Sounded the Warning

The Home Inspection on our home was scheduled for this morning at 8:30 by the buyers. I was prepared to go over to my mom's for a few hours. The kids were off from school and I didn't want to be mucking about.

Early this morning (4 am to be precise) Baby Girl came into our room announcing that she had thrown-up. So with a thorough clean up of her and her bed, I relocated her to our room. None too soon, she threw up again. Twice.

I planned to still go to my mom's, and take extra clothes and the throw up bucket with us.

6:30. Brown-Eyed Girl came in my room. Her belly hurts. I told her to get a throw up bucket too.

7:30. Cease fire on the younger one barfing. BEG commences barfing. Okay. Do I risk taking the barfington twins in a car just to watch them puke at my mom's and then bring them back in 2 hours.

8:30. I was still home and announced to the inspector and the potential buyers, as I opened the front door, that they were welcome to continue with the inspection if we could stay. But my house smelled oh- so lovely.

I sat there in the frontroom with my older two kids reading books, the sick girls spread out on a mattress pad on the floor, and the one-year old running around staring at the weird people who were leaving on all the faucets.

It's procedure, I know. And even though it wasn't my business, one can't help leaning in to hear what the home inspector is telling your potential buyers about your home. It was compelling, yet I didn't want to hear, because I can't do anything about it until they submit their findings and requests for repair. That means I will have to wait at least 3 days. It was maddening.

Not to mention that the inspector kept pausing to talk to the buyers about their jobs, or the latest movie he'd seen. I felt like screaming, "Hey! Get your crap done and get out of my house so it can become their house, and I can get on with cleaning up barf!"

I'm not so nice when I'm tired and smelly.

Thus my warning:

If you have a home inspector coming to your home, and your children just happen to come down with the flu, the plague, scurvy... go to your mother's for two hours. You won't have to strain to hear what's wrong with your house, then worry about it for the next two days when you can do nothing anyway.

Plus your mom might have some good ideas for getting vomit out of hair.

Spread the Love

The kids and I cut out 150 hearts and wrote messages like; "God loves you", "Have a Happy Heart" and "Show someone you love them" on the hearts. Then we folded them and went on a valentine drop (idea inspired by HER.)

The kids were out of school, so I took them downtown. I gave each of them a stack of valentines, and told them to give them to whomever they wanted. They went nuts. Their favorite part was handing them to construction workers. They received so many smiles and "thank you"s.

One woman actually refused a valentine from my 7-year-old. Poor BEG looked over at me and asked sadly, "Why would anyone say, 'No thank you' to a valentine?" On the way home the kids chattered about how happy it made them and the women who turned down the valentine. They all agreed that even if no one appreciated the valentines, the valentine drop was successful, because they had made THEIR hearts happy by doing it.

This:

-Drop off kids at school

-Follow up with Mortgage Broker about a confusing Good Faith Estimate

-Grocery shopping

-Make homemade white bread

-While it rises:

call realtor and get answers to questions about the Realtor Contract for an offer, he’ll have to come by at 4:30 to go over it with us.

call printer repair guy about the loud noise the printer is making after he changed a part

get a call asking if the people who looked at our house on Tuesday can walk through again at 6:30. I can do that.

put baby boy down for a nap so I can:

call mortgage company to complete an app. over the phone- which consists of running back and forth looking for documentation for our 401K, bank statements, mortgage balance, employment paystubs. Oh-yeah, Dear Hubby has most of these at work with him because he was going to do this and got caught up in meetings.

-Now to document these things, I should scan and email all these things to the mortgage company. Plus they want our taxes from the last two years. These forms consist of 40+ pages because we itemize and include all sorts of schedules and addendums (is that a word?)

-Put the dough in the pans

-It’s now 2:00. Baby Girl asked for school work, so I thought I’d better accommodate while she was interested. After I got her set up, I realized I hadn’t eaten lunch.

-Warm up soup from last night’s dinner. Take 2 bites. Answer the phone. It’s the school, Brown-Eyed Girl has fallen off the playground and gotten a good-sized goose egg.

-Wake up Baby Boy, drive to the school.

-Check Brown-Eyed girl out of school.

-While we’re in the car, go to the library an return the books that are 3 days overdue because the library changed to a new system and the new system didn’t send me an email reminder that they were due Saturday. I was convinced that I would not pay the late fees. They were convinced too. Woo hoo.

-School’s out, back to the school to get the older 2 kids.

-Stop and get BEG an ice cream cone for her bonk.

-Heading home, I get a call. “Can we show the house at 4:00 instead?” ummm, yeah, but I have 8 loaves of bread ready to throw into the oven at 4:00, do they mind? Grrrrr.

-Put first 4 loaves in, tidy up the house, start on homework

-Shuttle the kids outside during the showing.

-Review contract with realtor, make offer on a home, write a check and sigh.

-Make dinner

-Get kids ready for bed.

-Receive an offer on our house. It’s appealing.

-Watch “Lost” and unwind.

-Go to bed and dream about all the fun work of starting over remodeling a new home. Except for this time, the house is bigger, the mortgage is bigger, the property is bigger, and our family is bigger.

This is supposed to make me better.