Letters to My Son

So I bit the bullet and started a seperate blog for Dexter...FYI there'll definitely be some repetition between the two.

If you care to add it to your favorites the address will be:

http://letters4dexter.blogspot.com/

Hope you enjoy reading it as much as I'll enjoy writing it :-D

So what's the real estate verdict?

Alright so how close was I on my estimate? Well you can be the judge of that with the following information...

On Friday, the female realtor who was referred to me by a family friend came over to do her appraisal. First off, I just want to say that she seemed very nice. I had given her our "stats" before she came (in case you're wondering - 3 bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms, 1498 square feet, built 2005, two storey) so when she arrived she had her estimate already. I went through the house with her & showed her the space. Then we sat down & looked at the numbers according to her. She said she'd list at about $275,000. She came up with this number by looking at 'comparables' in the neighborhood to see what they sold for and by averaging our four property tax assessments. As you can see, that was a good $50,000 below my guess and though I'm not a real estate professional I didn't think I was THAT off. The average size of house she showed me seemed to be about 12 - 1300 in size so I went through her stats of the sold compariables myself (as I'm a data nerd) and broke it down to an average price per square foot & then multipled by our square footage and came up with $309,000. Oh, she also seemed pretty focused on the finishes saying that people are really looking for granite and hard woods. While I think those are nice, I don't think they are dealbreakers for many people in my price point.

I decided to get a second opinion from a business associate of mine's husband who is also a realtor. Kevin has been doing real estate since 1985 in Central Alberta which means he has a lot of experience and hopefully that also means that he is good enough to sustain his income to raise his kids all these years! LOL Anyway, he came over on Sunday afternoon and didn't want any information before he got here. Tyler & I showed him the house this time and he made lots of positive comments about our floor plan choices, etc. I liked that he geniuinely seemed to appreciate our house and the qualities it had. He took down the info he needed and said he'd get back to us this week.

Today Kevin came over with his own pile of information. He also showed me some of the comparables, though I'm not sure of his exact approach to crunching the numbers. He recommended listing our house between $299,000 to $314,000 and said could see it selling for $295,000 to $310,000. First of all, of course I like that his numbers are higher but the reality is that your house is only worth what someone will pay for it. But secondly, I like that he had ranges so that we go into it being flexible yet still have some set goals. Personally I feel more comfortable listing with Kevin so I think thats the route we'll go. I'd like to list for Feb 1st as there is some purging & tidying & staging I'd like to do with the house.

Are we Moving? Update

Hey folks! So I'm happy to report I've made some progress this week. Yesterday my family friend Cynthia, who lives in Millet, called me back to find out exactly what we're looking for & where. So she's starting to be on the hunt for homes we'd be interested in...we're still not sure which communities we'll be looking in but I should be talking to her again tonight to sort some of that out.

Cynthia also recommended a realtor for us to sell our place. Her name is Melea (I think) and she is coming over tomorrrow @ 3pm to access our house and give us a suggested listing price. I'm excited & nervous to see what she says.

I went onto the www.mls.ca website to scope out the current active listings and based on similar houses in our area I'm going to GUESS that she'll say something around $325,000. So that's my official guess and we'll see what she says tomorrow!

I also have a mortgage broker friend who will probably start looking into our rates and what we can get as no matter what, our mortgage is up for renewal in April.

Brief (as possible) Holiday Synopsis

It was suppose to be my Christmas with MY familiy this year as my parents offered to come to Red Deer for it. I was very excited as this meant I wouldn't have to travel (much) with a new baby. Then my parents decided to get a trip in lieu of Christmas presents for my brother & sister to Vegas - Tyler, Dexter & I were not included in that as they decided Vegas was no place for a baby. I teased them a lot about it saying "Dexter WANTS to go to Vegas" but truthfully I was cool with staying home. Between the logisitics of travelling and the lack of extra bucks I'd rather wait for a trip I could truly enjoy.

So, to take advantage of seat sales my family booked flights to leave on Sunday, Dec 21 and arrive back at 12:30am Dec 25th (yep Christmas morning). No big deal as I'm not much of a morning person. They all had a great time in Vegas but unfortunately, due to fog, the plane was unable to land as scheduled in Edmonton & they were re-directed to Calgary. It was about 4am when they officially new they were going to be given a hotel room and then a flight to Edmonton at 1pm. Tyler or I could have gone to pick them up but their vehicle was in Edmonton, the roads weren't great, the weather was cold & we were both too tired. The four of them got to our place at 4pm, about 12 hours later than expected.

This meant that I was in charge of cooking Christmas Day dinner by myself (well with Tyler) and 3 month old Dexter. Not really as bad as I thought, except that at noon when I went to prepare the turkey, I found it still frozen! It was only like a 10lb turkey so I thought I had given it plenty of time to thaw (as the ham in the fridge for the next night was thawed) but apparently not. Luckily I had time to thaw it via microwave. As icky as that sounds, it worked and the turkey was ready for dinner. It was not table presentable visually but everyone thought it tasted pretty good (except for Tyler who thought it was dry). The major downfall of the plane delay was that my family was exhausted by the time they arrived and it didn't make much for having fun on Christmas Day. So that was a bit disappointing. Luckily Dexter is still way to little to remember much. In case you're wondering, I made the following for Christmas Day supper (Tyler helped as did my Mom once she arrived): turkey, gravy, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, brussel sprouts, buns. I think that's it, just the basics.

