Forty-Eight Hours

My brother gave smell-good colored pencils to Ania. I love them!

A great day. A great weekend. But totally exhausting. Do you think we'll get to relax in heaven? It's ten pm on Sunday night and I'm not so patiently waiting for my littlest crying person to fall asleep so I can do something besides wait for her to fall asleep.

Nicole's bridal shower that my mom and I put on was a smashing success. Nicole is darling. Darren is perfect. The wedding is just around the corner. And they were showered with gifts, mostly for camping! Who can beat that?

Ania lost another tooth this weekend. She was so, so proud of herself because I promised not to touch it and told her that she could pull it out when she was ready. She could hardly wait to come home to show Cody! And I learned that the tooth fairy builds a castle with the tooth after she claims it. How did I miss that for 44 years?

Garage sale, done! I think garage sales are like having babies. Ten minutes after you're done you promise yourself that you will NEVER do that again, but ten days later it's all forgotten and two years later you're having another garage sale! Ugh. This one was definitely more about scraping up some money than getting rid of stuff. But both things were done and life is simplified a little bit.

I've spent the whole week moving things. Moving our things out of the basement. Moving the office to my room. Moving the TV room into the office. Moving Kaisha into Alissa's room. Moving Alissa into half of her room. Moving garage sale stuff up to my mom's house. Moving the weights into the garage. Rearranging the garage. Watching my awesome renters move their truckloads into the basement. Next week will be watching Collin move out. I'm super excited for him!!

My mom's property...wow. It would make the most intriguing, deathly boring novel ever. Basically, one guy on the city council (who will not have my vote in the next election :), wanted a clause added to their statement requiring the property owner to sign a contract with the city re: watershed regulations, which, just like the water issue, was already ironed out over the 5 years my father spend on the short plat. He spent 20K on that issue, hired multiple engineers and a construction company to install curtain drains and storm drains, etc. He also hired a land use attorney to work through impervious surface issues etc. So, mom's buyer is working on those issues with the city and the county now. ALSO, although my mom is in the county, they seem to be unable to decide under whose jurisdiction her property falls...the city or the county. So, they seem to want to impose BOTH sets of watershed regulations on the property now. The buyer, a very able realtor that has worked through untold number of watershed projects in his years, said yesterday that he has NEVER seen anything like what they are doing to my mom's lots. He sat in a room in city hall last week with 8 city workers from different departments ALL working on ironing out what they were going to require next. Your tax dollars hard at work. That said and ridiculousness aside, we have not met a single person through this process that we didn't actually like very much! They've all been kind, pleasant people. It's just the web of the system gone bad.

Bottom line, when the sale closes and her money is in the bank, then maybe we'll buy bottled soda's and toast to the rest of our lives without thinking another thought about city politics.

Little crying person stopped crying. Now the fun begins! Alissa and I are so addicted to watching Bones. It's really going to reek havoc on our grades this fall.