Worst Things About Selling a House with Kids

Selling a house with three small boy is a task. It's a HARD task, one that has me just about ready to take the house off the market and stay here forever. These are the top 8 things I hate about it.

8. School. Trying to figure out when the house will sell, when we'll move, what school they'll go to next year, well, that's all impossible. And that's stressful for all of us.

7. Toys. They are everywhere. Every showing requires trying to put the toys away in an orderly way that still looks like we have enough space.

6. School papers. I have no idea why so many papers come home today with the two big boys, but it is a LOT. And every day I feel like I have to clear off the counter, get rid of the unneeded papers and file the rest. It's overwhelming.

5. Crumbs. Even having their snacking confined with to the kitchen doesn't seem to matter. They generate a LOT of crumbs. Especially under Tommy's booster chair. And I won't even get into the fact that he splashed his soy milk on his tray yesterday and tiny splatters of milk layered every single area of the kitchen.

4. Leaving for showings. It's extremely difficult to gather up three kids, their stuff and leave the house neat for a showing. Extremely difficult. And then of course we have to think of somewhere to bring them. And the times we've left for an hour, come home and the agent is JUST showing up. Yup, that's happened and it sucks.

3. Toilet lids. I have two little boys who are potty trained. So before we leave the house, they need to go potty. I check all the bathrooms before we leave and inevitably find at least one toilet with the lid up and unflushed. I suspect this issue may plague us for years to come, but having strangers encounter it is unacceptable.

2. Cleaning before a showing. My house stays pretty clean. But "my clean" and "house showing clean" are a bit different. Just because everything has to be neat and away and doing that while taking care of three kids and feeding them and dressing them and all the work that goes into our every day is just next to impossible.

And finally

1. The stink! You know how you are supposed to bake a loaf of bread before a house showing to make it seem homey? Well, what happens when a baby drops a deuce RIGHT before we walk out the door? Because that stink just festers. We spray some air freshener, take the offending diaper with us and pray the people looking have a bad sense of smell.

Yup, selling a house right now is no fun at all.

Morning Noise

This morning I was sitting downstairs with Tommy and Owen. Tommy is usually the first one up these days. I get him up, change his diaper (or if Chris is here he does that part while I put in my contacts) and we bring him downstairs. One by one, the big boys eventually roll out of bed and slowly scoot down the stairs.

Today it was a bit different. Tommy was with me, Owen had made his way down the stairs, "baby" aka his lovey in hand. And then we started hearing banging.

The whole ceiling was shaking a bit. Colin was up. And doing something. Loudly.

It lasted a good five minutes. Bang, crash, bang bang, jump, jump. I sat on the couch thinking about whether or not to get up and be mad at him for starting the morning doing whatever in God's name he was doing.

Eventually he made it downstairs and I asked him what he was doing, trying not to be mad.

His answer? He was getting ready for field day. Yes, he woke up and decided to do jumping jacks, push ups, run in place and practice his jogging skills. For five minutes.

He takes field day seriously. And I learned a good lesson in not getting upset before I actually know what's going on. Because after I realized what he got up to do, I couldn't stop smiling.

Morning Math

When we are waiting for Colin's kindergarten bus some days, we do math fun. It's either watch Colin bounce all over the car bothering his brothers or have a quiz! He loves doing math quizzes. My only issue is pretty soon I'm going to need a calculator to give him problems because his mental math ability is quickly surpassing my own.

Morning Cuteness

There really is nothing cuter than Tommy in the morning in his little jammies.

Who cares if he's covered in breakfast!



And check out this little curl in the back. I know it's time for a haircut, it's just going to be hard to cut off his baby hair.

Interesting Beginning to Our Summer

The beginning of our summer (or at least the beginning of warm weather since the boys are still in school) has been "interesting".

First, Colin decided to "fall" off the couch. We say he fell, but we're pretty sure there was leaping involved. We know he started from a kneeling position and then flew off sideways somehow. And he hurt his arm. So I took him to the ER and it was a fracture, so into a cast he went. Luckily it was a "buckle" fracture, so he only needed to be in the cast for two weeks.





Six days later, the boys were playing street hockey with their friend (and the dads) and Owen took a stick to the lip. Back to the ER I went where Owen got a stitch in his lip. Which was really really gross, but he was shockingly stoic and was amazingly calm during the whole thing. I think the stitch lasted in his lip about 24 hours before he somehow popped it out, but it's healing and looks fine. (I won't torture anyone with a picture of his poor lip).

Colin got his cast off this morning, so hopefully our slightly rough beginning to the summer turns around. The ER nurse nicely informed me that her families of 3 or 4 boys are in there often. Hopefully my 3 boys don't follow that path and can keep themselves injury free for a bit!

Charter Schools H-1 Visa Controversy?

A departure from what I normally write about here, but this sure is interesting....

So yesterday I got a flyer in the mail about a brand new charter school in my area. It had a nice "green energy" theme to it and a picture of Obama on the front and promises of a G&T program and it sparked my interest. Green? Obama? Gifted? Woot!

I started looking around on the internet for information and couldn't find anything besides one man's name, a couple mentions in articles (just on how new charter schools will pull funding from public schools) and a list of its progress on a what looked like a conspiracy theory website.

Conspiracy theory website about charter schools?!? What? So I started reading through it and am now fascinated by this.. Part of the conspiracy is based on whether or not the people establishing the schools follow a certain Imam, I don't have an opinion on that part. But, there are a ton of schools being founded by Turkish nationals which I find so interesting. (One article I listed below said that 120 charter schools have been founded by Turkish Nationals in the US since 1999). The school I got the flyer about, is indeed being founded by a Turkish national (found his resume online).

Here's an article in the USA Today about some of the schools

http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2010-08-17-turkishfinal17_CV_N.htm

A recent article about four Oklahoma Charter schools

http://newsok.com/schools-backers-say-islamic-ties-pose-no-threat/article/3563627

Now I don't find the religious connection concerning, if it exists. The one thing I find concerning is that apparently a lot of the schools use a good deal of H-1 visas to bring teachers in from overseas, specifically from Turkey. Since the schools operate as charter schools it concerns me that they are taking public funding from our public schools to pay the teachers on visas and thus taking jobs from our teachers. Any thoughts on this? Has anyone else stumbled on this?

Oh and one last article, apparently some of the Wikileaks documents showed the US's unease with the H-1 visas for the teachers "Classified documents recently released by WikiLeaks recount U.S. officials' growing concern over large numbers of Turkish men seeking visas to work at American charter schools..."

http://articles.philly.com/2011-04-04/news/29380536_1_charter-schools-fethullah-gulen-truebright-science-academy

So what do you all think of all this?

Bike-a-thon

Owen had his annual bike-a-thon today. I actually couldn't make it as I was escorting Colin and his class on their first field trip. But Chris went with Tommy and got some pictures of Owen in action.





Great job, O!