yay for Caelan!

so the cat is back, only she appears to be sore and/or weak. she's got some battle wounds on her ear and is walking gingerly. no doubt she got in a scuffle with something, and got her ass whooped.. I offered her some food.. and canned food, but she doesn't seem to be eating. if she doesn't perk up by tomorrow sometime I'm calling the vet.

here kitty kitty kitty..

Anyone seen our cat?

she went out yesterday and didn't come back.. it's not unusual for her to miss the last call into the house, and she's spends the night outside, but she's always waiting to come in when the sun comes up.

but she wasn't today.. so me and Evan went for a walk around the block. The good news is that there are no kitty bodies in the streets. the neighbors hadn't even seen the cat in a while either, and she goes all over the neighborhood. It makes me wonder if someone brought her to the animal shelter. I hope she comes back tomorrow.. if not then I'll call the shelter.

long weekend!

so as part of the long weekend festivities, we went to Yankee Candle for the fall festival or whatever. we bought candle stuff wel. b/c I can't help myself.. honestly it's like a kid in a candy store for people who like smelly candles. We went on a Hayride, and Evan painted a pumpkina nd got his face painted and got a balloon dragon! we had a good time.. now we're home, and the kids are sleeping, and jay will be leaving for the church supper shortly. give me a few minutes, and I'll upload some new pictures!

edited to add:

look! it's an update!

so here I am on my lunch break at work, blogging. It's been a while, I understand that... but life has gotten in the way. It's funny though.. well not really, but I often think that when things happen in the course of my day that I should blog about somehting that happened.. and I never do. I forget. I'm forgetful, it's just the way it is. I accept it, and so doesn't my family. i.e. Evan will ask me for a drink, and I'll say ok I'll get it. I go into the kitchen and return empty handed. Evan says, "Hey you forgot my drink!" oops.. and then I head back into the kitchen again, get distracted, and forget his drink again. it's pathetic really, the amount at which I forget to do things. My problem is that I get distracted easily from what I'm doing, and then I forget what I was doing int he first place and start to do something totally different. then 2 hours later, I remember that I forgot to finish something, so it seems as though my day never ends.

Life is otherwise going good. Liam started his new daycare today. Thanks so much to Tamar for watching him for us over the past several months!! I know he'll miss it there!

Have I told you all that he's got 2 teeth? others are on the way.. he chews all the time... He's eating solids like a champ, and is practically crawling. it's cute. I've got to get in on video for you guys.(riiiight, that will happen sometime this century) Hell I've just got to upload some more pictures. and take some!

The weather here has been incredably dry the past couple of months.. not much rain even for our dry season!! the temps last week were in the 80's.. but still chilly in the mornings.. hard to figure out the best way to dress the kids in the morning.

the cold nights, warm days, and lack of rain has caused the leaves to start to turn. it's beautiful around here the second week of october.. that's usually the peak of the season. I'll be heading out to North Adams for work next week, and I'll be sure to stop along the way and take some pictures!

Evan has started school as well. poor kid says every monring that he doesn't want to go to school, but every afternoon when we pick him up he tells us what a great day he's had. he doesn't realize that he'll be in school for the next 15+ years so he better get used to it! lol.. he had a very difficult time re-adjusting to being somewhere everyday after spending the summer home with Jason. I'm just glad that he doesn't kick and scream any more when i drop him off

that's all for now
i'm done

county fair!

we went to the county fair last night after the t-storms! it wasa blast.. Evan was so into it this year, it made it worth it to go! Evan digged the rides, which he usually doesn't do. he started off on the merry go round with Dad, and then Evan and I went on the little roller coaster, the flying airplanes, and the rocking boat, and then back to the roller coaster.. that was his favorite. He was very sad that he was too short for the bumper cars. there's always next year! and the rides were really quite fun! I remmber when we had the fair or whatever come into Cranberry highway when we were kids over where the old DQ used to be, which is now the spot with the Giant Walmart... Christine and I would ride the roller coaster, bunches of times. it was tons of fun! Evan played some games too, and won some prizes, and bought an over priced ninja set from the toy guy at the parade on thursday night... but of course it was th only thing on th cart that he wanted. he was sooooo.. excited for the parade! firetrucks, tractors, police cars, horses, oh my!

yesterday I gave my notice to my century 21 office.. i need to leave there. My broker is not a good person to work for. as a person, she's pretty nice, but as a real estate professional, she's pretty whacked. I'm hoping to join an agnecy, literally at the end of my street, andeven if I have to do some office time at least it's there, and not an extra 1/2 hour away. knock on wood for me that i can get a job there, as I really enjoy doing real estate stuff.

so yesterday after my office time, i went and showed a couple of houses to a coworker.. he who gets out of the car.. the boss from umass.. lol.. not expecting that.. Aaron wanted a second opinion. it was fine, and we had a good time. he figured out which house he wants to put an offer on, but says he wants to think about it some more. hopefully he'll wait a little bit long enough so i can figure out the stuff with switching offices.

I'm off.. gotta get the kid some food, and then clean our hovel and then the car!

I'm done

we're proud parents again!!

only this time a a beautiful butterfly!!



we have 2 more to go!

TA DA!

I finally worked on and finished the bag I promised to my sister for Mother's Day. hush up.. I've been working 2 jobs and taking care of a family. I'm just glad I finished it before her birthday.

