So, we had the survey done yesterday, and since Conan wasn’t able to be present for that, we met up at the new house (which we still don’t have a firm close date on… theoretically Friday before we go out of town, but I’m not holding my breath) to check it out, have a picnic, look at the driveway issue a little more, and though that situation is a little more daunting than we originally thought, we discovered some wonderful blessings…
I’ve always wondered why a nurse or clinician of any kind would tell you that "1 out of every three pregnancies end in miscarriage, you know," as if it were some sort of comforting message. But they always do. Especially when looking at my chart that says my personal stats are more like, "one out of three pregnancies might survive." Do they not get that miscarriage is very common for me? More common than the average? Why are we as a culture so content with the statistics and say there’s no real knowable reason for these things… yet most women have maybe 1 or zero miscarriages in a lifetime, while others have several. It averages out to one in three pregnancies, but that does NOT mean that the average women will carry two babies and lose one.
So, we were supposed to have closed on our great new house today, but we’ve hit a few, fairly major, snags. Enough to make them cancel closing. Well, postpone, really.
OK. I’m really grateful that Melissa doesn’t get morning sickness bad at all. I know there are times where she’s a bit woozy, but overall she’s said that she’s got it pretty good.
That’s her. Me, on the other hand, I always get sick and nauseated when she’s pregnant. For instance, right now. 9:00 in the morning at work and my stomach is bouncing breakfast around like a trampoline. Or take this Sunday. We got to church a bit early (how did that happen?!) and the boys said they were hungry (not like they didn’t eat breakfast 30 minutes before), so we broke out some light snacks we had in the diaper bag from I don’t even want to know when. Everything was fine and good for five minutes.
Then, all of a sudden, I got a whiff of the goldfish crackers. I’m not sure what it was but I think I’d rather have been smelling poopy diapers. My insides started swirling around like crazy. I tried to calm down, telling myself that it was all in my mind, and took a slow, deep breath. Big mistake. All I could smell was more goldfish crackers.
I sprinted (as reverently and slowly as possible) to the bathroom, locked my self in a stall. After a few moments of relaxing and breathing I…puked. Yep. So there you go. It’s just so weird. I feel for you women that are less fortunate than my wife.
Melissa, however, she’d got nothing on me…well, aside from the fact that in six months she’ll start to be getting big and have back aches and be tired and later have to go through the whole delivery thing and the breast feeding stuff…but besides that, she’s got nothing. 
Wahoo! We were fortunate enough to get multiple offers on our house, and ended up selling for just $1500 below asking. We are SO happy, and relieved. Age & Jodie, tell Shark Clark we’ll see him on May 15th for closing. We are so blessed!
OK, so we don’t have a ton, and they’re not all exactly the same viewpoint (my friend took the afters), but I think you’ll get the idea.
This isn’t even a true comparison… I can’t find the original original… there was no landscaping out front, so no tree, no little rosebushes, no forsythia bush to the right, and just lawn all the way to the driveway with no landscape timbers.
Next we see the entryway transformation, due in large part to my dear sister Bente’s hard work. Thanks!
And here’s the lovely Living room before and after our transformation — although these are the MLS listing shots, so it was much cuter with our nice curtains, and photo collage, and such.
Now, the kitchen before pics also don’t nearly do the real before any justice, as the lovely peach paint and flowery wallpaper has already been stripped, and the new wall color is up, but you get the idea.
The tile design is courtesy of Conan, and the teaching of how to tile and hard labor is largely thanks to my fabulous father, and somewhat thanks to me. Well, the teaching ENTIRELY thanks to my dad. Thanks so much.
Here is the dining area/eat in kitchen. That is Burke in the exersaucer… I can’t believe it was so long ago! And you get a small sampling of the wallpaper. Nice.
There are some crazy before photos of the bedrooms, but since we don’t have any afters I figured why bother. Same with the bathrooms. And no photos of the downstairs at all, with it’s totally fabricated full bathroom, thanks to Conan, Mom Heiselt, and Adrian, and beautifully patched up ceiling, thanks to Mom and Conan. Pretty sad. I’ll work on that. See if I can’t convince my friend to take a few more, since our digital camera is totally broken and nonfunctional at this point (it’s been on it’s way out for about a year now) and we’re saving up for such niceties as a fridge for our new home.