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Another Big Bite

Another Big Bite

Tag Archives: moving

Welcome to Colorful Colorado

25 Friday Jan 2013

Posted by anotherbigbite in Being a Grownup, Fixing Up the House, Grossology, On the Road Again, The "Joy" of Parenting

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

buying a house, colorado, colorado springs, diy, home, moving

It was a journey 37 days in the making, folks…  But we finally made it.  Alice had taken to calling ever male she had contact with “Daddy,” so it could not have come soon enough.

photo 1 (12)

I ‘spose there is a bunch of catching up to do, huh?  We finally arrived in Colorado just under two weeks ago.  After spending three nights in a hotel, we got the call from our title company out in Ohio that everything was good to go.  Both Nathan and I were just waiting for the other twelfth shoe to drop, but surprisingly, nothing else went wrong out in the Midwest.  We closed in Ohio at nine in the morning and had our final walk through scheduled on our Colorado house at 2:45, followed by its closing.  Of course there was a botched wire transfer that almost derailed us out here, but after (temporarily, no worries!) draining the kids’ savings accounts, everything workout just fine.

Almost.

We got to the house just in time after stopping by Old Navy to pick up a new pair of pants for The Finnster.  He had an accident while we were killing time at Garden of the Gods out here in C.Springs, and I wasn’t about ready to see our new house for the first time in person and meet our realtor with a littlin smelling like pee.  We changed him in the car, hopped out and crossed the threshold into what would be our new house in a few short hours.  My first impression was fine – it is smaller than our old house, but we had so much space that we never used in Ohio.

Oh yeah, and it was FILTHY.  And there were nail holes everywhere.  Like, check this out; how many times do you need to pound a nail in to hang it in the right spot??

photo 3 (10)

There are nail holes in places I would never think a sane person would ever hang a picture.  The floors were appalling.  They clearly wasn’t a single DIY bone in the previous owners bodies.  And apparently they had no shame when it came to putting thier house on the market covered in a layer of dog hair and grime.  Oh, and the brass light fixtures?  EVERYWHERE.  Libarache would have loved it here.

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Finn got to pick out his own room – and he is a little man after my own heart; “I want this one.  I can see the mountains from my window.”  Once again, the little guy has the best view in the house.  Just as we were getting ready to walk out the door and sign the papers, we hear little whine from upstairs.  There, poking out from between the railing is a little penis – Finn’s, obviously.  He had his coat on, his shoes on, and his pants around his ankles.

“Mom…  I need help.”

Oh.  Shit.

Literally.  The poor little guy was so excited, running from room to room, that he didn’t quite make it to the potty on time.  He almost made it…  Two more feet and we would have been in the clear.  There, in the middle of the floor in the bathroom, is a giant, stepped-in pile of poop.  There was poop tracked into the carpet, all over the floor, up the front of the toilet, down Finny’s legs, caked into the soles of his shoes, all over his pants…

Have I mentioned the water had been turned off?

We cleaned up as best as we could, changed him back into his peed-in jeans and headed off to closing.  There was no backing out now.  You can’t just refuse to buy a house that your son has shit all over.

Before long, our stuff arrived.  I was expecting a giant Mayflower truck to pull up in the driveway, but instead, we were greeted with this:

photo 4 (7)

I’m not gonna lie, it was pretty exciting.  Like, I was all ready to have the Lost Ark carted into the living room.  Unfortunately, all that was in those mysterious, exciting looking crates was our crappy furniture.  So, as every catalogued possession I owned came through the front door, I got to check it off the list.

photo 5 (5)

While I was frantically trying to find the number 267, Finn took it upon himself to start unpacking his stuff.  It was like the second coming of Santa.  He was actually gasping with joy as he pulled things out of boxes.  I forget how long two months is to a little person.

photo 1 (13)

Before the ink had dried on the deed, we were ripping up the carpet.  Ugh, I can hardly explain how disguising it was.  We decided to put in cheap, Ikea laminate floors after we discovered how expensive our tastes in hardwood were.  I’m still not sure how Nathan kowtow’d to my request for the white floors…  Once we get settled and have successfully ruined these, we’ll put in real wood.  That’s our five-year plan, anyway.

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We are sorta settled now.  We’ve located the closest park and have been spending a part of every day there.

photo 2 (12)photo 1 (14)

I think Finn likes Colorado.  Alice doesn’t much care.  She’s just glad to have the right guy to call Dad.  Finn was really getting to be a major terror, and all of a sudden, he has taken to putting himself to bed.

photo 3 (12)

My living room is looking a little bit better, though we haven’ unpacked any of our books, and I can’t really feel like I’ve moved in until the hardcovers get on the shelves.   My propensity for white furniture is really become a bit of a shock now.  Everything is all in one room.  It kind of resembles a hospital waiting room, but that will get better.  Soon. I hope.

