Sold, so mostly packing except a visit from Megan

About a week after Spring Break, we got an offer on our house. We only had to show it about 6 times in the period of just over a month. It was so easy. And the offer was very fair. At that point we would have had to lower our price to get more visibility and the offer came in just above what we were planning to lower it to. Plus they were willing to let us close on June 10th, the exact day we wanted to. Our kids have school technically until June 18th (SO LATE!), but they only have to be in school until June 5th in order to get final grades. That's a Wednesday, and our close day is the following Sunday. Just enough time to pack up our storage containers and get the house cleaned after the kids are done. We were excited to accept. 

Since then, it's been slightly ridiculous. They made us have the inspection done the very next day. Then they asked us to do a laundry list of silly, easy items from the inspection. Then we had to have the appraisal done a few days later. Then they decided to add their brother to the contract, which then forced us to have another appraisal done because it changed the type of loan they were getting. Then, for the last three weeks, they have been telling us that they can't get insurance. We had a toilet overflow (because Harrison flushed Steve's keys down the toilet like a month after we moved in here) and we filed a claim with the insurance company and got like $2500. So they asked us to get the claim for them. And then they asked us to get the insurance adjuster's notes. Then they asked us to get the info for our insurance company. And then they asked me to give their info to our insurance company because the insurance agent didn't pick up the phone the first time they called. *sigh*

Another round of arrange-the-squishies.

Harrison woke up one morning with a rash on his torso. I wasn't sure what it was from, but after a while we figured it was poison oak from a walk he and Steve went on because Steve had a little on his hand too.

Mira was in a play that had performances at the end of April. Emilia and I went the first night and Steve and Cecily went the next night. She did great and it was fun to watch her perform up there.

This dress looked gorgeous on her, too.

The same weekend Mira had the play performance, Megan flew out from Colorado to stay with me for a whole week. She flew in Friday evening and Saturday morning, she and I drove up to Port Townsend. There is a beach up there called the Glass Beach and I've never been able to go because my kids didn't want to hike out to it. When we decided to go, I (unwisely) went with what I remembered about how long the hike was. Turns out I was off. By about 2.5 miles. I thought it was slightly over a 1 mile hike out and the same back. It turned out to be 2.75 miles out and the same back. The walk out there wasn't so bad. But the walk back was the thing nightmares are made of. It felt like the parking lot must have kept moving farther and farther away. Every time we would round a bend thinking we'd made it, there was just another bend to walk to. We questioned our sanity multiple times. "Did we miss the parking lot?" "Surely we wouldn't have just walked by it without noticing right?" "Were ALL THESE HOMES here the last time?" I will never do that hike again. The glass was gorgeous, but not worth questioning my sanity.

On our hike we found glass, another starfish, lots of fun rocks, crab carapaces, weird armadillo-of-the-sea type things that have gorgeous teals and pinks on their interlocking shells. I just looked them up and they are called chitons. This is what their shells look like:

 

When we finally actually made it to the parking lot, we sighed a huge sigh of relief and then found ourselves a pizza parlor. We ate most of a pizza, Megan had a salad, I had my first ever bowl of clam chowder (it was good!), and I had their last piece of huckleberry pie for dessert. It was SO yummy. And SO well-earned. We stayed in a hotel overnight and then after our carb-heavy continental breakfast, we took the ferry to Whidbey Island and walked through the Price Scupture Forest. I'd been there twice already, so this was my favorite find of the day:

 Megan braving the cold and rain on the ride back.

Before we drove home, we stopped at Indian Island Country Park and looked for more shells and rocks. That place smells terrible because of all the oysters and clams and muscles that go there to die. But there are tons of gorgeous oyster shells. And a plethora of rocks in all shades and colors.

Jules loves it when Harrison will sit calmly with her. It doesn't happen often, so she always makes me take a picture.

Kitty in a drawer.

This kid fluctuates between me wanting to kill him and me wanting to scoop him up and snuggle him all day. He is so funny. He picked out this hat and put it on himself when we were going to go shopping one day. Wore it all through Walmart like that.

We put together this puzzle one day. It was 750 pieces which was about 250 pieces too many for my taste, but it was satisfying to finally put in the last pieces.

Another Harrison-chosen outfit for a park excursion.

Goober.

Last Saturday, we figured we only have a few weekends left here in Washington and the kids had a few things they wanted to do and we have a few places we want to take them. I'm the only one who has ever been to Alki beach and Jules and Harrison have been begging to go ever since I told them I found a starfish there. So we stopped there at low tide. Then we drove a bit further north and got ice cream at Molly Moon's. SO GOOD.

These are rhododendron bushes near peoples houses in downtown Puyallup. I wish I could take one with me, but alas. I will have to do without.

I did pick a few to do some photography. (Shhhh. Dont tell.)

The wildflowers are just starting to come in, too. So I did some photos of those as well. To remember Washington by.

(not a flower:)

 We are 3 weeks away from closing on this house and haven't found one in Utah yet that Steve and I can agree on. We are terrible at buying houses together. Thank heavens for airbnbs. I'll try to keep you updated! But we'll see. I'm heading to Colorado for 3 days next week to attend Elijah's graduation and see the rest of my family. I'm going to be frantically packing over here.

