Wednesday, August 26, 2015

Pictures

I only think to pull out the camera at the lamest moments these days. But it's better than nothing, I guess!

Angela exhibits her love of fried eggs and begs for backyard chickens.

This is a "Train" that Natalie made while I was trying to keep the toys cleaned up to show our place.





Natalie insisted that I strap her into her booster so that she could walk around with it hanging off her behind and sit down on it wherever she wanted.

Mall play place= our favorite place ever


Second favorite place: Ice cream store

Cousins! Agle children are much more photograph-friendly here, my girls were being goofy.


With Micah gone so much, there has been quite a bit of this

And this:
Totally chillaxing for Saturday morning cartoons.

Now that the temperature has gone down a bit, we can enjoy the zoo again Yay!


Angela found this bird hiding back there and she thought it was the coolest thing ever


And Natalie is naturally drawn to primates that are as fussy in the face as her dear father.

Learning to recognize all of the venomous snakes that we will encounter in Florida



Tuesday, August 18, 2015

Travels and Travails: A Brief Summary

Eleven days ago, we did one final clean and left our home to be sold while we went on a trip to see family in North Carolina and search for a new home in Florida. Unfortunately, the only success we had was in visiting family.

In the last week before listing our condo, I was not thrilled with our realtor- I kept asking her if there were things to be done or if she wanted to stop by and look at the place (she only saw it once on a walk-through several months ago) and then, the NIGHT of the day that we were planning to list, she sent us tons of paperwork and wanted to list it at a higher price than we had discussed earlier. We felt like our place should cost less than other units selling in the area because it is not in pristine condition, but she was very confident and so we just trusted her. She's a pretty confident professional and has a lot of experience, what's not to trust? She knew that going under contract quickly was a priority and that we didn't care about making much money on it. Well, wouldn't you know it, the feedback is coming in and everyone says it's overpriced. We had well over a dozen people come to see it and no offers. I feel really irritated because we did a lot of work and I feel like the realtor isn't carrying her weight- she said she would be holding an open house the first Sunday that it was on the market and that she would have a professional photographer come, neither of which happened. I feel like her description made it sound so pristine when it's really not and so most potential buyers were disappointed. Now we need her to reach out and invite offers and communicate to buyers that we're really not looking to get top dollar, but she's been completely unresponsive. And now we're back home with the kids and it is going to be incredibly stressful to continue showing and trying to manage the messes of daily life with two toddlers. Unless the next couple of days bring an offer that is wildly above anything that we expected, she WILL be getting a scathing online review. At least the pressure to sell quickly is slightly less because....

We didn't find a home in Florida. There was one house that we loved and we were ready to make an offer, but we were on very different planes when it came to the value. The home was older but clean and well-updated on an acre of land just a couple of miles from the heart of town, but the neighborhood was really sketchy with some older homes that were falling apart and neighbors with broken appliances and furniture heaped all over the yard. Our realtor reached out with comps to justify a valuation significantly below their asking price, and their realtor said that the owners just wouldn't go there. The silver lining? When we move down there in late September, it will probably still be on the market and the buyers might be able to get on board with a price we could agree to.

We DID get to visit my Dad and stepmom LeAnn, my sister Darlene and her family, Micah's sister Chere and her family, as well as some brief sightings of my brother Paco. It was so good to get out and see everybody and to have Micah around. Now, he has one more month of crazy work in which he MUST crank out a finished thesis and I MUST NOT lose my mind and strangle my children and set fire to my condo.