September 28, 2009

I have been so busy lately that I have not had much time to post. Our friends from KC came for a visit over the weekend and we had such a fun time together. They arrived on Thursday, we went to OKC on Friday for the Thomas the Train event, went to the aquarium and out to eat along the river on Saturday afternoon, and then they headed home. In between those events, we had a fun time just hanging out and eating lots of yummy bagels that they brought to us from KC (I miss my bagel store so much!). The kids really enjoyed playing together and had so much fun. They always get along so well. It is fun to watch. We were sad to see them leave and will definitely be looking forward to our next get together.

In other news, we are still working on selling our current house and finalizing the plans for our new house. After noticing that we always seem to have more people come through for our open house on Sundays than on Saturdays, we have decided to only have them on Sunday afternoons going forward. That is a relief because it gives us back our Saturdays to get things done

We had an appraisal of the house today, since there has been some confusion on the exact square footage of this house. When we bought the house, we were told it was just under 3800 square feet. When we listed the house on the MLS website, the agent got the square footage from the county records and it was listed at just under 3500, much to our surprise and dismay, since that raised our price per square foot for the amount at which we had the house listed. The results of the appraisal today? 3972 square feet! I was a bit surprised, since I thought it would come in closer to the 3800 square foot amount but, at the same time, this is a big house so I'm not too surprised.

Our architects told us that the square footage number they give us on our new house plans will be less than the number an appraiser will come up with because they calculate it differently. That is why we decided we should go ahead and pay to have our current house appraised, because we were thinking the smaller number in the county records was probably from the initial house plans and the 3800 sq ft number was probably from an appraisal. Lo and Behold, we ended up at 3972 sq ft so, who knows, but we are happy with this new number. It will really make our price per square foot so much more attractive and means that our price on the house is really a pretty good deal. So that was good news today.

As for our house plans, we got the second iteration back on Tuesday and they look great. We are really happy with them and have only found a couple of small tweaks that need to be made.....and then, this evening, the husband suggested we might want to consider moving the boys bedrooms upstairs, which is a pretty big change I think. I do agree with the husband though that, in the long run, it will be cheaper because it is much cheaper to build up than it is to build out on one level. So now we are thinking we will move the two bedrooms and their bathroom upstairs and we will also have another smallish room finished upstairs that will hold our workout equipment. That makes me happy because I really did not want that equipment downstairs, as there was not really a good place for it.

Hopefully this will not be too big of a change. We had already added a staircase to the upstairs in anticipation of future owners who might want to finish out the space upstairs. We have always been a bit unhappy with the way the three car garage was going to stick out at the front of the house and in the last iteration the architects had rotated the garage a bit so that it was at an angle and did not stick out quite so much. So now the garage can move back into the area where the two boys bedrooms are currently and we will have to rearrange some other things, like the laundry room, powder room and some closets. In the end, I think we will have more of what we want for less money, which is great.

The other news is that we will be celebrating Ben's 4th birthday this week. I sat on the couch this evening with the boys and we looked at pics from their 2nd and 3rd birthdays and it was fun to see how they have changed so much. They are such big boys now.

I have had a hard time finding gifts for Ben this year. It seems that we are at an age where so many of the toys and games are based on movie or TV characters and our boys really don't know most of them. They know a few, such as Winnie the Pooh, Thomas the Train, Barney and Curious George but not much else. I really like to pick toys that are fun and educational, along with some cars and/or trucks, since they both love to play with those. I searched long and wide on the internet for award winning educational toys and I did find a couple of goods ones but I think it is going to be a challenge to find good ones for Nick's birthday and Christmas.

The boys are both doing great but this post is long enough already. I will post some pics and a boys update next and will try not to wait so long between posts next time. Tomorrow the boys have been invited for a play date and they are going to be treated to play time at one of the fun bouncing places as a birthday gift. They have not played with these friends for a while so they are really going to have a blast.

My mom and sister are coming for a visit on Wednesday and we will be celebrating Ben's birthday, so that will be a fun day to.

In early October, the state fair and rodeo is coming to town and this will be the first year that we are taking the boys. I know they are going to enjoy it a lot. Then we will celebrate the dad's birthday and then we will celebrate Nick's birthday and then it will be Thanksgiving and then Christmas. Wow! This year is going by so fast!

We are having beautiful fall weather and are trying to spend as much time outside enjoying it as possible. We played outside in the yard a lot today and I so enjoyed watching the boys play and playing with them. It was a nice, cool but very sunny day. Absolutely perfect. Tonight it is suppose to get into the 40's, which is a first for us this year. Fall is truly upon us and I am loving it.

Next post will be a picture post with a boys update, I promise. Hope you are all doing well and enjoying the fall weather (for those of you with seasons:).