In Progress

They arrived at 10am! I’ve snapped a few progress photos with my phone…

It’s so odd to see how relatively quickly and easily a home can be torn apart.

It’s also weird seeing the slab of concrete that we live on and how thin the layer of vinyl really was over top of it! No wonder my feet got tired after standing in the kitchen cooking for hours.

Looking forward to seeing the finished product in a few short hours!

Special Olympics

I just wanted to say a quick thing that happened today. (But of course I’m an English major so I can’t write anything short even if I think I’m going to. Ha!)

I was subbing in an AUI class (K-2nd grade kids with Autism), and we went to the Fall Special Olympics, which is a much smaller version of the Spring one. The Spring one is all the kids in all the schools in the county and they do a bunch of stuff. The Fall one is just the kids in North Raleigh, only elementary schools, and they only do soccer skills. It was not the most exciting thing ever.

But what I wanted to write about was that I had this amazing experience. We arrived, and sat down on the bleachers in the gym with all the kids from our school (Pre-K Special Ed, AUI, and AUII). All the teachers and TAs were there of course, and most of the kids in our class had parents there as well. The same was true of all the other classes from other schools that kept arriving and sitting down in sections on the bleachers.

Shortly after we arrived was when the parents started showing up. These kids are very special of course. They’ve very different from normal kids. They don’t talk much, if at all, and if they do, it doesn’t often make sense. So when they say something coherent or meaningful you tend to pay close attention.

So as the parents arrived, one by one, each of the kids in our class was so excited to see their mom or dad or both, and their faces just lit up with happiness. One little boy turned and saw his mom approaching, and called out with glee, “Mommy!” and I got tears in my eyes. I had to turn away and force myself to think about something else because I was about to cry.

I felt like the amount of love in that gym at that moment was so powerful that it just was bringing me to tears. I teared up again just now as I wrote that. There was just so much love.

These classes are extremely challenging and there are always teachers who care about the kids, but when you put the kids in an exciting situation, with plenty of teachers around to keep everyone well-behaved, and then you add their parents into the mix, and you see and feel how much the parents really love their children and how much these kids LOVE their parents… it’s just so powerful. Because communicating can be such a big challenge for these kids, but they so clearly have a special bond with their parents that overpowers any lack of communication.

The flip side to this is that there was another sub sitting behind me, also subbing in the same class today. And a couple of times today she commented to me on how she found it so sad to see all those kids with special needs together in one place. There were so many of them. It was so fascinating to me what a huge contrast that was to the way I was feeling… and I think that’s because of the year I spent in the AUII class last year as well as the many days I’ve been subbing in AU classes this year.

When I first started working with kids with Autism, I thought the whole thing was depressing and awful and sad as well. I don’t know when the shift occurred, but obviously something changed because I don’t see it that way any more. Instead I feel amazement whenever these kids bless anyone with recognition or communication because it is such a gift, coming from them.

FINALLY!

This has been going on for way too long, and it’s really been very stressful for me.

We decided about a month ago (which feels to me like a decade ago) to update our flooring and counter tops in the kitchen and entryway in order to sell our house faster. We were able to immediately have our granite counters installed the week after making that decision, and we thought our new wood floors would be in at the same time.

That didn’t happen.

Instead, the process dragged on and on and on. Our awesome real estate agent went above and beyond contacting tons of different flooring places, meeting with them, getting quotes, etc. only to have one after the other fall through. Some of them raised their prices after giving quotes. Some of them just fell off the planet and never returned his calls again. The whole thing has been so strange and so frustrating for him but especially for us since we want to sell our house ASAP.

So finally last night he met with another guy who gave us a really good price, and our agent, James, said he had one additional guy coming out this morning, but he was pretty sure we’d go with the guy from last night because it would be hard to beat his quote and the quality of wood he was offering.

Well, this morning the other guy showed up, and after lots of sales-pitch talk and negotiating and him going back and forth out to his car to call his manager etc. etc. we ended up getting the best quality in cherry color, which is exactly what I wanted, for $100 less than the guy who quoted James last night, and it’s a better color wood than we would have gotten with the other guy.

AND this guy today ordered our flooring on an overnight rush delivery so it’s being delivered tomorrow, and they’ll be installing our new floors FRIDAY MORNING!!!! FINALLY!!!!! OMG!!!!

So James will come over as soon as they are done putting in the new floors so that he can snap new pictures of our updated entryway and kitchen, get them posted to MLS… and get us some BUYERS in here! Whew!

I know this isn’t the end of the story – the biggest hurdle is still to actually get someone to come in and make an offer and buy our house. But this feels huge. I have a good feeling.

And the weather is so gorgeous right now… 70 degrees, bright blue cloudless skies, and the FALL TREES! They are so pretty right now, they take my breath away. The reds! The oranges! The yellows!

Our neighborhood in particular is so beautiful right now, and if someone comes to look at our house, I can’t see how anyone could NOT fall in love.  The photo above is taken from the view from our mailbox.  This is what I get to see every day when I turn around to walk back to our house after checking the mail.  I love it.  And it’s going to get even prettier over the next couple of weeks!!

And the leaves aren’t even at their peak yet!  The tree right in front of our house (the one right in the middle of the photo above) is just barely beginning to change colors.  Right now it has a tinge of red starting on it, but I know from past years that when it’s at its peak (usually just before Thanksgiving), it’s a gorgeous bright golden yellow/orange!

I feel like this timing is perfect and everything still has the opportunity to work out the way it’s meant to… which means selling and moving before Christmas!!

Bats and Cats

A few weeks ago Talan and I baked some Halloween sugar cookies.  Bryan documented the event, and I finally got around to editing and uploading the video last night, so here it is!

Talan and I make things together in the kitchen pretty regularly.  We bake cookies, make smoothies, bake cakes, etc.  But this is the first time we’ve documented the process on video.

Baking cookies (or doing anything in the kitchen) with a 5 year old is pretty stressful, but seeing this video really helped me appreciate that I do this with him because you can clearly see how much he enjoys it.  In the moment, it’s hard for me to stop and see how happy he is because I’m too worried about eggshells getting into the batter and flour and sugar getting dumped all over the floor.  But I really enjoyed watching this video and seeing how much Talan enjoys baking with me, and it gives me motivation to do things like this with him more often.