I'm blogging

In case you haven't noticed, I've been avoiding blogging for 2 weeks. I haven't felt very funny.

Oh so about the house - we made an offer contingent upon selling our house, which he countered. He was unwilling to even consider a contingency so we said nevermind. We are keeping our eye on it, it is still on the market at the same price, so if the price is lowered we may take that as a sign that he is becoming a little more desperate and may make another contingent offer. We're just not really wanting to put our house on the market without knowing if we will get this one or not. It's definitely on the back burner.

Two weekends ago (the weekend before Memorial Day), we went camping. Wednesday and Thursday night Momlie and I went to Stub Stewart, a state park about 30 minutes away. Geoff took us up there around lunchtime on Wednesday, unhitched us, and left. We got the camper all set up before he was even back at work! And it was PERFECTLY level, which can sometimes be a little tricky. We stayed in a loop we haven't stayed in before and walked around and scoped things out. There was a group of about 20 college-age kids building a wood shed (since it's the new loop they didn't have the shed where they sell the wood yet) - they were making a lot of beeping with an electronic level. In the 3 or so hours they were there, they put exactly 2 posts in the ground. 20 of them! Momlie put up our new set of party lights from the Easter Bunny while I started a fire, and then we had a fantastic dinner of crab legs, salmon, and asparagus - all of which we cooked over the fire! It was a very still calm evening, gorgeous weather, so we decided to rebel and leave the awning out. Geoff is VERY VERY VERY particular about the awning, he hates it being out if there is any wind and certainly never overnight. Around 2:30 in the morning I woke up - all of the windows were open and the blinds in my bedroom were banging against the window because of wind. I closed the window and then thought "oh no. the awning." So I tossed and turned for a while, trying to ignore it and hoping the wind would stop. I could faintly hear the blinds in the living area banging, and I was debating what to do. I peeked out the window and saw the neighbors still had their awning out, which made me feel slightly better. I thought "should I go close the awning? should I do it myself? should I wake up Momlie?" After 15 or 20 minutes I heard noise outside, so I peeked out - oh yes, 3 AM and the neighbors are outside pulling in their awning. UGH!!! Then I hear Momlie in the living area - I thought she heard the neighbors and was peeking out to see what was going on, but she said she was closing the windows so the blind banging would stop. I mentioned the awning and we decided we better go close it. So out we went to roll up the awning. It's a VERY good thing the blinds woke us up, because it got very windy after that - the whole trailer was shaking. Yikes. But the rest of the evening was still. The next morning, Geoff sent a text to ask how we were - we said "good, except for the awning incident". He said "ha, ha, ha, very funny!". If only he knew. :) We told him later, of course. We had cereal for brekkie and ham sammies for lunch, and then Geoff picked us up after work for softball. For dinner that night we had chicken caesar salads. Friday morning we checked to see if we had TV - we wanted to watch the weather because it was supposed to be like 95 and sunny all weekend! Crazy. We caught the Hillstrand Brothers from Deadliest Catch on a Portland morning show, that was interesting. All in HD... man we rough it when we camp! We just enjoyed ourselves and knitted (her not me), chatted, Sudokued (me not her), read, etc. Oh, and I worked on the first step of a sign I wanted to make for a camper - like a welcome sign! The "first step" consisted of spray painting a board silver. We also "installed stuff" - a MagLight holder and a paper towel that Geoff still hadn't done since September. We gave up on him and did it ourselves. ;-) Around 2 we started packing up - we wanted to be ALL ready to go for when Geoff picked us up. We got done pretty early, so we just sat all ready to go other than having the electricity still plugged in so we could have the AC on. That was the first time we had used it and it worked great! He swooped in around 3:30 and took us to Cape Disappointment State Park in Washington. It was great! Well - Friday when we got there it was humid and hot and buggy and nasty. ICK. We turned on the AC in the camper (roughing it again). It really worked great!! It was nice especially to get the humidity out of the air. Momlie went down to the beach (which was less than a 5 minute walk from our site) and Geoff and I started dinner - I made roasted potatoes, and he cooked the rest of the asparagus and steak. Plus we had some leftover crab leg. After dinner since it was so icky out (we were kinda back in the forest so it was just super buggy) we went inside and hung out in there. Saturday morning we woke up and made breakfast... and I decided to work on my sign more! Geoff was like "make sure you use a pencil to write what you want to say first to make sure you have enough room!" I said no. :) Geoff and Momlie were quite surprised - they figured being an engineer that I would want it to be exact. I said maybe I just wanted to have a creative outlet, but secretly I was just lazy. Lucky for me (I also attribute it to many many years of yearbook and scrapbooking and therefore having a good eye for how many pixels things are and spacing and stuff like that), the first word (Welcome) came out GREAT. I wrote Welcome all across the top of the sign. Then I didn't know where to go from there... I still wasn't sure what I wanted to say. What I DID know was that my brush was too big to write much more. Momlie wanted to go to the Fred Meyer (grocery store that also has Target-like items - it's like a Super Walmart but waaay nicer. They carry a lot of the same clothing brands as Kohl's, and they are owned by Kroger so all of their generic stuff is Kroger brand. It's a great store), so she said she'd get me a brush there. Also, we had to move! When I made the reservation, they didn't have any spots available for the whole weekend, so we had one spot Friday and one Saturday. So we moved and then she took the car to go to Fred Meyer. I LOVE having a towable rather than a motorhome because it's nice to have the car seperate. When she returned, I made the rest of my sign. I also drilled holes in the sign that are totally uneven (the eye didn't work so well on that part, I just called it "rustic") to hold it up. And it's SO CUTE. Geoff has the pictures on his camera so once he downloads them I will post for you all to enjoy. I'm so proud. Geoff and I tried to find a geocache - but (a) I didn't have on the right shoes and (b) we think the path was messed up by severe storms we had here in December, so we didn't find it. We used our dutch oven for the first time and cooked spaghetti - yum. Then we went and watched the sunset over the beach (this site was even closer to the beach). It was blissful - and a PERFECT temperature all day. Sunday we woke up, had breakfast, packed up, and went home. A sad day. But overall, a fantastic camping trip!!

