Whirlwind with a side of crazy

 I'm not sure how we do it, but we have managed to get our lives in a bit of a whirlwind lately.  Leave it to us pack way too many things into our lives and how we don't lose sleep, I have no idea.  Before I get into some of our craziness, let me go back to last week.

Finley and I took Cole to get his hair cut.  Mimi won't be coming into town for a month and there was no way we could make it that long.  Plus, the rat-tail look really isn't flattering!

Finley loved sitting in the car while Cole got his hair done.

 And here is the handsome guy after....much better!

Later that afternoon, I had to go get a nail out of my tire and tire's rotated.  You can imagine my enthusiasm taking 2 small children to a place with giant tires and....other people.  BUT, they had me in and out of there in 20 minutes and the kids were actually really good.  They probably wanted the crazy lady with kids running all over the place in and out of the as quickly as possible, so thanks Discount Tire!!

Cole playing with his Sonic toy...this provided hours of entertainment

Finley being a cheese-ball

Sunday night, we were able to join our friends on Lake Lewisville for Scott's 40th birthday celebration.  Megan rented a party boat and it was so fun!  It rained a little bit that evening so the weather was absolutely perfect out on the water!  Actually, I was a little chilly once the sun went down.  Crazy for the middle of July.  (Don't worry, we are back into the 100's now...ugh).

Katie and Pete

All the girls

 Yesterday, what a treat we had!!!!  Casey (my best neighbor friend) and her two girls came into town for the day and we got to spend the day with them.  We SO miss them and hate that we live 3 hours away now.  But, when we see each other, we pick up right where we left off and don't skip a beat.  Casey had a doctor's appointment so I kept all 4 kids by myself for a couple hours.  I knew Lexie and Cole would be totally fine, but it was the two little girls that kept me on my toes!

Lexie was such a big help with the babies!!!  I miss this girl!

 I even managed to get them all fed.  In actuality, it was easier to have them all contained instead of running around the house, ha!

After lunch, I let them all play for a little bit then put the 3 younger ones to bed.  Yes, I felt like the greatest mom ever, getting 3 kids 3 and under down for naps with very little fussing!  I told Nick last night, we could have 5 kids, I could do it!!!!  He said, "I couldn't".  So, 2 is what we'll stick with :)

Kaylee and Finley playing with legos

 Finley loved following Lexie around and playing with her.  At one point, Lexie put the blanket on the floor and laid on it.  Finley laid down next to her and copied everything she did.

Pretending to be asleep

After all the kids woke up from naps we went to Bahama Bucks and got sno cones.  It was so nice spending the day with our friends and we sure do miss seeing them.  Hopefully we can make it down to their hood sometime soon.

Some big news from earlier this week....we sold our house!!  Well, we signed the contract and now we are in the 7-day option period and it should all be finalized soon.  Our closing date is Sept 19th so we have two months to get things packed up and into storage.  We are so blessed and I am so thrilled that we sold our house in 2.5 weeks!  We couldn't be happier.

I do feel a little bad because there was another buyer that was extremely interested in our house but were just a couple days too late.  Even though we had a contract on our house, they still came for a second showing last night and brought a whole entourage!  The reason I know this is because they were supposed to be out of the house by 7:15 so I headed home around that time.  They obviously were still there and stayed way past their allotted time and when they walked out (finally), they had everyone in their extended family and friends all there. :)  They showed up in 4 cars.  Poor people, will be so disappointed when they went through all that trouble and not even getting the option to get an offer in.  Oh well.

1, 2, 3, 4 cars

Now we just have to say some prayers that our house appraises for what the selling price was.  This will happen on Monday...eek!

House showing

 Honestly, I feel like we are a homeless bunch these days :)  Living out of my car is what we've been doing the last 2 weeks.  I love my car, but I'm super sick of seeing the inside of it!! :)

Our house has been on the market for 2 weeks now and even though we got off to a slow start (holiday week), we are definitely making up for it now!  On average, we've been having 2-3 showings a DAY.  Crazy right!  I mean, we are so ecstatic that we've had all the activity and several of the showings have been extremely interested, so I really truly hate to complain.  BUT, I really didn't think it would be this annoying interesting.  I keep telling everyone, it would be way easier if we didn't have the dogs to worry about because it would be so much easier if we could just go hang out at the gym, park, mall, grocery store during showings (my refrigerator and pantry have never been so pathetic) but then I would have nothing to do with the dogs.  The dogs have been loving it though!  They love nothing more than going in the car and being with us so to them this is perfect.  

Monday morning, we all woke up around 7:15, hung out in bed till about 7:45 when I got a call from the scheduling agency, saying we had a showing at 8:00am!  On a Monday!!  We've been pretty lucky till this point where they've given us a couple hours notice but I'm sure you can imagine my surprise when I only had 10 minutes to get out of the house.  And we had swimming lessons at 9:00am so I had to get everyone ready for that too.  

