Back Dorm Boys

OH MY GAH!! Click on the title above to go to the Back Dorm Boys link. This is funny stuff! I stole it from my friend Zellyn's blog. I laughed and laughed and laughed.

When you go to the link, don't let it start playing right away. Click the pause button and let it fully load (walk away from your computer for a few minutes), then when you come back and click play, you can experience the whole thing without any of those annoying internet streaming hiccups.

I had to watch it a few times because I couldn't decide which guy to focus on. After my second viewing, I decided that the Back Street Boys' "I Want It That Way" is just a great song. It's a classic. Yeah, I know it's mass-marketed pop drivel, but dang if it isn't just catchy good ol' sing-along FUN.

Stress!

We hired a real estate agent (Julie Hile) last Thursday, and on Monday she brought a home stager (Evelyn) over to our house to help us get it ready to sell. If you've ever seen the show "Sell This House" on HGTV, you know what a stager is. They come in and look at your house from the perspective of a buyer and tell you what to change in order to make the house more appealing.
Evelyn was a nice lady, but by the time she left all my furniture was re-arranged, I had a four page "to do" list and was feeling overwhelmed. Mark and I really wanted to get this house on the market this week, but now it's looking like it won't be until next week - hopefully.
One task that is really daunting is the garage. It's an absolute disaster. While we were interviewing agents a few weeks ago, we had one agent (one of the top 100 agents in Atlanta) tell us not to worry about the garage, that the only one who cares about the garage is the husband, and he doesn't care if it's messy. But when Evelyn went into our garage, she looked at Julie and said, "You CANNOT put this house on the market until you can fit at least one car in this garage." I nearly started crying at that point.
Another huge task is our yard. It's weedy and overgrown. Our to-do list for that is so long, we decided there's no way to handle it but to hire someone to do it all for us.
I stayed home yesterday to work on a bunch of the cleaning/organizing items on our list. I had Mom and my friend Barb come over to help and I guess we got a lot done, but there's still so much to do. Barb's coming over again today to do some touch-up painting for me. I'm totally exhausted, so I stayed home from work again today. At the rate I'm going, I may just have to quit my job altogether. We need the money, but right now time is more precious to us than money.
Mark and I are feeling so under the gun. I guess our big fear is that, with the holidays coming, we're not going to be able to sell our house before my second trimester is over. In which case we'll just stay here. Which is really starting to look like a better option to me. Because all this stress is just too much.

Weddings and Pumpkins

Another busy weekend. We had Catri this weekend, though, so that made it more fun.
We attended the wedding of our friends Jeff and Diane on Saturday night, where my husband not only danced in a conga line (photographic proof to left), but proceeded to dance spastically to various disco songs with Catri and me. God, I love him. I had to bow out after a few songs, though, since bouncing around with a pregnant tummy feels a bit uncomfortable.
I like taking Catri with us to weddings, because she always provides entertainment for me in that lull at the reception before everyone gets there and they open up the buffet line. We sit and video each other with my digital camera doing silly things like dramatically reciting rock song lyrics and such. Wish I could attach a sample here, but I think I have to have the more advanced version of this blog to have video rights.

Sunday evening our Life Group met at our house and we carved pumpkins. Well, some of us carved pumpkins. Some of us just sat around talking and eating pumpkin pie. At left you will see our Life Group's creativity displayed.
From left to right:
James' massive head wound "Have a Nice Day" pumpkin (note dramatic use of pumpkin seeds as brain matter oozing from the head)
James' cat pumpkin
Charles' StrongSad the sad pumpkin
Catri's angry pumpkin
I plan on putting Catri's pumpkin by our front door where I'm hoping people will pick up on the message I believe it is sending: "Keep off of my lawn, you bratty kids, and don't even THINK of asking for candy!!"

In other news, pregnancy is hard. The mood swings have kicked in with full force and some days it's all I can do to stop crying for a few hours. Yesterday was like that. To accompany the mood swings, the enemy (aka "Satan") sends me a lot of messages like "You don't deserve this baby; you're not taking good care of it; it's going to die," etc. I'm sure I'm not the only woman to experience this kind of thing, but it sure feels lonely when you're going through it. Your prayers would be appreciated.

Our lives lately ...

We've had a busy past few weeks. We had a fun visit from some California friends (Hi Luis, Carolyn, Alyse - top photo - & Alexander!), have been working to get the house ready to put on the market, and went to the wedding of my best friend (Congratulations Mike & Kathy! bottom photo)

We're hoping to have the house listed by next Monday (we're interviewing listing agents now), and to be moved into a new house by the end/turn of the year. We're trying to avoid a situation of moving in my third trimester of pregnancy. If we haven't sold/bought by end of January, we'll probably just wait until next fall and try again then. I think we'll be able to move by our deadline, though. Houses in this neighborhood have been selling fast, I think primarily due to it's location (right by the highway). We love this house, but with baby on the way and all, we'd like to have some more space. We want to make sure we have room for out-of-town guests and we also want a basement so we can put in a darkroom.

Anyhow, other than the latest joys of pregnancy (mood swings and nausea, anyone?) the house thing has been consuming our thoughts and time. We're hoping to be able to get away and go camping sometime soon, before the beautiful fall weather turns too cold, but we'll see. We may not have time, since we also have to start looking for a new house - we'd hate to be left homeless. :)