1 closing down, 1 to go! The next one is scheduled on october 9th, and I've got a co-worker who's ready to buy a house too. who said real estate was slow? for some reason little-ol-part-time me is go-go-going...

Evan starts preschool on the 10th, we're all so very excited. Hard to believe my little dude is ready for school. Little does he know he'll be in school for atleast 15 more years. ugh.

ok i'm done.. i'm tired

life as it stands

is a bit less crazy with 2 house deals under agreement. although one of them has become quite the headache. the buyers are getting their home loan through the USDA, and apparently the USDA failed to inform my buyers what a pain in the ass it is to get a loan with them. It doesn't help that the loan contact woman is a big douche, thinks she's all righteous, says things are going to be fine and then 2 minutes later she's coming up with yet another reason to hold up the deal. grr. according to my buyers the rural development loan program sounded like a great program, but as the deal moves forward it has come apparent that the loan lady didn't explain to my buyers the process very well, as well as what hoops needed to be jumped through and all the ups and downs. The loan douche said near the end of july for them to go find a house and put in an offer. they asked her if closing by September 1 would be a problem. she said no, so the buyers said 'okay', and didn't renew their lease at their apt. now anyone who has ever been involved in purchasing a home knows that the normal transaction time is about 2 months not 1. well we had the home inspection this pat week, and she said a couple of easy fixes needed to be done. ok. and the home inspector said the foundation needed to be supported or it will buckle (thanks to the high water table and fieldstone foundation walls).. and he added in a few other things in the report that were catorgarized at 'unacceptable'. well the loan lady says that all of these stupid little things that don't really need to be fixed now need to be fixed now before they move in so they can get their loan money. this is bullshit, and it's frustrating everyone. so now we've had her inspection the buyers home inspection, and now she needs a contractor to go in and get an estimate for all the stupid repairs so the money can be put in escrow. me and the listing agent were talking this and it seems stupid to have to many hands in the honey pot. ugh.. here's to working with the feds i guess.

Jay's great aunt's health is very poor right now, and no one expects her to live past the next couple of days. It's so sad. Jay's grandmother has 8 or 9 siblings, and most of them live in town, and even we know them all fairly well. Poor Bertha's passing will be hard on the entire family. She's lived a good long life, mostly healthy, and has a great big family that loves her to pieces. She was even one of my godparents when I got baptized about 8 years ago. It's one of those bittersweet moments in life, similar to when my grandmother died. It was and is terribly sad, cancer got the best of both of them, and both women did so much for their family and for others, and yet God decides to take them early. At the end of their lives, you're just so thankful for all that they did when they were able, and it's so hard to see them not being able to do the simplest things in life, and then you're (sadly) thankful for that they will not be suffering much longer. Jay's eldest great aunt is in denial about the while thing and hasn't been to see her sister since her health has gotten really bad. she had it set is her mind that she was the one to go first, she's nearly (if not already) 90 years old. I have a feeling that it's going to be a rough next couple of years.

+++++++++++++

on a different note, the family is doing well. the bay is huge, evan has bundles of energy, and loves to swim, jay's ready to go back to work in a couple of weeks, and me? I've been the space cadet around here.. I feel like im always supposed to be doing 12 things at once and no time to slow down. life will 'normalize' once again, right?

suppose I should get dressed now.

ok i'm done

anybody else?

I know i received a comment on one of by blogs on here a couple weeks ago, and the comment never showed up. I got the email notification, but no comment. anyone else having this problem? perhaps i need to update my template.

so.friggin.busy

so.friggin.busy I feel like I've fallen off the face of the Earth.. well internet Earth that is.. so not only have I been working full-time, but many of my clients who are buying houses decided that they wanted to go out this week and weekend. friday I had a walkthrough and a closing in the morning, and later in the day I showed three houses (I played hooky from UMass), Then on saturday i was in the office until noon, ran to florence to pick up a key ran to Deerfield/Yankee Candle where I met the family, and proceeded (as a family) to my first showing for the afternoon, not far from Yankee Candle, then we drove back to northampton where we looked at 2 condos with a new client, returned the key to Florence, and then went to Amehrst to look at another condo. My cousin Kelly was supposed to stop by, but she was unable and it was okay... our house is a disaster.

today is Sunday, no huge plans for today.. that I know of I need a day off thankyouverymuch.

but tomorrow i go back to work, where i'll be heading out to Boxford, and then I'll be running home to get ready to show 3 more houses to the family i showed to on Friday, and on Tuesday I'll be at work all day and then going to Deerfield to show another condo. Thank God we're going away next weekend.. phew..

and the house still needs to be cleaned. desperately. and the laundry hasn't been put away in about amonth. and man o man i've got to get the recycling out of the kitchen.. it is overflowing, and I still have got to mail that package to my sister (sorry).. Think I'll request a pick up for monday as we speak so I don't have to go to the post office

So I haven't been purposly ignoring anyone or any internet sites (DIST mostly) and blogs I normally visit and be social with. hopefully soon life will be back to normal-ish and less crazy.

but the good news is that I've got soem buyers that wnt to put in an offer this week hopefully... the ones going monday, and the other buyer, is pretty much ready too. My co-worker who just started looking yesterday will be ready by september. so it's good.. it's not a fruitless effort like with some of the others I have gone out with.

oh and little dude loves sweet potatoes.. watch for pic and video update shortly. he gobbled up more than half of the jar! he could care less about the rice cereal. (and honestly I don't blame him)