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Friday, April 16, 2010

Home Run!

Can you believe it?! We're TEN days away from moving into our new home! Yup, that's right. In case you need to be brought into the loop (and most people probably do), here's what transpired in the last month:

Mid-March - After three years of wishin' and hopin', we finally felt prompted to pursue selling our home. Two realtor interviews later, and a after much praying+discussing, we decided to go for it.
We spent seven days whipping our house and yard into shape. This meant painting almost the entire inside (to neutralize for the market), adding some bells and whistles here and there, moving out all our personal stuff and a lot of furniture for staging, and doing TONS of yardwork. Whew! After all that work and wondering if our house would even sell, we were pretty beat.
March 25, 4 p.m. - Our house went officially on the market.
March 25, 6 p.m. - Got our first call for a showing (right at the end of dinner). As soon as we hung up the phone, we simultaneously threw our hands in the air and cried "WAHOOO!" Then we rushed around, putting away dishes, turning on all the lights, and scurried out the door.
March 25, 7 p.m. - Nervously sat and nibbled on ice cream at ColdStone, while we wondered how the first showing was going.
March 25, 7:30 p.m. - got a text from our realtor reading "If your house sold, where would you go?" WHAT?! Freaking out.
March 26 - Got an offer on our house! WHAT?! Freaking out.
March 28 - Were scheduled for our first open house...which never happened. After two counters, accepted our buyer's offer at 11 a.m. WHAT?! Freaking out some more.
March 29-31 - Started visiting homes for sale, and checking out rentals. Figured we'd be in a rental for awhile, waiting for the Lord to reveal the perfect home in the perfect place.
March 31 - Fell in love with 17945 SW 110th Avenue in Tualatin.
April 1 - Met the neighbors around 110th Avenue in Tualatin...including friends from church. Coincidence? I think not! (And I love how this happened on April Fool's Day) Made an offer.
April 4 - After a couple counters, our offer was accepted...not going to go into details about the amounts, but I'll just say that the Lord TOTALLY blessed. Can you believe that...in a market like this?!
Two inspections and two appraisals (and a bit of battling with grumpy people) later...we are officially on the home stretch! We close on the 22nd and 23rd, and are officially out of here on the 26th! For all our friends who know the history of our life on Fulmar Terrace, you know what a monumental day that will be.
So, without further ado, I present to you the future dwelling place of the Boehme family. These, by the way, are "before" pictures - we were able to save enough on the sale of our home to do some fun and exciting remodeling. Can't WAIT to reveal the "after" shots!

The view from the front. Sorry, the pink door has gotta go. ;) LOVE the brick arch and huge, wraparound yard. Our house is at the top of two cul-de-sacs, so I call it a "super-corner lot." We only have two bordering neighbors - our church friends, and a young family on the other side who happen to be duck fans. Life is good.

Nook/Kitchen area. Sorry, the cute vine painting has to go too. Wish I could transplant it to my mom's kitchen!

Great room - this floor is being replaced with hardwood, so if anyone wants about 600 q. ft. of brand new wide-plank rustic-look pergo, let me know!

Master bedroom

Love our new entry!

The pink room - uh, yeah, needs paint. :)

About half of the view of the backyard - and Brett's new awesome play structure! The other side has a waterfall/pond. That white house belongs to our friends from church. The brown house is inhabited by Ducks...including a 2-y-o girl for Brett to play with!

Brett's room - sorry cute mural, but you have to go too. My boy loves red.

The best room in the house! This is about 1/4 of the bonus room, which is a new addition over the garage. Fun times will be had in here!
Not pictured - one other bedroom, the formal living room (which we are converting to a dining room), and the formal dining room (which we are converting to an office).
Through all of this, I have just been bowled over by the goodness of the Lord. He has blessed us exceedingly abundantly above. After some rough detours in our lives in the past year, it's been such a breath of fresh air to have Him so clearly and lovingly affirm the desires of our hearts. All the glory goes to Him alone!

Friday, April 9, 2010

think inside the box

Here's what we've been up to lately...

Boxing, boxing, and more boxing! We now have SEVENTEEN days left on Fulmar Terrace...things are moving along well and we will be excited to update with lots of photos as soon as our deal is cinched on our new house!


First shot of the day on Easter...yes, it's 9 a.m. and Brett is scarfing candy, shirtless...you only live once, right?! :)

Enjoying all the goods from Grandma and Grandpa Brown's indoor egg hunt


Two handsome fellas


Having fun with Grandma and Papa Boehme's Easter card


Look what we saw while out house hunting?! No, this isn't our house...but it was fun to see Bambi!


Thursday, April 1, 2010

Easter Craft Day

Today Brett had so much fun with his good buddies, Jaron and Toby. All three boys are learning from the same home preschool curriculum, so we thought it'd be fun to gather them all together for some Easter-related school activities and crafts. It was such a blast, I think we'll have to do it again for every holiday! The boys made hand-stamped Easter greeting cards, rolled and cut oval egg-shaped cookies, decorated their cookies (by far the most messy and fun part of our day), and went for a little indoor egg hunt.

Brett mixes cookie dough...he is totally infatuated with Mommy's mixer.

Jaron thought the ladybug stickers were pretty awesome.

Toby-pastry chef in training


Makin' cards

Makin' cookies (or rather, makin' a mess and eating it!)

Three little cuties, all sugared up

Baby Jack was in charge of guarding Toby's prized cookies.
It's an absolute crime that I don't have a single photo of baby Sami...but I took a ton with her mommy's camera so hopefully we can add some of that little cutie pie. She never fails to melt my heart!
Some memorable moments were when Jaron buried an unfrosted cookie in a mountain of sprinkles, Toby was so into his project that he nearly ate the glue stick, and Brett decided that it was most fun to dump whole containers of sprinkles into the bowls of tinted icing. Good times, good times.