Anybody out there want a house

Our current house has been on the market for 5 weeks now and only three people have looked at it. We are starting to really worry about it. We are having an open house this Saturday, but I don't have very high hopes. From what I have read, Open Houses only work to sell a home about 5% of the time.

On a brighter note, we are about to have a couple of nice vacations. We will be camping with Kirsten's side of the family next week. This will the sixth year in a row that we have done this. We always have a great time and I always gain five pounds during the week.

A couple of weeks later we will be taking a river trip. This is just for Kirsten, Patrick and Myself. The girls will be staying with my parents. It is a four-day trip down the Rogue River (in Oregon). Everything is provided and we will be staying in different lodge every night. It is a little spendy, but we bought it last November before we knew that money would be tight.

Emily and Kaitlyn are both doing very well. Emily (who is four) is finally getting used to the water. When we go in the hot tub, she is able to put her entire head under water without panicking. Kaitlyn (who is two) has no fear of the water at all. She will jump off of into the water an sink to the bottom. After finally clawing her way up to air, she will climb out and jump back in again. Don't worry, Kirsten or I are hovering within inches of her at all times.

Kirsten is enjoying her job. She likes being able to get a lunch every day and she always gets off work at 6:00 PM. Things have been a little slow there however and she has been somewhat bored several times. The current employee's have informed her that this is slow period and it will pick up.

We are buying a home

Well, we now have an accepted offer on new home. It is a nice place with a large back yard. There is an oak tree at the back for some nice shade and some nice leaves for Patrick to rake this fall. :-)

It is 2655 sq ft. This is quite an upgrade for us. I may sound like I am bragging, because I probably am, but we are very, very excited. I am especially excited about certain things. It has that fake would deck, which means that I don't have to stain or waterproof anymore. :-)

Also, it has the vinyl type of siding, which means that I won't ever have to paint the house!!

Now we just need to sell our current house.

Here are a couple of photos.

Living in Limbo

As you can imagine, things have been very busy around the household. We spent two weeks getting the house ready to show. This involved fixing a lot of little things. Spreading a lot of bark chips. Cleaning a lot of areas that don't get cleaned very often, like the outside of second story windows. We also had to pack away a lot of our stuff. The garage is half full of packed boxes and extra furniture. It is important to make your house look bigger by having less stuff in it, so we are already half-way packed for the move.

Anyway, I went to post some new photos, but I can't find the items I use to download them to the computer. It seems that in our initial packing of stuff, we must have gotten it into a box also.

Our house has been on the market for two weeks now and only two people have come and looked at it. They both gave it good reviews, but are not ready to purchase anything just yet. It is a buyers market out here now, so we are not expecting to sell our current home very quickly.

Last Monday we toured the new town with our real-estate agent, which happens to be our sister-in-law. We looked at eight or ten homes. Out of all that, there is only one that is a possible choice. We have come up with another list of ten homes. We will look at those tomorrow.

Everyone here is doing well. The girls are just as cute as ever. They are constantly testing their boundaries. We have to keep right on top of things.