Kids Say the Darndest Things - December '10 Edition

Taken from the sidebar....


During Family scripture reading, we came across a passage where the 10 commandments are written....

Kyle: "What's 'commit adultery'?"
Me: "It's when someone who is married goes off with another man or woman."
Matt: "God commands us to be faithful to our marriage. We're suppose to save all our love, feelings, and affection for just who we're married to....(blah, blah, blah)
Me: "Yah, what would happen to our family if I went off and got another boyfriend?" (Thinking the kids would recognize how that would DESTROY our family.)
Haylee: "YOU would get A LOT of Christmas presents!" 12/10


Brookelle & I went to one of Ryan's band performances. In one of the musical numbers, Ryan has a part where he plays the Timpani drums REALLY loud...BOOM-BOOM, BOOM-BOOM, BOOM-BOOM....

Me: "Can you hear Ryan? That's him playing the drums loud!" Brookelle: (listening, smiling) "Yes!" (she was amused by it)
Later on in the song, the music, in stark contrast, is played softly....
Brookelle: "GO, Ryan, MORE! More, Ryan, GO!" 12/10


Brookelle was struggling to put on her jacket and couldn't get her arms in the right holes....

Brookelle: "Bad coat! Bad coat!" 12/10

You Can't Always Get What You Want

CHRISTMAS 2010

"The Line Up" on Christmas morning (8:00a.m.)

~ they all have Great Expectations of what is to come...

(The joke's on them!)

This boy...

wanted one of these...

Cost: anywhere from $299 to many, many thousands of dollars.
Problem #2: We don't have a space for it in our home.

He didn't get one.



This boy...

wanted one of these...

Cost: $200 - $300

He didn't get one.



This girl...

wanted one of these...

(In an advertisement, it boasts, "This is definitely the gift for a spoiled kid.")

Oh, goodie - JUST what I WANT!

Cost: $234.88 - $349.99



She did not get it.



This girl....

...is so excited to get what she wanted....

Main Problem: We already have a doll house.

(But it's officially her sister's and she wants sole ownership)
We don't have room for another - especially when we're trying to sell our home!

Cost: $75 - $190+

She did not get it.

Well, guess what? I wanted to have the w-h-o-l-e Christmas break off work ~ and then a severe winter storm hit the Northeast (you may have heard about it - a lot - on the news?) ~ and I've been working mandatory Overtime ever since during my "break."

[Insert title of Post here]

This Sweetie Pie...

doesn't even know about the "I want its" yet. (Thank goodness)
and she couldn't be happier about her stocking stuffers...

and

What more could a 2-year ever want?!?

(Why can't we all be like her?)

As for the older kids, in spite of not getting the above mentioned items, they still have an AWESOME [and totally non-embarrassing] life!


After all, they've got a very photogenic dad...

A brother with excellent dental health...

A sister who sits on you and pulls your hair...

A Rock Star brother...
Sisters with RAT'S NESTS atop their heads
(i.e. very severe bedhead)...
And last, but not least, a Mom who does a special rendition
of "Feliz Navidad" on Christmas Eve...

They've been blessed immensely, wouldn't you say? :)

Come to think of it....when ya look at it THAT way...they HAVE gotten all they could ever want!
What am I doing titling my post the way I did?!!?

(It'll just take a little more time for that "enlightenment" to hit them!)

Who Ya Gonna Call?

In the course of selling our home over the last 6 weeks, we've had a good number of prospective buyers come through to take a look. After they have come to see our home, my brother, our listing agent, will call me with the feedback.

WARNING TO THOSE THINKING ABOUT SELLING IN THE FUTURE: This feedback stuff - hearing the reasons people aren't going to buy your home - can be hard on your psyche! It's not for the "faint of heart."

Some of the feedback are things we can't even change. (They didn't like how, when standing at our front door, they could see all the way through the different rooms to the back of our home.) Other feedback we can fix, and we do. (Installing more rain gutters.) And some feedback we could change, if we spent a million dollars, but we're not going to. (Put in a new deck & stairs in the back.)

