It's up!

"The house is open," as Claire would say. Realtors open house today
drew @40 viewers. Fingers crossed.

Hats & Sippy Cups Epilogue?

I started this blog four years ago to chronicle our coinciding home remodel and birth of our first child. The sippy cups are still around, thanks to our second. But the hard hats are gone. So, soon, may be this house.

After all the hours we spent reviewing designs, picking paint colors, sidestepping 2-by-4s, holed up in an extended-stay hotel, we're about to put this home on the market. We've got it just the way we want it. Now it's time to sell?



We've always envisioned this home as our first, our starter home, an investment. It's been a good one, too! We still love its bones and its proximity to the many neighborhood amenities. We've lived here nearly 13 years and owned it for nearly a decade. Economic and physical realities, however, compell us to find a less expensive but larger home.



We can find a home with a larger living room than this for less money. One where we can feel comfortable raising our girls through school years. Not that we felt uncomfortable here. We were just feeling a bit hemmed in for a variety of reasons.



Look how nice the house looks now. Our Realtor had it staged. Our stager used mostly what we already had in and around our house -- the flowers from our garden, the wine decanter as a vase, the mirror from our basement and the soap from Sarah's collection.





Anyone recognize the barn?





She brought in some furniture and paintings, as well. Each piece she bought at Goodwill. She buys everything there, she says. She selected the picture above because it reminded her, she said, of seeing Claire and Paige sitting at their little white table.




The basement has been rid of its clutter and forgotten mementos. It's now actually usable. I sat down here with Claire yesterday watching The Electric Co., thinking about how cozy it was now. I thought twice about selling the house. We'd discovered space we'd never before used in a pleasurable way.



We are so happy with our Realtor, Tracy Dau. She's really our unRealtor. She's spent hours at the house helping Sarah get it ready to photograph and show. She offered to split the cost of a six-hour house cleaning for Monday to make sure we were ready to show it. We gladly obliged. She fixed this sagging fence post herself with some concrete we had in our basement. I'm kind of embarrassed about this, but very glad she did it.



Tracy restored a lot of homes before she got into real estate a couple years ago. She and her stager both worked for years at Rejuvenation Hardware, and it shows. They've got impeccable tastes. Just look at this dining room. I feel like inviting everyone over for a party. Sarah advises me that's not a good idea at this point. Maybe after it sells. A going out party.



The house officially lists Monday. Tracy plans an open house on the weekend. She offered to do one tomorrow, but we decided to give ourselves a break.



Sarah has been working nonstop cleaning and preparing the house while corralling the kiddos. It's time to savor this place one last time.

Reach the beach

It's been two weeks since we took the girls to the beach and far too long to post these photos.

Our first trip in about a year took place during one of the lowest tides in years. A -2 tide. It promised to expose all sorts of sea life that so far Claire had only seen in one of her books.

We headed for Oceanside and found the hallmark rock outcropping of our favorite beach completely exposed. This rocky tip usually is buffeted by waves. Normally, we'd have to walk through a tunnel to get to the other side. Not this day. We simply walked around it, stopping to look at the mussels and barnacles harpooned to its lower walls.







A local brought her kids and their shovels and began prying the mussels off the rocks. I cursed myself for not thinking of bringing one along myself. Nothing like fresh, hand-harvested mussels.



A day later, the state fish & wildlife department closed the mussel harvest because of an illness among these shellfish that threaten humans who eat them.



The girls continued to explore this rocky point, bending down to get a close look at the sea anemones clinging to the base of the wall.



Claire made us all aware of the various shapes of seaweed and jellyfish she found along the wet beach.



I'd never seen the water so low. It exposed rocky swaths in the sandy beach that I never knew existed. These were in what I later learned was the low intertidal zone. Here's an example of one of the many tidepools we could peer above on this special day.



Paige looks skeptical.



Claire looks thrilled.



Eventually, we found the people we aimed to meet here: Mark, Sophie and Ella.



The gentle breeze, smell of sea salt, rhythmic waves and squawking gulls eventually washed the shyness off Sophie's face.



The youngest, born a month apart, did their best to get a good feel of the sand, stones and pebbles.







Something in the coming tide made us all a bit loopy. Here, Mark tries to shake some change out of Ella's ears.



Eventually, the tide marched back in. We made our way back through the tunnel since the surf already was threatening to strands us up against the rocky point. While the older girls built a sandcastle and Sarah flew a kite, Paige found her own hole and sat in it.








Yep, Paige. Time to go. Maybe we'll come back for the next low tide.