For Memorial Day weekend, Geoff drove me and Momlie on our annual wine tasting adventure as always. We hit our favorite place first and then went to all new places - nothing that fabulous, in fact all rather disappointing. I don't think we'll be back to any of them, but our goal is to go to all of the wineries in the Willamette valley (there are A LOT) so we have to try new ones at least some of the time! Sunday we helped Gary and Momlie a little with cleaning out their garage, and then Gary and Geoff watched the Nascar race. Monday Geoff and I stayed in bed all day watching the Deadliest Catch marathon - okay I'm lying. I tried to - I lasted until about 3. I thought that was pretty good! But by then I had to get up and do stuff, so I just took care of a few things around the house. And that's about it. More tomorrow maybe when I don't have this much to blog about. It's always hard to make it over the big hump and then it comes a little easier.

Last softball game

Tonight was our last softball game. We both absolutely loved coaching! In fact, we're already planning on doing it again next year (we'll see where the next 8 months takes us). We've been trying to figure out if most of our girls will be on AA again next year or if they'll move up to AAA, because we love them all and want to stay with as many as possible. We have a party next week, so we're looking forward to seeing them one last time. The best part of tonight, and perhaps the whole season, was these wonderful gifts from two sisters tonight (and their mom told me they were the girl's idea!):

Jenni, age 6














Meagan, age 9














Jenni, age 6














Meagan, age 9

Poor Geoff

Someone (ME!) woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. This is how our morning went down:

Me: "Should I put my hair up?"
Geoff: "Sure."
Me: "WHAT?!?! You mean my hair looks that bad?"
Geoff: "No, I just thought you wanted to put it up."
Me: "My hair looks hooooorrrrriiiibbbbleeeeeeee!!!"

10 minutes later...

Me: "Oh, so Gina got this gift the other day, can you believe it?"
Geoff: "Are you jealous or making fun?"
Me: "Making fun. What?! You think I was jealous of that? I think it's way over the top. I can't believe you think I'd be jealous!"
Geoff: "I was just asking..."

Poor Geoff. I had some coffee after that and now I am much more pleasant. I didn't sleep well last night.

Note: I had to really debate posting this one because I didn't want to look like an overly emotional freak girl. But I decided to because one of the reasons it's funny is because most of the time I'm NOT an overly emotional freak girl, and also because this serves as a pittance to Geoff.

I can hit!

I love when we get our gas bill, because I love seeing how low it can be each month. So today I said to Geoff "tomorrow they read the gas meater!" "I mean meter". Geoff was like "HAHAHAHAHAHA. Meater!!" Yes, it's funny.

Lest you think I'm a softball star and that's why I'm coaching (I know, none of you are that dilusional), I have really never hit a softball or baseball in my life. We used to play in gym class for a couple of weeks a year, and I can't recall ever hitting it. Sure, maybe I got a little piece of it or maybe even hit a foul ball or two, but I certainly never hit the ball. Geoff even threw me a couple of pitches before a practice a couple of months ago, but nothing.

