Something's in the Air...

As it is each Spring, Houston is now blanketed in a thick coat of bright yellow pollen. Kleenex anyone?

I was reading the Pence's blog and thinking about the election. I was thinking about how wonderful it is to have some diversity on the ballot this year. I think it is awesome that my daughter will come of age in a time where women have moved to the forefront of politics and as a person of Mexican-American background, I believe it is high time that we had some alternative viewpoints, and frankly, some different colored faces up on the TV screen in election year. Regardless of political opinions I hope everyone can take a moment to appreciate this - it is truly history in the making and I believe that our children and country will ultimately benefit.

On Saturday morning Bella decided to start my weekend off with a spectacular series of diaper surprises. Typically, we aren't up taking baths at 7 AM, but I'm glad we did because otherwise I might not have gotten these post bath photos!

We braved the pollen and spent Saturday afternoon at Jesse Jones Park. We had a picnic and were taught by "settlers" in period costumes how to dye Easter eggs using all natural ingredients. One thing I learned was that it takes a LONG time to dye eggs with all natural ingredients, and Jacob lost interest after about 5 eggs. He had done blue, green, and yellow but then there was a bit of a mishap with the walnut egg stain and so we ended up with mostly brown eggs. Afterwards we went to the playground.

Last week the lot for our new home was cleared, so of course I had to go by and take a picture!

My head is spinning....

On Sunday morning we had the first showing of our house. On Sunday evening we found out that we had received an offer. It was lower than what we could accept and so early Monday morning we counter offered, then we waited... and waited. Finally around 8:30 Monday evening we found that the counteroffer was accepted, however they asked us to include our dining room table and chairs in the sale of the home! After some hesitation we agreed and so we went to sign the paperwork tonight. The inspection will be this Saturday, so hopefully all will go well. If so then we are set to move out at the end of April. While our new house is being built, we are going to be able to make a temporary move into a home just four houses down from our current house that is a rental property belonging to our neighbor. The really weird thing is that the current tenant in that rental property is the father to the girl who is buying our house! So just like that we have sold our house after only a few days and we've secured a place to live - hooray! I am so relieved! Now we just pray it will all go smoothly.

Some of you have noticed how beautiful my blog is looking these days, we love it! Shout outs to my good friend Amy and her newly launched blog design business, I have linked to it in my links section so check it out. She is uber-talented and I know she will make the cyber world a better place. Friends don't let friends have ugly blogs!

YAWN...

There's a lot I need to catch up on but I'm too tired tonight to cover more than the basics.

Work has been stressful for me lately - we're just really busy and it is the classic situation where I need to train others so that I won't be so burdened but I'm so burdened that I can never find the extra time to train someone to help me out and so the cycle continues! I thought it was a sad statement that I had to set the crock pot to cook during the day so that we'd have dinner at night and set my reports to run overnight while I went home - talk about not having enough hours in the day!

Our house is officially "on the market". You can see the HAR.com listing here if you are so inclined. http://search.har.com/engine/dispSearch.cfm?mlnum=4622049&backButton=Y It is truly bizarre to see photos of my home up on the Internet. Yes, I realize that this blog is on the net but it just seems weird for some reason to see my bathroom and my kid's rooms up on the net. I figure it must be payback for the hundreds of times that I have have looked at houses and critiqued the pictures! Of course, me being me, I'm totally sentimental about this house - part of me hopes it sells right away so the anxiety will be over, the other part of me hasn't figured out how to say good bye yet!

In the midst of all of this, the children are both constantly amazing me with all the new things they are doing. Bella LOVES to swing (Can you tell?)

Did I mention she is sitting up now?

Jacob riding his tricyle on the greenbelt

Almost ready to crawl - she gets up on all fours and just rocks, I have a feeling it won't be long now.