Lots has happened since my last post.

First, we got our house on the market. 

We got all of my preliminary list done. We got the carpets cleaned. We signed paperwork. We dealt with stupid Daylight Savings Time change.

About a week after my last post, we did the real estate pictures. That was a stressful day, but it went really well. Our realtor paid to have not only photos done, but a digital floor-plan and a 3D tour made. I got the house ready right under the wire. As in, I was painting the last stroke on a new canvas for above my bed as the photographer was starting downstairs. But I made it and didn't inconvenience anyone, so I'm calling that a big win. One of the reasons I was able to get it all done was that Nicole agreed to take Jules, Cecily, and Harrison for the 3 hours the realtor and I were prepping and having the photos done.

We didn't have any showings for a week after the listing went live. The moment I was starting to worry, one came in. Then it was another week and a half before another one was scheduled. It wasn't a lot of showings, but it was very low stress. One showing every week to week and a half is not difficult to cope with. I felt that Heavenly Father was smoothing the path, just like I'd asked. I was so calm and had a strong sense that things would work out. Part of the reason I think it was lower stress is because the realtor put in the effort to get those extra things. People could see exactly what they were getting, follow the layout, and get a virtual tour right from the computer. So they didn't need to come look at it unless they were very interested.

There were a ton of other happenings as well. 

Harrison turned 3. We got him some more Star Wars figurines (mostly for daddy to play with when they play together) and some transformers (definitely the winner that night). We had cake and ice cream with the Nelsons the day before his birthday because we were very busy day of. And thank goodness. He was uber cranky the day of his birthday.

We lost our Relief Society activity coordinator to a stake calling, so we were without one for all of February. The first week of March was our RS birthday dinner, where we provide dinner and speakers for all the women in our ward. It is the biggest activity we do all year. So, since I'm the RS counselor over activities, I got to be in charge. Of course it happened to be four days before our real estate photos. It was a lot of stress. But the other women really stepped up when they found out how much I had on my plate. I had originally volunteered to buy and make all the food (it was just chicken salad sandwiches and fruit salad), but I ended up just buying the pieces and the other committee members and the RS president put it together.

I also had a doctor appointment and a presidency meeting that week, and Mira had a choir concert and Jules had a field trip to the fire station that Harrison was not allowed to join. Our built-in school time babysitter, Nicole, had something going on that day. So Jules went with one of her preschool buddies instead of me and I took Harrison to get a popsicle because he was devastated that he couldn't stay and see the fire trucks. She is wearing the pink coat with the (fake) fur-lined hood.

Once a week, I pick up Cecily, Laef, and Kate from school instead of dropping them off. I still have to pick Jules up from preschool, so we head to the library for an hour or so. Lately, that means they have just enough time to name all their new mochi squishies and arrange them in rainbow order.

Catboy and Owlette (from the PJ Masks show) posing for the camera.

Harrison needed some Mama time one day, but I'm so bad at playing with littles. Harrison LOVES cars, so he always wants me to play cars with him. But I basically just drive it around his room for two minutes and then get bored. So we got out our Blokus game and he dictated that I make cars. Then he wanted to puzzle the rest of the pieces in. Do you see the cars in there?

It got really nice for like a week, so we were able to go for walks in the woods near our house. This is from some pictures of mushrooms that I took. No idea why I chose this one. It's not even interesting. *shrugs*

Mira wears her bathrobe all the time. Even to school sometimes. She's got confidence in spades that one. Also, she's cute.

Mystery looking regal on our nightstand.

Harrison was upstairs by himself one day while the rest of us were downstairs doing something. I can't remember what. Suddenly I hear screaming (which isn't that unusual for him, so I didn't think much of it). Soon though, he's downstairs crying and wanting to be held. Do you see that scrape on his neck? That's what he did! We have NO IDEA how. None of the blinds in the house have strings, so thank heavens it wasn't that kind of injury. Poor kid. It took almost a week to heal.

He's just cute.

The next week's squishy ring.

I love Mira's birthday lists. She's always modest in her requests. And there's almost always food on it. She doesn't like sharing the things she loves.

Harrison has been really into Transformers Rescue Bots lately. He got Starscream for his birthday. So I felt it was very fortuitous that I found this Lego set, complete, at DI one day.

We decided to take a trip to the Museum of Art one Saturday as a family. I was able to get a pass from the local library that allowed all 7 of us to get in free. We all enjoyed looking at the art, even Jules and Harrison.

King Harrison. In his pajamas.

It always catches me off-guard when the trees start blooming in early March here in WA. This was from late March, but still.

I was the preschool helper on Mira's birthday. It was cold and windy, but we were still outside doing an Easter Egg hunt and an art project. I got to hide all the Easter eggs. That was interesting since this was the space I had to work with. I was surprised at how well I was able to hide eggs right in the grass though!

Mira had her party. I can't remember if it was that day or Friday night or Saturday. But she had her friends Belle and *I can't remember* over. They hung out and she made us all watch Phineas and Ferb with her.