Well, my brother didn't call me with feedback from the most recent prospective buyers that came to our home. He didn't call me, because he wanted to see the look on my face when he told me in person.

And when he told me at our family Christmas party the other day, my reaction (and those others around me) DID NOT DISAPPOINT. :)

He said that when he called the other Realtor who'd brought the buyers to my home, the other Realtor stumbled over his words at first, and had a hard time explaining his clients...

He said that these particular clients bring a meter thingie when they go around looking at houses.

WHAT?

I don't know about you, but THIS came to mind:

AS IN THIS:

From a certain movie you "Children of the 80's" might be familiar with...

So, the other Realtor says his clients walk around houses with this meter and measure.....this is where he was hesitant...and couldn't find the right words...because he didn't really understand, himself....but the "measurement" tells the clients SOMETHING. The rest of my family was gone, but I actually had to be in my home office working my JetBlue shift at the time and I did hear people out in the hall whispering, but I couldn't understand any words.

Initially, I thought that was just how people speak if the homeowners are there, (I do the same thing. P.S. If you're selling your house, and if possible, LEAVE when people come to look. It's so much better; they'll stay longer, they'll imagine themselves living there - not YOU, and they could even actually sit down on your furniture and start talking about possible offer scenarios. It's TRUE - I can vouch for it!) but, now in light of this new information, I realize their whispers may have had more to do with the mysterious nature of their "findings."

Their "findings," as it turns out, is what will prevent them from buying our home. Our home's "measurement" didn't make the cut. The "measurement" wasn't super high, but it was a little higher than their limit they have set for themselves. That was the feedback.

You. Have. GOT. To. Be. Kidding. Me!

Right?!?

My brother was not kidding. He said that is a first in his 8 year Real Estate career. He has never dealt with "Meter People."

So, I'm kind of unclear on this....What category would you say that feedback falls into?
a) Something that CAN be changed, and we WILL fix it. (And if so - HOW?!?)
b) Something that CAN be changed, but Oh well - DEAL WITH IT!
OR
c) Something that CAN'T even be changed.

(?) (?) (?)

One thing's for sure, my neighbors will THANK me for....that SOMETHING that we have in our home. Because now they don't have to have psychos moving in for neighbors!

(Maybe they think they already have psychos for neighbors?!!?) :)

*****
You're all singing now, aren't you?

If there's something strange
in your neighborhood
Who ya gonna call?
GHOSTBUSTERS

If there's something weird
and it don't look good
Who ya gonna call?
GHOSTBUSTERS

We've come a LONG WAY, Baby!

See this cute, little boy?

Don't let it FOOL you! ;)

When he was this age, haircuts were a NIGHTMARE!!! With a Capital "N!" Seriously. He reacted as if he were getting murdered! And that is not an exaggeration. He screamed THE. WHOLE. TIME. And not just screamed, he S.C.R.E.A.M.E.D. And, FYI: suckers, water guns, Popsicles, books, fruit snacks, and/or dinosaurs, etc. DID NOT work.

I learned quickly that it was a TWO-MAN job! I enlisted Matt to physically restrain him, while I did the haircut. In fact, it was probably more than a two-man job, but I didn't have anyone else to help me. I even tried taking him elsewhere for the haircut in case he only "acted up" for me. Nope. It was torture there, too. Never again. I vowed to keep the ballistics contained at our house, and out of the public eye after that. We also learned that we couldn't give him a haircut in front of the other children, because it would traumatize them! (Remember, he was a "murder victim.") And, finally, we learned, by sad experience, that when we waited until naptime (so the baby wouldn't be a witness) to give the haircut, his "fight for his life" woke up the baby! GASP! Now, THAT, as any parent knows, is simply unacceptable!