Jacob is really blossoming, he talks about all kinds of things now. The other day he starts talking about this hippo faucet cover we used to have in the bathtub (it was this rubber hippo that fit over the spout) and he tells me "We had to throw it away because it got all oldy". He must have over heard me saying to Will that it got "moldy". I couldn't believe he remembered that, it was over a year ago.

6 Months Old

To celebrate turning 6 months old (actually on the 13th) Bella got her ears pierced. She didn't like being made to hold still but otherwise did not cry or act uncomfortable in any way. I just never wanted her to have any memory of pain or fear so I wanted it done while she was still tiny. She looks so beautiful to me!

After we arrived home I got a few shots of the kids in the afternoon sunshine.



I also have to share these pics of her wearing an adorable little jean skirt given to her by her Auntie Leaf (Leaf is how Jacob says Leigh). I've been waiting until she was big enough to wear it.



This week we started her on a few bites of rice cereal, she's still getting the hang of it but she loves it and grabs the spoon from my hand - little miss independent!



New updates on the house - we ARE going to build on the big lot. We have compromised with the builder on a modified version of the facade with the porch. The upper window section above the porch will be stone instead of brick and it will be two rounded keyhole windows instead of the one big rectangular window. We had felt like it was too boxy before so now there will be two little rounded hobbit windows. It feels great to have that part decided. Now, we just have to get our house ready to place on the market and hope that it sells!

This last picture is just one of Jacob down at the new lakefront shopping center. I just thought it was sweet.

Better Home & Gnawin's

Quite a bit has happened since my last entry. What follows is a detailed account of what's going on - not for the sqeamish! On Monday I went in to have a root canal. The x-rays revealed that the root of the tooth was not in good enough shape to make the root canal sucessful. The endodontist (root canal dentist) suggested I get it extracted and replace the tooth with either a bridge or an implant. A bridge is where they file the teeth on either side down to nubs and string up a false tooth between the nubs and cover the nubs with more false teeth. So basically you lose 3 teeth to replace 1. And they last about 7 years. Given that I'm only 35 that's not such a great option. The other option, an implant, is where they place a titanium screw into your jaw bone then wait 6 months for the bone and gum around it to set. Then they place a pointy thing onto the screw head and then place a tooth onto the screwhead. It should basically last a lifetime but they don't know for certain as the technology is only 15 years old, but the ones placed 15 years ago are still going strong.

So we choose an implant, we go to the Oral Surgeon on Tuesday and he extracts my tooth and clears away all the infected gum and bone. Sadly, he decides there is not enough healthy bone left to place the titanium screw. So I have to have a bone graft. This adds 6 months or so to the previously described process - we must now wait for my gum and jaw bone to heal up around the graft material and then the screw can be placed. I look human today except for some swelling and a large yellow bruise. Most of the week was spent looking like the elephant man and pretty much unable to talk or eat much. I guess the silver lining is that I've lost some weight and Will's had some peace and quiet. The only limitation I have right now is that I can't eat anythig crunchy for 6-12 weeks. How will I possibly survive that long without tortilla chips???!!! I guess I will just have to eat queso with a spoon. Hmm. On second thought that may not be so bad, I've always wanted an excuse to do that.

OK, so on to an update on the house situation. The builder and developer have come back to us and said they will build our desired house on our desired lot if we will be OK with our least favorite facade. It is a brick and stone front with a front porch supported by curved wooden timbers. It is like a little cottage, very cute, it just isn't our favorite.



The other two facades have these really charming rounded stone doorways that we love, just like a little hobbit house.



So we have to decide what we want to do. I think we obviously will spend more time in an awesome back yard and of course, in the house itself, rather than looking at the front of the house. I guess in real estate you always compromise a little on one thing or another. We could have the facade we want on a different lot but all the upstairs windows would have views of nothing but the roof of the houses on either side. Our current lot is pie shaped and so the view opens out a lot more as the house would be set on an angle relative to the ones on each side. I think I'm just in love with the large lot, I want to own as much Texas as possible!