SHHHH... It's Quiet Time

I swear I blogged on the 15th. Did someone erase my life? The kids got out of school last Thursday and today we have instituted daily quiet time for the rest of the summer. Kale is in his room reading and listening to CD's. Reagan is just being quiet so I am not going to bug her and Dane is sitting on the bed with me snuggling, crawling, jumping, and basically anything that doesn't qualify for quiet time. Typical Dane. So let's catch up.

We could have named this post....................

Another Day Another Doctor - I have learned the hard way that when people say bad things come in threes you can't combine things from different genres. You can't combine kids' health, appliance failure and stupid people trying to buy your house. They each get their own three.

On Friday the 9th, Dane and I were 'helping' at Reagan's class party. It was a lovely outdoor festivity that Dane was over in about an hour so we left to go to Sam's Club. Right in the middle of the 1/2 ton hamburger and chicken aisle my cell phone rang. "Mrs. Sorensen, Kale was outside playing tag and ran up the slide, flipped over and broke his nose on the side of the slide. Can you come and get him?" Dane thought is was really fun to run out of Sam's. "Faster Mommy Faster!" Sam's was about 20 minutes from the school so I called the Dr. on the way and they kindly squeezed him in so we didn't have to visit the ER. Then I called Dear Nora who once again came to the rescue by getting Reagan at the bus. The Dr. let us know we could expect bruising and probably black eyes. His eyes didn't get too bad. They just looked like they had dark circles and the swelling is mostly gone now. He refused to take pictures although he and Erron have decided it is really cool because they have both had broken noses now. Must be a boy thing.

That same Friday Reagan got a little throat tickle and I made her endure for five days before I finally took her to the Dr. to find out she had full blown strep. Love that pink medicine. She missed her field day, twice, but they had to reschedule because of weather so she got to go the next week. That means field day was Tuesday the 20th. How can I remember that? Well, Dane and I were in the car driving down Kingston Pike on the way to help with field day at Reagan's school when my cell phone rang. "Mrs. Sorensen this is nurse Connie at Kale's school. We have him here in the office because he was playing tag and forgot to duck under the metal pole and broke his front permanent tooth in half. Would you like to come and get him?" We flipped a U turn and went to pick him up. I had to run home to get our dental insurance info and find a Dentist. The first one referred by a friend was out to lunch and then in a staff meeting. The second one, also referred by a friend, was on vacation all week. His secretary referred me to someone else in their building. Dentist number three only cleans children's teeth and so they referred my to dentist #4. Dr. DeBerry turned out to be awesome with a really fun office staff. I dropped Reagan and Dane at a friends and ran in to the office. One of the nurses met us at the door and said, "Now Kale, sugar, tell me how this happened." You have to read that with a drawl to get the full effect. They took him right back and had me filling out paper work and were asking me questions when the nurse came out and said, "Did you know his nose is swollen too?" I had to tell her about the nose incident and then the ladies in the office just kept asking questions and I guess I was in rare form because they were laughing so hard they were falling our of their chairs and some of the moms in the waiting room wanted to know what was going on so I blogged in person for about 20 minutes about all the crazy things going on. I felt like a stand-up comedian. I'm glad they felt like laughing. Shouldn't someone be paying me to go through this stuff so that everyone else can laugh about it?

The Stupid People Buying Our House - This is the third house we have sold and we have never had an experience like this before. The market is really bad and we know we were blessed just to get a lowball offer after already lowering the price but we thought it would get better after the initial $$$ shock got over. It hasn't gotten better. The dumb people asked for six things after the inspection including a light bulb to be changed in the garage. Sure, from 2,800 miles miles away I am going to jump on my little ladder and pop in a new bulb. Idiots. They said there was a leak in the sink in the kids' bathroom. The same sink that I stored the TP under for three years and not one drop of water got on it. The plumber confirmed that there was not a leak. They said there was a leak in the furnace that we had just had serviced. The furnace company confirmed there was no leak. It just went on and on like that. Then things really fell apart. Their appraiser had never worked in our town before and didn't know how to comp the area so he appraised the house at $50,000 less than it appraised for last year. Portland's market is bad but it is not California. We threw a fit, our realtor threw a fit, every other realtor in Happy Valley threw a fit and then the buyers came back with a new lower offer and said they would fix everything they had asked us to fix. How kind of them after we had already faxed the receipts for the things we had fixed. Jerks. Well, someone finally got through to the lender and appraiser because he upped his appraisal to the buyers offer but they didn't want to go back to their offer so we didn't sign the papers. 15 minutes before our deadline was up they changed their offer back and then we signed. They sent us the wrong closing papers - TWICE! I am really sad that these people get to live in my house and next to my friends and neighbors. I can't say I hate them because then I would have to wipe my mouth out to be consistent with Dane so I will say, "They are not my favorite".

Are You Ready For Another Road Trip?

The kids' and I leave tomorrow to go visit my sister, Wendy, in Houston, Graceland, and my friend Sharisa in Dallas. They should put out a warning over the radio. Dane is coming. Everybody hide. His behavior has gotten bad enough that I have pulled out 'Parenting the Strong Willed Child', 'Disciplining the Strong Willed Child', and 'Bringing Up Boys'. I have been so stressed that Reagan found my copy of 'A Joyful Mother of Children' and put it by my bed. Ouch!

It is 3pm on Wednesday and we are supposed to leave by 9am on Thursday. I have not packed one thing or made one list. That must be my subconscious telling me something.

Did I tell you that our land lord hasn't paid the HOA dues and we just found out that we are banned from the neighborhood pool? Another Day Another Story About our Stupid Rental House. Let's save that for another day.