Easter Sunday was really lovely. Our church leaders have urged us to make Easter a more important holiday in our worship. Similar to Christmas. So I had all of us sit down the Sunday before Easter to talk about how we could make that happen. I first informed them that if Easter and Christmas are supposed to both have the same amount of effort put into them, then we needed to scale back our Christmas celebrations, because Christmas alone is enough to kill me (as far as amount of time and effort). We decided on some decorations we could put up to remind us of Christ and the Holy Week. We were still showing our house at that point, so we weren't able to implement that particular suggestion this year. Hopefully we'll be settled enough by next Easter to do that. We talked about doing a Lent-like sacrifice and decided on getting up for a sunrise family worship service on Easter Sunday. We did do that. And it went surprisingly well for our night-owl family. We also decided to do Empty Tomb Rolls, a big celebratory dinner, and still doing egg hunts and baskets but with more of a Renewal and Restoration sort of feeling behind it. Hopefully we'll be able to continue to find ways to make Easter and our celebration of Christ's atonement and resurrection more special.

Harrison ate every single piece of candy within the first few hours of getting it.

Cecily selfie.

Easter Sunday was also interesting because we had two requests for showings that afternoon. We had already invited Alison and James to come over to eat our celebratory dinner with us, but there wouldn't be any time to hang out with them because we had to be out of the house from like 2pm to 4pm (and they both go to bed early). So we decided to go to Point Defiance and do a photo scavenger hunt with them. We broke up into three groups and then compared photos when we got back to our house. Harrison was not actually unhappy in this photo, he just looks like it. Haha.

This photo is from the trip to the MOA that I mentioned earlier. Don't know why it ended up here.

 Steve had a week long work trip the same week as Spring Break for the kids. So the kids and I came up with activities to do each day to keep from driving each other crazy.

Our first day, we went to Build-a-Bear at the mall. Jules and Harrison picked out Peeps. The only difference is the background color of the bows.

 Harrison's peep's bow has a blue background if you want to be particular. 😄 Mira got a baby version of a frog she bought two years ago.

Emilia had to order the one she wanted--a Purple Kuromi from the Hello Kitty universe. And Cecily got a pink axolotl and a baby.

The next day, we did a Create This Book session.

Wednesday, we went to the Museum of Glass.

They have a live hot shop. So we were able to watch them create a pitcher that would be sold in their gift shop after it cooled. It was fun to watch.

These were also from Tuesday. Jules saw cake pops at the grocery store and wanted some REALLY BAD. But I didn't want to pay $8 for 4 of them, so I told her we would make some at home. Tuesday was the day we did that and they turned out pretty good, I thought. I went the cheater route and just made cake batter, put it in our donut hole cooker. Then I make a chocolate ganache and dipped them in it. I thought we had popsicle sticks to put in them, but apparently I got rid of them. So we used three toothpicks per instead.

This was from Mira's Create This Book prompt. I "love" how it turned out. 😜

Jules decided one day that she and Harrison and Eve needed to wear magic "goblets" (read: gauntlets) that allowed them to change forms at the touch of a button. They got out winter gloves to using in their pretending. But Harrison got really frustrated trying to put on gloves all the time. He couldn't get his fingers into the holes properly. I had been working on making some fingerless gloves for Mira, so I had the idea to whip one up for Harrison and add some actual buttons to it. I asked Jules if she wanted one and she was like, "Nah, I'm good." Until she saw how Harrison's turned out. She wanted her to be red.

They have been one of the most well-used crocheted items I have ever made. They wear them multiple times a week.

Another Cecily selfie. :)

Thursday, Cecily went to school. Her school had break the week before. But since it's a homeschool hybrid it's not a big deal to miss school. She just does the work at home. She wanted to go to school Thursday though because they were doing a bake-off and she wanted to participate. After she got home, we played some Just Dance together.

Friday, we went bowling. It's such a different experience than when I was little. The kids are just as opposed to being given direction though. I remember us hating it when our parents corrected our form. Harrison was not impressed with bowling. I'm guessing he was highly overstimulated with all the noise and movement. Plus it was mid-afternoon which is always the hardest time of day for him. He looks kind of calm in this photo, but he was throwing a screaming fit on the steps. So gross.

Steve got home late Friday night. So Saturday I asked for some time off and Steve gave me the afternoon/evening. So I went to the beach. Alki Beach to be exact. It was the perfect afternoon. It was warm and sunny. The tide was completely out. The view of Seattle was unobstructed.

These things were blooming which produced one of the best smells EVER. I think I looked it up and this is a laurel bush of some kind.

 

One of the things I will miss the most about Washington are the Rhododendrons and Azaleas. I learned last week that they are in the same family of plants and none of them do well in Utah. Our soil just isn't right. The pink azaleas are so spectacular. My camera just couldn't get it right. The second one is a *more* accurate rendering, but it's a bit blown out.

On Sunday, we did a family third hour of church in the woods near our house and talked about Enos from the Book of Mormon and how he prayed while he was hunting in the woods.

There is more, but I'm going to do another post. This one is long. And I can't get the pictures to add properly. :\