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I’m hoping we’ll paint the living room and install the base trim this weekend.  I might even get around to changing up the brass chandelier over the dining room table.

As for the kids, they just had a first – even though it’s blurry, we caught it on film.  As we were getting changed into jammies tonight, the hugged each other.  At the same time.  And liked it.  And holy crap, so did Nathan and I.

photo (4)

Signing off from greener pastures, this is Lisa from Another Big Bite.  Oh, hell yeah, Colo-freakin-rado.

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Dude, Where’s My Pants?

06 Thursday Dec 2012

Posted by anotherbigbite in The "Joy" of Parenting

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Tags

kids, moving, out of the mouths of babes, parenting, potty training

And so I says to the guy… “Where’s my pants?”

Allow me to back pedal a bit. The movers are here today. Out of all the times we’ve moved in the last few years, this time Nathan’s employers have picked up the tab to move us from Ohio to C.Springs. C’mon. Say it with me now…

Sweet!

photo (2)

As I type this, there are three able-bodied men wrapping my dishes and pictures and sewing machine in packing paper. Like, seriously, this is woman porn. If I could just get them to vacuum, I think it might be the best day of my life. Or maybe not. Because now I have absolutely nothing to entertain the little ones except an iPad and a smattering of little toys. I have no dishes, no televisions, no spoons. I tried to put Alice down for a nap this morning, and it was a total no-go. This is why:

I excuse myself, letting the guys know that I’ll be putting the baby down for bed and will be outta commission for the next half hour. They let me know it won’t be a problem, they had things under control. I parked myself up in Alice’s room, fed her, and as soon as she drifted off to sleep, I heard Finn running up and down the halls and flushing the toilet. I was pleased; this kid NEVER flushes.

Then I overhear this little tidbit: “Hey, Guy, I leaked a little. I went up in my room; there are no clothes in my drawers. Where are my pants?”

Alice’s nap wasn’t happening today, and I knew what I was going to find when I walked downstairs with the groggy little girl. Yep. There’s Finny. Talking to the poor guy packing my great-grandmother’s Blue Willow dishes with a look of slight panic on his face, averting his eyes just a tad towards the ceiling.

And it is a full moon for the little Finny. No pants – NOTHING from the waist down. #ilovebeingamom.

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Love Letter to a House

26 Monday Nov 2012

Posted by anotherbigbite in Being a Grownup, On the Horizon, The Good Ole Days

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Tags

bittersweet, goodbye house, goodbyes, home, house, moving, selling a house

Dear House,

Oh, you.

It seems like just yesterday we were tramping through here with slightly lower expectations than you deserved.  We came to see you, despite the fact that there weren’t any pictures of your interior on your listing.  We loved your backyard.  We came in on a whim, and ended up buying the place.  It wasn’t love at first sight or anything.  We hated your light fixtures.  We thought you had potential.  And you did.  And still do.

It’s not much, but it’s home.

Two and a half years later, we are leaving you.  This makes me sad; incomprehensibly sad considering we are trading Ohio for amazing mountain vistas and low humidity.  It is strange feeling this way…  You still have so far to go to be an amazing house; we never did get to turning your backyard into the woodland paradise you deserve.  And your kitchen cabinets still suck.  I still have ten pounds of baby weight to lose; aren’t I the pot calling the kettle black?

The thing I will miss most about you is what I loved about you from the start.  In this craptacular region of Ohio, you have your own little slice of heaven out back.  In June, we would turn all the lights out and stand in the backyard and watch the orchestra of fireflies twinkle before putting the littlins down.  We watched a newborn fawn take its first steps by the creek.  We watched a robin chick take his maiden fall flight in the spring.  It took us a week to identify exactly what kind of animal was being tortured in the backyard our first fall (a perfectly healthy barred owl; not a small mammal in its death throes as we first thought).  Finny and I would sit at his bedroom window for minutes (a big feat for an eighteen-month-old) being eye to eye with the squirrels as they flung themselves from branch to branch. Thanks to you, Finn can identify robins, blue jays and chickadees by their songs alone.

And now I’m crying.

This is the first place Alice ever called home.  Her room was the first room Nathan and I had ever painted in our fourteen years together.  I keep trying find a way to explain to Finn that another little boy will get his room after he picks out a new room in Colorado.  He protests, and all he can say is “No, but this is OUR house.”  It breaks my heart.