Yesterday I decided that after all of this coaching and telling the girls how to hit it, I HAD to be able to hit a softball! We were very early for our game again and so was one little girl, so Geoff was doing some batting practice with her. He had 6 balls and threw her 4, and then she had to go to the bathroom. So I grabbed a bat (yes, it's meant for 3rd graders, but whatever) and asked Geoff to throw me the last 2 balls. I figured after all of the girls I've watched be corrected in their batting stance, girls I've corrected, and all of the times we've said "keep your eye on the ball!" I would know how to stand, and if I could keep my eye on the ball I could actually hit it. The first one was a bad pitch, but the second one I hit dead on and it went all the way into the outfield!! I was a little shocked. So then I ran out there and collected all 6 balls and had Geoff pitch them to me again. 2 were bad pitches, 1 I nicked a little but didn't quite get, but the other 3 I hit! Again, all of them to the outfield. I'm so proud. I now have the skill level of a 3rd grader!

Oh, and since the Duggar Family is pregnant again, Momlie and I have decided that they should name their new baby Jeffrey, to go with all 17 other J names they have.

Friday Funnies

First a few softball quotes:

Girl: "I want to be him!" [Geoff]
My thought: "WHY?!?!?!"
My response: "Because he can throw so far? Yeah, it's pretty cool!"

Girl: "Doesn't coach own any long sleeves?"
Me: "Yes, he does."
Girl: "Why doesn't he wear them? It's coooooold!"
My thought: "Because he's a large hairy man that sweats a lot."
My response: "I don't know, I guess he's just not that cold!"

Now a non-softball related funny:
Me: "Does Schucks carry a size 6 AN fitting for a fuel system?"
Geoff: "No, I doubt it."
Me: "Why not?"
Geoff: "They're too expensive."
Me: "Oh. So where would you get one?"
Geoff: "The internet."
Me: "What if you didn't have the internet?"
Geoff: "Maaaybe you could special order it at a few places, but it's just so expensive that no one carries it."
Me: "Well how much is it?" [thinking gosh, why would someone want a $500 part to redo their fuel system?]
Geoff: "$5"
Me: "WHAT?!"
Geoff: "Well those fittings are normally like 50 cents... the $5 ones just don't sell."
Me: "Okay"

It was just so funny that he was saying how expensive it was and it wasn't really the expense, it's just the specialized nature of the part that makes people not carry them. Funny.

Ridiculous!

I have a "Safety Calendar" here at work. The kind you tear off a page for each day, and there is a new safety tip each day. Well today's tip is about Christmas trees, and how you should be careful that your lights aren't freyed. I thought "how odd..." and then I flipped to the late November section of the calendar to see if it was just so full of Christmas tips there that they just had to put an extra one in May to remind us. But November 28th's entry is about Halloween and being careful when you're trick or treating! A month too late or 11 months too early, depending on how you look at it. November 27 (Thanksgiving this year) is about working with poisonous plants because that's apparently a popular Thanksgiving day activity. There are zero Christmas-related tips in the entire first week of December. And Christmas Day's tips is about making sure latch key kids know not to answer the door or say they are home alone. I know when I was growing up my parents left me home alone on Christmas Day all the time... riiiight. Odd. Someone should work on making these tips more seasonally applicable. Maybe next year.

Still no word on the house - I believe the offer went in this morning!

House Update

We went for the second showing with Gary and Momlie yesterday. They definitely liked it, which was great. No one thinks it's perfect, because it's not, but everyone can see the potential in it. Gary pointed out quite a few things of note - cracks in foundation (not deal breakers, but they are there), galvanized pipes, decent electrical, where the sun will hit the property, inexpensive (relatively) ways we could quickly make some changes to make it more livable, etc. He asked ahead of time if he could be critical without offending us and we said YES!!!! That is why we especially wanted you to come, because we know that you will be our devil's advocate. And he was, which was perfect. I had a whole list of questions about various things and all were answered. We also got to meet the next door neighbor who was very nice and told us some of the scoop. At lunch yesterday, we decided that once I talked to the zoning department at the county today (left a message for them Friday but hadn't heard back yet and I needed clarification on a possible easement next to the potential property) we would make an offer today.

I heard back from the county today and got tons of information about the property, including the fact that it has two "special considerations", one for wildlife habitat and one for views, which basically mean that you have to get special permits before doing any changes to the exterior of your property. Like, because your house is visible from the Multnomah Channel, they don't want boaters to be enjoying their nice day on the water and look up and see your neon green house. Kinda like an HOA, but it is county regulations. Things like that. And you can't build 30 stories high and ruin your neighbor's view, etc.

