seeing that fantastic climax for the first time. Julie was making fun of Doris Day’s casting for the first 3/4 of the movie and when we hit the climax it was sort of like, “Oh, I get it…”

Saturday was a whole bundle of fun. I went running in the morning with Stella. Then we went over to her Baba and Grandaddy’s house and hung out on their porch for a while. Baba dug out a bunch of old wooden blocks for Stella to play with and we just sat out and enjoyed the morning. I ran back over to our house and woke up Julie around 10:30, so she got a nice long sleep on her birthday. We ate some chocolate muffins for breakfast and then headed out to J.C. Penny. Oh, I forgot. We had gone to Kohls the night before to look for a new shirt for Julie for her birthday party and came out empty handed. It wasn’t that nothing fit, so much that everything was just so ugly that you couldn’t get excited about anything. So on Saturday we headed to J.C. Penny at Southpark Meadows. It was as if the gods were smiling upon us. They had tons of nice stuff, Julie tried on a bunch, and stopped trying things on because she had too much, not because there wasn’t anything else to try on. I like having good shopping excursions with Julie. Stella and I played outside the dressing rooms. We’d stolen Julie’s sunglasses and were playing games with those. Stella was also standing on her tip-toes (which I hadn’t seen before), and attempting to do chinups on the shopping cart. We had a lot of fun.

After that we headed out to McKinney state falls to go swimming, but it was closed due to bacteria levels. Bummer. Then we went to Garrison Park to go swimming, but it cost $3 and we only had about 30 more minutes to swim. Bummer. So we went and got snow cones. Stella had her first tastes of snow cone, and I’m proud to say she prefers Root Beer (my flavor) over Black Cherry (Julie’s flavor).

We headed home and went out to an early dinner with my Mom, Dad, Christine, and Brian. At Waterloo South. So Julie got her hamburger. We came home and had Julie’s birthday party. The usual suspects came out and it was a lot of fun.

Sunday, I slept in with Stella until 10:30. Sleeping in with Stella involves me going into her room about 7:30, and lying down on a pillow and a blanket. Stella then proceeds to crawl on me, alternating with dozing off in odd positions for short periods of time. It’s all very cuddly. We got up and cleaned up after the party, and then went out to breakfast at IHOP. We were bad this weekend about eating out.

That afternoon we went swimming at Dittmar pool with Christine and Brian. Stella seemed to enjoy the water, but I think she was overwhelmed by the number of people in the pool (heck, we were overwhelmed by the number of people in the pool). But it was a free pool on a hot summer day. Better get used to it kiddo, that’s the way you’ll be swimming in Austin.

We got home, and I realized that our Realtor was going to be taking pictures of our house and that the lawn was shaggy, so I rushed out and mowed it. I got out of the shower about 5 minutes before he got there. We got our paperwork signed and he mentioned that he thought we had tile in our master bath, and that no one wants carpet in their master bath. We find that argument hard to argue with. It is just too humid in a bathroom to have carpet. So we’re going to go out and pick some tile at lunch today. We’ll get that put in as soon as possible. As long as we don’t sell the house first.

All in all, it’s been a crazy time getting the house ready to market, but we’re definitely seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. And it was a great weekend to boot. Stella has really started communicating with us, and really starting to stand up on her own, and toddle around. Plus she’d started using the “No” word. I really don’t like having to go into work these days. I’d much rather sit around and play with her. Ah well, this post is too long. I’ll let you guys know how the tile goes…