Nathan walked out the front door for the last time this weekend, and I’m hot on his heels.  The kids and I will be spending a few weeks at my mom’s house in Chicago until we are all safe and sound and calling Colorado Springs home.  I’m so excited – but I’m going to miss the little things about you, House.  We actually play basketball in our living room.  Will I be able to do that in Colorado?  What about walking around in my underwear with all the curtains open?  I don’t have any neighbors in sight from the back…  I think it is pretty ironic that I am trading a home with a precious little chunk of nature in lame-ass Ohio for a house with views of Pikes Peak – and twelve other houses in spitting distance.

Not a great shot, but it is our last one as a family here; Nathan left two minutes later.

I love everything that you’ve done for us.  I love everything that we have done for you.  But this is the end of our short journey together.  I’ve been trying to find something about you that I won’t miss at least a little, and the only thing I can come up with is your squeaky floors.  Oh… and that fucking maniacal one-eyed groundhog that I scared from setting up permanent residence under the porch.  Remember that?  After a five-minute Mexican standoff, I chased him down like a rabid dog, brandishing a fireplace poker in one hand and six-month-old Alice in the other?  Oh, good times, House.  Good times.

Here’s the deal, House.  If those new owners don’t treat you with the love and respect that we did, you give me a call.  There won’t be much I will be able to do, but I’ll be a shoulder for you to cry on.  And we can reminisce about that one time where you decided to spring a leak and ruin our brand new bathroom!

I kid, I kid.  Even despite that, I still love you.

Happy Trails,

Lisa

Oh, and for anyone thinking of pulling any funny business; Nathan left me with the shotgun…  It’s loaded (easily accessable to me; impossible for Finn to get to – don’t worry), and even though I’ve never shot it before, I’ve been told the first shot is bird shot and will hit anything in front of me.  The second and remaining shots are buck shot.  And three and a half years of dealing with children that STILL don’t sleep through the night has made me a very light sleeper.  Just so you know.  Cheers!! 🙂

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Ch ch ch ch CHANGES.

22 Wednesday Aug 2012

Posted by anotherbigbite in Being a Grownup, Bitchfest, On the Horizon

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

colorado, jedi mind tricks, moving, relocating, selling a house, Travel

Yeah.  Remember this?  Well, it is unofficially official.  We are moving to Colorado!  Nathan has accepted the job.  All the transfer paperwork will take a few weeks to come through; at that time we’ll figure out start dates and all the little details.  So, for now, we are just basking in the glow of another dream coming true.

Or are we?  In four days, it will be our second house-aversary.  In this shitty market, we are going to be putting our house on the market TWO YEARS after we bought it.  And sunk a whole ton of money and time in it.  Not to mention we are still up to our eyeballs in unfinished bathrooms.  #Sigh.  Followed by #gag.  And #barf.

Just when we moved past the slight heartbreak of finding out we would not be moving to Colorado, we moved on with our regular lives.  Took our time getting the bathroom floor back together.  Went on vacation.  Bought a new car.  You know, shit you would never, ever do if you were going to be packing your bags and dragging your family across the country.  To live.  Like, forever.

What the fuck are we going to do?  We are going to take it all in stride, put on our grownup undies and do what we do best.  Find the best in a (sorta) crappy situation.  Oh, that and FINISH ALL THE GODDAMN BATHROOMS.  And the kitchen.  And maybe brush up on our HGTV-honed house staging skills.  After we get the house on the market, we are going to WILL someone to buy it with our Jedi Mind Tricks.

This is simultaneously a dream come true and my worst nightmare.  I’m a nervous drinker; if Diet Cokes were beers, I would be totally toasted right now.

On the plus side, this is where we will be living…

Colorado Springs… Named the “Best Adventure Town.” Hell yeah. via National Geographic

Instead of here…

Okay, I don’t actually live in Youngstown.  Or anywhere close. It’s like how I say that I grew up in Chicago, but I’m actually a suburbanite and am totally terrified to drive in Chicago city limits. (And is that a DELORIAN??  Holy crap, where is Doc Brown when you need him?) via reason.com

Trying to keep it positive, right?  Optimism is my new middle name.  I think.  (Don’t tell anyone, but if people actually had middle names that perfectly described them, mine would be Bitchy Worrywart Snob.)

In the next few weeks, I will be posting all our before and after pics of our entire house.  And I’ll be doing some major subliminal marketing to all y’all, since I know everyone and their mom wants to move to Youngstown, Ohio.  Right?  And buy my awesome pad.  Right?  I’ll make you a really sweet deal…

This IS the house you are looking for…. Right, Obi-Wan??

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