Once I had that, we were ready. I called our realtor and left a message and she returned my call around 5ish. She had not previously asked and did not realize that we wanted to make an offer contingent upon our current house setting and was not pleased with that. She said that there is another couple interested in the house and they were just finishing up securing financing and about to make their own offer, and she wanted us to have a strong offer since there is likely another offer out on the house. I talked to her some about it and she said she would call the listing agent to see if the seller would consider a contingent offer. I said "well why would he SAY he would, that makes no sense!". And she said "well, if I say you're a great buyer and very interested and all of that but that you just need to sell your house first, he will tell me". So she did that while Geoff and I talked about what we wanted to do. We had previously discussed just renting our current house but decided against it, so we spent some more time talking about if that was what we wanted to do. We decided it just doesn't make sense for us due to a number of factors, and told her that we definitely want the offer to be contingent on selling our current house. Actually Geoff told her this - he answered when she called and he was so great with her. I was upset at that point and he was just fantastic. He said everything I was thinking but not able to express properly. So, she is going to type up the offer as we want it, email it to us in the morning for approval, and then she will present it to the seller. So maybe our house will be on the market tomorrow? I don't know. :) According to Geoff, she said that it doesn't look good that our house isn't even on the market yet and we still want that contingency. But we don't want our house just on the market randomly, we only want to sell it if it means buying this other house. So it is what it is - he can either take it, leave it, or negotiate it. It's out of our hands, and if it's meant to be, it will happen.

An interesting thing about the whole experience, aside from the fact that it's like a 180 degree different market from when I bought this house in June of 2005, is buying with someone else. When it was just me, I made my decision and that was that. Now I have to really make sure that what I want to do is what Geoff wants to do, just like he's doing with me. So we are overly tentative with our opinions sometimes. It's particularly amusing because we're almost always on the same page. One of us will finally say "I know we're not making this full price offer with no contingencies, and that may cause us to lose the house, but I'm okay with that. I can get over it. Can you?" And the other will say "Yes, definitely! I feel the same way. I'll be a little sad for a bit, but our house now is great and other things will come along." PHEW, okay. Now we can move on. That's how many things happen with us and it's been especially apparent in this house process. I'm sure you married people got quite a kick out of this little anecdote.

Yikes. I just spell checked this and I had 5 spelling mistakes. That's atrocious. (yes, I spell checked atrocious but it was right!)

Friday Night

Last night we had an excellent softball game... the girls were great! They really continue to show improvement every day, it's so fun to watch them. As an added bonus, Geoff's parents came to watch us/them. :) It was great having them there and it was a really fun game. The first game was still my favorite, maybe just because it was the first, but this game was a very close second. It went quickly, we got through all 5 innings, and it was just all-around fun.

Addy and her very serious boyfriend Brett came over tonight. They were only here for a little over an hour, but it was great fun! I made a big pile of nachos that we all chowed on, and we caught up on life. They've been looking at houses using our realtor, so we both showed each other the "current favorite". They are seriously considering a gorgeous house in SE Portland. I would hate having them so far away (they're just down the street now) but the house is great and maybe we'll be moving anyway. I haven't seen Addy in quite a while so it was good having her here. Brett is great and it was fun to catch up. We also did quite a bit of reminiscing about our younger and single days. It's hard to believe that we're coming up on 5 years of being friends - I still remember the night I met her and our random path to becoming such good friends. We had so much fun together, lived together for 2 summers, and I hope we continue to remain close.

I think right now Geoff and I are strongly leaning towards buying the house we looked at on Tuesday - we have another showing on Sunday that his parents are going to with us. It will be nice to have a second look and a second set of eyes. There is a lot of potential in that house and property. I've been struggling through it and praying through it all week, and that's been a good thing.

Girls Night Geocaching!

Last night for girl's night we geocached! It ended up being only me, Kristie, and Kendra, which actually worked out very nicely. For one thing, we all fit in one car which was great, plus they are the two I know the best so it was nice to spend some alone time with them. We looked for 5 caches and found 4. The one we didn't find was a puzzle cache, so I guess it's possible we didn't figure out the right coordinates from the puzzle, but I think we did. It certainly wasn't a very difficult puzzle. There was one ambiguous part but the rest was just basic math. And 2 out of 3 of us are engineers so you'd think we could do that. Plus we used Kristie's cell phone calculator to double check ourselves (we actually did the math by hand first)! They both loved it and Kendra thought her husband would really enjoy it as well.

Not much else going on - Geoff's been super busy at work this week but he should slow way down next week. We had a great softball game on Monday night and we have another one tonight. The weather is looking pretty nice for the game, hopefully it won't be too cold/windy for the girls. My sister is in Bilbao, Spain and is visiting the Guggenheim this weekend. We're going camping in 2 weeks - for 4 nights, yay! We're having a Mother's Day brunch next weekend, then camping, then the week after that is Memorial Day! I can't believe it's May already.