Theres no "I" in team, but there is in Conjunctivitis and they're all pink.

Well, a case of the Pink Eye has given me leave to update you all on the happenings at 4540 McKenzie Dr. SE Apt. 9. Soon to be a new address!! More on that later.

Several times over the last month I've been meaning to update the blog, but when I try to think of all the things that I want to say I get confused and the posts go into the edit pile. Yesterday tho, I went into the walk in clinic and walked out with eye drops to clear up my pink eye so I'm taking the day off of work today and FINALLY have the time to write. For all of you that are worried about me hanging around the little one with a reddish tint to my eyes, no worries. I haven't been handling her except when I've washed and disinfected myself for a good 5 minutes and then slight handling at that.

So, to start things off, here is Ashtyn's 3 month pic!


Don't ask me how she's able to turn her feet in like that, even I in my double jointed state can't do that.

She's grabbing at stuff now, mostly mommy's hair, but toys as well. The rolling over that she started and you saw in previously posted video has stopped a little now, it's old news for her and she's bored with it. She now prefers to lay on her back and try to get her whole foot in her mouth or come up with new sounds to make with her lips. The times she does flip to her stomach you can tell that she's warming up on the tarmac for a takeoff to crawling.

Opening weekend of Grouse and Partridge was huge for her and us as well. It was the first time I'd taken her anywhere on my own and the first time that momma hadn't been around her for more than 8 hours. She went up to Sherwood with daddy and got to hang out with Grandma and Papa for a couple days. Grandma liked it since she's still at the age where she'll let you rock her for hours without wanting to get down and run around.

We also got in a couple of goose hunts while we were up there in the mornings. Here's the spoils of our first hunt on Saturday morning. We were setup so close to town that when we got the decoys setup, Rhett walked over to the gas station and got us some coffee for the goose blinds. That was in my top 3 favorite goose hunts of all time.

Ok, so back to what I eluded to earlier in the post. Our time in the apt. is drawing to a close. After many years of consternating on the merits of home ownership and a year of living in 780 sq feet of space, it was time to make the jump to a house, or at least a condo.

It was a bit of happenstance that one night I came home and Katie mentioned that a guy had come around earlier from Century 21 giving out business cards to the complex tennants. He just so happened to be walking by the patio again when I sat down, so we flagged him over and talked for awhile. Within a week we started looking at places.

One of our rules was that we weren't going to be tied to our house, if we wanted to take a family vacation, we wanted to do it without having to worry too much about whether going to see New Salem Sue was going to stretch the budget. Don't get me wrong, the worlds largest concrete cow statue is pretty cool and it's only 30 short minutes from Bismarck, but after you see it about the only thing left to do in New Salem at that point is to stop at the Cenex to get some Gummi Worms for the ride home. Vacations were only a small part of it, like I have a feeling I'm going to shoot a Boone & Crockett buck in the next few years that will probably require a head mount, Ashtyn may find herself in dance class or basketball and momma will need an occasional professional massage. All of which we'll still be able to do.

That being said, we were less than impressed with most of the places we looked at. When your first impression of a house is, "Well, if we did this, this and this it wouldn't be too bad.", then you got troubles. One Sunday afternoon when we were looking at more houses we had no intention of buying our realtor told us about a place that just came on the market for way under what it was worth. After looking at the house and looking at the price, then looking at each other, we decided to make an offer.

The problem arose the next day when I went in to write up the offer sheet that he told us there were already 4 other offers on the place so we kind of picked a number out of a hat and made what we thought was a pretty valid offer. By noon the next day they came back and told us we were one of the top two offers, maybe the top, maybe not. "Would we like to increase our offer?" "Nooooooooooo, we wouldn't LIKE to increase it, but if we have to, we'll go this much higher." Sorry Loren, but I felt like Brian Cashman of the Yankees bidding up Mark Teixeria even though nobody else was bidding against him.

After a week of getting our chain jerked around, they let us know that we didn't get the place....... Allow me to put out a small PSA on a certain agent in Bismarck. ANDRA MILLER IS THE WORST REALTOR IN THE CITY OF BISMARCK. And if you're going to sell a place, Andra, don't put it on the market for $12.50, it creates confusion and we try to avoid confusion. Thank you. (I was joking there too, she was smart enough to list it for more than $12.50)

So after that debacle we regrouped, vowed not to deal on anymore homes that Andra Miller was the selling agent on and set our sites onto something that didn't require a second mortgage to get ready to move into.

That night we went to look at a condo that wasn't in "West Bismarck", but rather Bismarck itself, 3 bed, 2 bath, 2 living rooms (one of which will be the man cave) and about 1000 feet more living space than we have now. It was the perfect combo of location, size and price that we were looking for. We made an offer, they counter offered, I looked at it and said, "yep, lets do it."

See thats how deals are supposed to go down, people offer and the other party counter offers in a reasonable amount of time. Now if things go as well as they have we'll close on the the place Oct. 27th and move in at the end of October. I'm going over there at noon tomorrow to get some measurements so we can plan out what we need to get as far as paint and stuff.

Just a note - all those of you that have had me help you move over the years....... expect a call at some point and clear the weekend of Oct. 30th on you calendars!

Pretty exciting times for us. Ashtyn is very happy to be leaving the apartment!