I haven't been very good at keeping up with my weekly Advent postings, but I have a very good reason. We've been looking at our Advent wreath every day, cleaning it off from food that's been thrown on it from the boys (it sits in the middle of our dining room table), but that is about the extent of our Advent practices this year.
Seven days ago, we officially put our house on the market. We put an ad in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, listed it in several free online listings (including craigslist), and are going to hang up a few pamphlets at Whole Foods and the Food Co-op. We spent an entire week cleaning our house from the basement all the way to the ceilings on the second floor.
In the middle of all of this, Rowan and Sawyer came down with stomach viruses. Do you know how hard it is to get the puke smell out of your carpet and couch (any suggestions?)? Fortunately, they are beginning to feel much better. And our house looks like a model home. It's spic and span. The basement is clean and orderly, the kitchen is spotless, and the rest of the house is cleared out and spacious. It doesn't even look as though kids live here (except for the bed and crib in the second bedroom). A very professional "House for Sale By Owner" sign hangs on a white frame in our front yard. It's official. We're for sale.
We're in a new kind of waiting now. Our lives revolve around this new waiting to see if our house will sell. We've shown it twice, received several phone calls, but the offers haven't been exactly rolling in. But it has only been 7 days. And we're selling it ourselves, so the audience we're reaching isn't as big as it would be if we had an MLS listing. We're seeing how far we can get by selling it ourselves before resorting to a realtor to sell it for us (no offense to any realtors reading). But it is a week and a half until Christmas. Who wants to buy a house when you're busy buying gifts and wrapping presents?
I seem to be pretty emotionally attached to this house. The week we signed the initial papers on our new house, I became pretty nostalgic. Kenny and I "began" in this house. He moved in, and a few months later, we started dating. He proposed to me in the side yard - where he has since built a gorgeous patio. We came back from our honeymoon to this house - our first home. We brought both Rowan and Sawyer home to this house. And we've put a lot of work into making it our own. The kitchen, living room and dining room have been completely remodeled, the gas and water lines in the basement have been rerouted to accommodate a laundry area, the bathroom has been updated, and the small bedroom, which we turned into the nursery, was painted. We did all the work ourselves (or Kenny did all the work, I painted the walls). It's very much "our house." And it's for sale.
[B]House for Sale[/B]
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