So, we moved the haircut scene outside to our back deck in an effort to protect the baby's precious naptime - she still heard him (the nursery is in the back of our home) and was awakened. So, the next time we relocated outside to the front porch. Did being outdoors reign in my boy's dramatics? No. Not one bit. And as a result, during the "haircut show", we had neighbors peeking their heads out their doors (literally) to see just WHO was being murdered on our street. And then the cops proceeded to show up at our place due to complaints of "disturbing the peace" and we were arrested for child abuse and put in jail! Nah, just kidding on that last part --- when we saw the suspicious neighbors, we high-tailed it down to Wal-mart and went into hiding there before we could get caught by the police. Oh, wait....Wal-mart hadn't come to our town way back then yet...Oh, I remember, we went and hid in the trashy tent trailer that was parked at the side of our house and escaped the altercation with the Officials that way instead. ;) But, seriously, I wasn't lying when I said it was a nightmare!

In fact, I'm sitting here surprised that he even has a nice, short hair-do in this photo. I'm surprised that instead of putting myself through that, I just didn't let him go for the "hippy" hair look during that "phase." He must've been my 2nd child - and I was a "young" (READ: inexperienced) Mom!)

So, anyway....Where am I going with this?!?

Fast Forward ONE YEAR....

OK - I don't want to embarrass him too badly - it's been four years, maybe five.

My son CAME TO ME a couple of days ago, and practically PLEADED with me to give him a haircut!!!

(Here's proof)

And so I did. By myself.

And there was no screaming, no thrashing about, no outbursts, no blood, sweat & tears. The baby remained asleep and other members of my family walked in and out without fear and trembling. In fact, when Ryan AND Matt came by, they both said, "Can I be next?" That's how FUN it looked! :)

But, I do think HELL may have frozen over!

Creating "Art"

#1

#2

#3

#4
#5

{click on image to enlarge}

Which do you like the best?
I was thinking of making a large print of one of these and framing it. (Another proof that we're done having kids - otherwise my "artwork" will be out of date.)

P.S.
I did it on www.wordle.net

Your Opinion, Please...

To Decorate or Not to Decorate?

That is the question.

With our home being up For Sale, I'm troubled about this Christmas decorating thing.

My original aversion to decorating was that I'd put it all up, have to take it all down if we sold before Christmas, and then put it all back up in our new home, then take it all down again after the New Year. BUT, that is no longer an issue at this point since we won't have to move out before Christmas - the turn around just takes longer than 16 days now.

BUT, we still have to show our home - to any interested buyer - at any time. Which means it has to be "staged." Which kind of means it's not fully OUR HOME - we're catering to what's attractive to others.

So, there's a couple of schools of thought with decorating for Christmas when the house is on the market.

I keep going back and forth with this dilemma. THUS, I open it up to my readers (all 3 of you! :))

1) Prospective Buyers might think it's "CUTE." Like it feels like Home. Warm. Welcoming. Festive. They might even imagine their OWN decorations in those very spots.

OR

2) All the decorations just make our home look CLUTTERED.

CLUTTER = SMALL

CLUTTER = CLAUSTROPHOBIC

CLUTTER = MESSY

CLUTTER = UNKEMPT

CLUTTER = UNSETTLING

CLUTTER = DISTURBING

CLUTTER = PSYCHOLOGICALLY UNSOUND HOMEOWNERS (Think: that "Hoarders" T.V. show that everyone talks about/is disgusted by.)

I had a goal of "40 bags in 40 days" - which was literally filling up trash bags - throwing out or giving away "stuff" in our home that we didn't need, we didn't use, and we didn't LOVE. I quit counting after 24 bags, but after this big effort, I hate to bring back more stuff again, ya know?

And I KNOW that many of YOU are turned off by clutter. Remember when I blogged about this? Most of your comments were not about being horrified by the sheer NUMBER of bottles of cologne my husband had, but by the the fact that he had them all out on the bathroom counter!!!

On the flip side, there's the possibility that "THEY" might think we're Scrooges, or something, if our Christmas decorating is lacking, and will wonder what other crazy things have gone on in this house! (It's TRUE! I have these thoughts when I look at houses myself!)

But, we have to live our life, too, right?

But, anyone who has sold a house while living in it, knows that your life is NOT really your own during this time anyway.

So, which line of thinking do you follow?

Or is your opinion something else entirely?

*******

Of course, if it's more "traffic" (literally) I'm trying to get to come see our home, I could use Christmas decorating to my advantage and do it like this, I guess....