February and March!

We decided to make our house an "open house" during our town's annual "Parade of Homes" We had two "Parade" houses (out of 25 total in the whole town) in our neighborhood and the exposure was bound to be good. But, that meant we had to move EVERYTHING except the furniture out of the house. I'm trying to forget the whole experience (two weeks of constant moving and cleaning), so let's just say I'm glad that's over. We did have great exposure during the 11-day open house and a few offers, but we ended up taking an offer from a family that saw the house almost three months ago. Luckily they are ready to buy it at the same time that we are REALLY ready to sell it. So, the house is under contract! Yea! We're selling it for less than we expected, and the new family is getting an incredible deal, but we're also so glad to be done with trying to sell this house in this horrible market! Relief! It'll be total elation when it finally closes this week or the next, but I'm feeling that first stage of relief at least. We'll miss this gorgeous house, but we have been through so much in the last year that I'm ready to move on to the next adventure.
We've sold just about everything we can sell, including some of our cars. The photo above and below are of Jonah and Ana's trip to San Jose, California to deliver one of our station wagons to a buyer there. Ana LOVES traveling, even long car rides. Must take after me!

I also threw away a lot of things, which is my favorite apart about moving. I had to get one last photo of my dried wedding bouquet before it became fertilizer.

Since we couldn't really LIVE in our house during the Parade of Homes, we kept only a few suitcases of our stuff here and moved everything else into our enclosed trailer and took it to Jonah's dad's cabin. We have all (except Elsie, who still lives under the stairs) been staying in the casita, which Ana (the hotel manager) calls Hotel de la Casita.... We have a room key and everything. We went to Las Vegas for four days during the first weekend of the "Parade" and then stayed at the Loosli's house next door for five nice days while they were out of town. That made it so much easier, and I had to do hardly any cleaning of our own house. Ana really took advantage of the Parade of Homes and the thousands of cars that passed thru by having a "SALE" out front. She made enough to continue her horse lessons for another month, so she was delighted. Plus, she just LOVES business. Here she is with her "employees" Olivia and Asia from up the street.



Skip forward to March. Jonah and I have both been so intensely busy, we can't believe that neither of us are employed full time! Jonah's been selling everything and fixing up our remaining cars to sell, and I've been consulting with a few local businesses and I even MC'd a fashion show last week! Unfortunately (ha ha) I don't have any photos from that event.
The SADDEST thing this week was when I dropped my iPhone in the toilet as it was flushing and it landed in about an inch of water and instantly died forever! If any of you know me well, you know I live and breath through my iPhone, so it was quite devasting. I'm working through the grief and the three weeks of lost work info I'd failed to back up onto my computer.
Big time OOPS.

SO, I forgot to mention that we are flying to New Zealand on April 1st. Bought the tickets and everything. We'll be there at least until June 26th, unless we can get our long-term visa stuff figured out before June. YEA! We are all pretty excited to say the least. Cam is already having friend withdrawals, but we're hoping he and his friends will survive.

With news of our iminent departure, we got some visitors, including Jonah's dad surprising us last weekend and Jonah's brother Eli and Eli's wife Julie coming this weekend. They've helped us enjoy the beautiful spring weather that's finally showed up.
We spent some time at the Town Center Park where Eli impressed with his leaping, and Elsie did her best to soak her pants in some waterfalls.

In other EXCITING news, Cam lost his first tooth. Here's his new smile!
We'll be moving and packing and working for the next few weeks, but I'll try and get another blog out before we go. Hope to see some of you soon!