Getting ready for the new house....

A lot has transpired in the past couple of weeks:

• We sold our house! Well, someone made an offer (a horribly low offer), we counter-offered, then they counter-offered and then we said accepted. The offer is almost $30,000 less than our asking price (gulp!) but we just want to sell the darn thing and move on, literally. It sold in less than a month, so that's good. The inspection is this Saturday and I pray that everything goes ok. I don't want these people backing out of the deal.

• Starting in March I'll be working 3 days a week instead of 2 days a week. My employer asked me to increase my hours to 3 days a week and I said yes, although I don't really want to. I keep telling myself the extra money will be nice and will come in handy.

• Speaking of money, we've been spending a lot of it lately. A LOT. Renovating a house doesn't come cheap. I used to watch all those house-flipping shows on TLC and HGTV and always wondered how these people could be so over-budget. Now I know from experience how easy that is. We maxed out our Discover card and requested our limit be increased. Every day we spend more and more money on this house, but it is worth it. This is the house we hopefully will be spending many years in, and we want it just right.

• The girls' bathroom was originally just going to have a new floor and new toilet. Well, now the entire bathroom, literally the entire bathroom, is gutted! We removed the shower and are replacing it with a bathtub. We're replacing the toilet, the vanity, sink, mirror, lights, towel racks, tile floor...everything! I haven't been to the house in several days and can't wait to see the finished result.

• Speaking of towel racks...why the heck are they so expensive?! We bought new towel racks and toilet paper racks for both bathrooms. In the master bathroom the toilet paper rack was $37! That's crazy! It's Kohler, which is a good brand, but still....sticker shock.

• I've been on the phone the past week getting everything arranged, like cable, phone, water, gas, electric, trash pick-up, etc. Our part of town doesn't do recycling, which stinks. I'll have to bring my recyclables to Lulu's house each week when we visit. I'm bummed because every week we have an entire bin of recyclable stuff, and I don't want to just throw it out with the regular trash.

• A moving company is coming tomorrow to give us an estimate. I hope it's not an arm and a leg. We still need to decide when we're actually going to schedule the move. We have to be out by February 28th, but I'd like to move out by the 24th or so, maybe even earlier.

Other news not related to the house: Sophie was sick on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday with a fever. She's doing much better now, thanks to Children's Motrin and lots of powdered donuts. She continues to make us laugh all the time. The other day she was tugging on her butt. I asked her what she was doing. She had a serious look on her face and replied, "I'm pulling a wedgie out!" How does a not-quite-yet 3 year old even know what a wedgie is?!