Not sure how I did it, but I got the house picked up and everyone out of the house.  Both kids were without clothes at this point so we drove down the street and I then put their clothes back on.  Whew!  We made a stop at McDonalds to get the kids some breakfast and I have never seen a kid put down pancakes as fast as he did.

Later that same day, we had another showing but for some reason I had to let them in.  They were late and Cole fell asleep so I just put him in bed and they could look through his room while he slept.  The dogs, Finley and I hung out in the car outside and Finley thought it was pretty cool to sit in the front seat!

So this has pretty much been our life the last week or so.  There was even one day where there was a miscommunication, the people showed up late, Cole really had to go to the bathroom but we didn't have time to go back inside so Cole was definitely peeing on our bush as the people drove up to the house.  Not sure why they didn't come back for a second showing...hmmmmm.

And there has been lots of this too....poor kids have had naps interrupted like crazy!

We've also been fortunate enough to have Pete and Katie offer up their house to us during the day.  They both work and they just live down the street and the kids love it there so I just let the dogs hang out in their backyard and we have somewhere else besides my car to hang out in.  They have been so generous and we definitely appreciate it!!!  The first day going to their house, I'll just say we had an incident with their alarm and the Frisco police showing up...always a good time! :)

Again, it's so hard for me to complain because things have just been so great besides the living in the car thing.  We decided where we are building our next house, put money down and get to start picking out all the fun stuff pretty soon.  We have 3 months to get our house sold once we sign our contract with the new house so everyone say some prayers it happens soon!

Outside all the house stuff, little Miss Finley has been quite the little pistol lately.  Her new fun thing to do is stand on all the furniture and she is obsessed with the dogs and their dog dishes lately.  The other day she found her little puppy beanie baby and thought it needed some food/water.


AND....this one is totally random, but Cole's cousin Cameron asked for more videos of Cole so here you go Cameron.  Cole misses you!!


Last, in other big news around our household (we sure like change in the family, haha!).  I am returning to work in the fall to my old position.  It's still the part time, everyday just mornings and we found a new sitter (our old sitter Ms. Jen referred us to her) that is super close to the high school AND, Cole will also continue going to Stonebriar MDO.  It couldn't have worked out more perfect and I'm so excited!  I am a little nervous because I will have two new classes that I've never taught.....Business Law and Global Management/Marketing.  I still get to teach my MS Office class but starting from scratch with the other classes will be interesting.  I met with my principal yesterday and everything is all set.
This is definitely a bittersweet deal, I am so excited to get back to work and be around adults/teenagers but I also hate leaving the kids.  I'm afraid Finley's world is going to be rocked at first because all she knows is staying home with mom.  I know kids are resilient but it will probably take a few weeks for her to get adjusted.  Again, she will only be at the sitters from 7:30-11:45 every day so it's not bad at all.  It will be good for her to have some socialization.
So lots of new and good changes in our lives and hopefully we can just enjoy the rest of the summer :) 

This past week

This has been such a strange week.  With having 4th of July in the middle of the week, it has just thrown everything off.  Honestly, it didn't really even feel like July 4th.  It was nice having Nick home an extra day though!  

A couple days ago, we were outside and Nick and Cole were playing baseball.  Cole has loved playing baseball lately and I must say, he can whack that ball pretty good.  We always say Cole is going to be our left-handed pitcher, but for now, he's just enjoying the batting part.

Cole also started swim lessons again this week.  When he was 18 mo he did the survival skills lessons and even though they are good in theory, I think it scared Cole and he's terrified to put his face in the water.  So hopefully these lessons will do him some good but I'm sure we will have to keep up some lessons throughout the year.

Monday after swim lessons and naps, we headed to the gym.  I used to try to go to the gym in the mornings, but realized the entire population of stay-at-home mom's went at the same exact time.....so I decided to go after their afternoon naps and it works great!!!  There's hardly anyone there and my kiddos don't get lost in the child care crowd.  One morning, I walked in and there were about 50 kids and Finley was eating a marker!!!  Yep, that was the last morning I was doing that!  They both enjoy going and Cole and Finley love playing in the basketball court after I pick them up from child care. :)

For our actual 4th of July day, we didn't do a whole lot....I didn't even take a picture of the kids!!!  Bad mom!  We did meet Nick's parents for lunch and then swam and had dinner with the Shempps.  Always a good time and the kids love being over there.

Today, we had more swim lessons, a showing, and then this lovely face needed to be hosed down after dinner.  I'm not really sure why she always has to put half her meal in her hair, but she does.  Just when I think we can go a day without taking a bath, she gets creative and makes hair gel out of spaghetti sauce.

This girl is crazy....but she makes us laugh :)