The update

Our house has been listed for a week and a half and we've had 2 people come look at it so far, which in this market, is pretty good. It's also good we don't have 5 people a day coming over because Ty helps me clean the house by throwing his half-eaten yogurt away and missing the garbage can. I'm hoping things will pick up a little in a few weeks, when it feels like spring and people start thinking about being in a new house for the summer. We'll see. And we'll pray. Because--drum roll please--we made an offer on a house. Of course it's an offer that's contingent on us selling our house (two mortgages = two stroke-inducing stress levels). Back to the house. You remember how I said our house feels about 6 square feet right now? This one is just a tiny bit bigger than that. How about 3372 square feet. That's more than two and a half times the size of our house. Just FYI, doing the math (without a calculator) to figure that out just now, gave me a twitch over my right eye. I usually default anything math related to Dan, the math teacher/tip calculator of the family.

ANYWAY, the point is that if everything works out, we will have THE party house. The basement is bigger than our house now, please don't ask me by how much, so the playroom possibilities are making our minds reel. We got a pool table for free a while back that's been in pieces in our garage, so that will be in a prime spot. We'll get an adjustable basketball hoop for the boys, and can get a train set or an insane race track for Jake's hot wheels that we can leave set up at all times. Aaah, space. This house has a few things we want to update (it was built in 1974) but we'll have some extra money to do that over the next few years. Depending on how much we sell our house for, we'll have money in the bank to do a few projects from the very beginning. Like get a new industrial sized dishwasher because Ty somehow dirties 10 times as many dishes as the rest of us combined. He pulled these 5 spoons out of the dishwasher the other morning to eat his cereal. And I wonder why I constantly feel like I'm doing dishes...it's because I am.

Anyway, we just couldn't be more excited about this house, so hopefully it will all work out. We've seen already that God's plan is better than ours, so we won't mourn in sackcloth and ashes if it falls through (that's for my girls' Bible study). But it's sure something we're praying hard for. Pray for us, and we'll host all the Super Bowl parties, 4th of July bashes, and playdates from now on. Speaking of playdates, some of our house guests may need to think about homing devices for their children so no one gets left behind in our gargantuan house. I already have one on order for Ty for his birthday in 10 days. Actually, I'll probably just put it on the ketchup bottle.

Sigh...

I needed a little pick-me-up. A new blogger template and some cute new pictures reminding me that my children are not always covered in condiments.

It's official...

We've done it. Our house is on the market. Anybody interested in a great starter house? It has A/C, a gas fireplace, sprinklers front and back, easy freeway access, freshly lustered cabinets (courtesy of Natalie and Alison), and here's the kicker: it's walking distance to 2 Starbucks and the new Jamba Juice. Take a look...and know that this is BY FAR the cleanest my house has ever been, even in the pre-kid era. After garbage day tomorrow, we'll be junk free and loving life. Oh wait, we're going to have to show the house, so maybe we'll actually be hating life, but at least we're on the way to loving life from a new, much bigger, home sweet home. I must keep the big picture in mind in order to not lose it. Here's a little snapshot so you can feel a little of the panic I'm overwhelmed with about needing to keep things clean around here. This happened RIGHT after our house was listed:That's not dust on the lens, that's powder smudged into the walls. Welcome to my world. I promise to keep you updated...as long as I'm not too busy scraping PB&J off the ceiling, or scrubbing blood out of the carpet. At least now, thanks to Jenne, I know I can hide the ketchup in the cabinet above the fridge. I can barely reach anything in there, but I'm still pretty confident I'll be blogging about Ty's miraculous ketchup-retrieval-expedition soon. Where there's a Ty, there's a way.

I'm on strike

I'm not cleaning one more inch of my house for the next...oh, two minutes. That will be just about the amount of time it will take Ty to strip down to his diaper, roll around the kitchen in puddles of ketchup, and make a modern art masterpiece by repeatedly slamming his excessively ketchupped body into a freshly Mr. Clean Magic Eraser-ed wall.

We've been waiting for a few sunny days (God bless the Northwest) to be able to get yard work done in order to list our house. And after a ton of help today from family and friends, we'll be ready to get pictures taken and put it on the market on Monday. (The Brooklyn Tabernacle choir just erupted in the Hallelujah Chorus.) THANK YOU again to all that have helped us get our house under control! I've felt like this was going to be a never-ending process.

My friends Natalie and Alison cleaned and "lustered" the cabinets in my kitchen, for which they will receive many crowns in heaven. I believe Alison's exact words were "So...how much of the peanut butter and jelly do the kids actually get in their mouths?" Not enough, my dear friend, not nearly enough.

Her comment actually got me thinking. I'm proposing the idea to Dan that we do a family fast until our house sells. This will eliminate the need to do dishes, cut out about 90% of the messes the kids make, and drastically reduce our time in the bathroom therefore making clean-up much more manageable. Seems reasonable don't you think?

Oops, my two minutes are up. Good thing the boys are asleep for the night. Not that that means anything. I found blood on Ty's pillow yesterday morning. He's got so many bumps and bruises I can't tell what's new anymore, but I think he bit his tongue...probably practicing for his artistic debut: A Tribute To Ketchup And A Warning To Mom's Who Try Hiding It In The Back Of The Fridge.

The 411

Let's be honest. I don't have time for the 5 mile long stories of the typical Ang Stump blog. But hopefully you'll get the gist of what's been going on with our family these days.

Dan's world: Suffering from pharyngitis, cephalgia, bronchitis, and is intermittantly febrile (sore throat, headache, chest cold, and has a fever off and on...sounds a lot better in medical terminology, plus it makes me look smarter) He's been sick for 3 weeks and is finally starting to shake it after having the whole week off.

Jake's world: playing with cars, watching the same 30 seconds of the movie Mouse Hunt at least 79 times in a row because he's now proficient in TiVo technology and the remote control; playing with more cars; ordering "2 apple pies, pwease" at McDonalds by himself holding a wadded-up one dollar bill to the cashier; hitting his brother for taking his cars; trying desperately to figure out his squirt toy in the bathtub and then shooting a stream of water into his brothers face and yelling at the top of his lungs "Ha ha, THAT'S what I'm talking about"; growing 6 inches in two days; and finally...playing with cars.

Ty's world: pulling down the new curtains mommy and auntie Karina worked so hard to put up; using a sharpie as body paint; supergluing his ring and pinky fingers together and then ripping them apart causing a chunk of skin to be relocated from one finger to the other; waking up approximately 18 times a night due to an everlasting cold and then waking up every morning with 6 inches of snot crusted from nose to chin; FINALLY getting over the cold only to get a fat bloody lip while throwing a temper tantrum about not getting an endless supply of tic tacs.

Ang's world: um, see above...and pray for my sanity