For Boxing Day, I invited Willie & Kris over for dinner and games with my family. Again I cooked with the help of my Mom & Tyler. I made a bone-in ham with a pepsi sauce (yep pepsi!, so yummy), brussel spouts with apricot jelly & cashews, apple coleslaw, fruit cocktail cake for dessert and had Kris bring her yam casserole. Willie & Kris brought their new puppy Willow, a golden retriever. Willow & Willie, that'll get confusing for Kris sometimes. Anyway the evening was pleasant & fun. We played some games, crib & sequence I think, while my brother and sister relaxed, texted, etc.

On the 27th my Dad, brother & sister went back to Grimshaw while my Mom, Tyler, Dexter & I set out for Medicine Hat. We got in late-ish as we checked into a hotel for that night (my aunt's husband's family was in town at their place). Made a stopover at my Aunt's but she was sick & the house was full. Met my cousin Bryson's baby Cayden for the first time though he was born back in May. Dropped my mom off at the room and Tyler, Dexter & I went over to our buddy Owen's dad's place. Owen's two sisters were there too which was exciting as Tanille in in Vancouver doing school & Desiree is in Waterloo, Ontario for school. Had a fun night playing "the Office Clue"! Dexter was a little cranky as I had forgotten my breastfeeding cover and it was very difficult to feed him.

Next day we went back to my Aunt's house in Red Cliff and visited with my family there, plus Crystal (my brother's baby mama) brought over my nephew Chaise. He stayed until like 8pm which was cool. Tyler, Dexter & I snuck over to the A&W in Medicine Hat over lunch to see his pregnant cousin Jennifer, her fiancee & her mom. Plus I had a bunch of hand me downs for them. So that was fun.

Drove back to Red Deer on the 29th then went out to Willie & Kris' house for their Christmas with us. Tyrone, Kim, Kira & Tehya were all there as well. We had decided to buy presents for the kids, and then just do a chinese gift exchange with the adults. For supper we just had appetizer things, which were filling but not satisfying if that makes sense. The gift exchange was a little weird as Kim & Tyrone brought two new age books that none of us were interested in but them, I brought two items which I thought were good (diffusers from Body Shop & yummy cheese dip spices from Epicure) but nobody seemed that excited about them, and Willie contributed a snow globe, Jesus themed! Kris did pretty good by bringing a Salt Lamp but unfortunately it was the last gift to be unwrapped so we didn't get to fight over it as we would have. Pretty much everyone in this small group has interests that are too far from each other to have a very successful exhange. It's so much more fun when there is a bigger, more rowdy group. We played some games after this though Tyrone was in a grumpy mood and kept picking at Kim. Then when we started a game with Tyler, Willie, Tyrone & I and Tyler missed his turn by accident it started this huge, unneccessary blowout. Part of me wanted to get involved and stand up for Tyler, but the other part of me decided to take Dexter out of the room so he didn't have to listen to that, especially as I know me getting into it wouldn't have accomplished anything. Shortly after that Willie quite the game and we went home (it was passed midnight anyway).

That brings us to the 30th were we decided to stay home for a night. Very enjoyable, but went by much too quickly. Oh, my mom left early in the morning to go home too.

Then on the 31st we travelled to have Christmas with Tyler's mom Mary in her new trailer. She took possession on Dec 21st and should be living in it all by herself except that Tyrone moved in on the 2nd. Lucky for us, he didn't move in until we had already left! So New Year's at Mary's was pretty laid back & quiet. We had a yummy lasagna for supper, opened presents and played games again. The next day we went for Dim Sum in the afternoon which is always a fun experience as we don't have one in Red Deer. It was fun to take some pictures of Dexter even though he was too little to eat it. Since Tyrone wasn't there & we were filling relaxed and chill at Mary's we decided to spend another night there. That night I accomplished pretty much eating almost all the lasagna and we played more games.

Mary's trailer is a decent space but I have to admit that I'm negatively prejudice against trailers. For one thing, she only owns the trailer not the land so she pays $500+/month to rent the lot in addition to her mortgage. Secondly, I find that they sometimes depreciate in value. Third, usually they are a little substandard for finishings. And last but not least, they have some quirks. One of the quirks Mary found out the hard way, is that all her toilets have to be flushed daily in the winter or else her lines can freeze. She went to Saskatchewan not knowing this and her washer grey water backed up into her ensuite tub. Awesome eh? Then the people who should fix it were gone due to the New Year's holiday. Glad it wasn't me!

I'm happy for Mary to be on her own as she wasn't happy with Robert and you should never settle, but I hate that Tyrone moved in with her straight away. For one thing, he'll be 32 in June and has no excuse for why he can't afford to live on his own. For another, he's kids are still with Kim in Calgary which is 3 hours away. Tyrone kept the van for numerous reasons, but that means that Kim is vehicleless. It just feels like the both of them (Tyrone & Kim) make continual poor decisions, and I wouldn't care about that if there weren't kids who can suffer. Argh!

Mini Updates

Yay, blog time! I am constantly composing blogs in my mind, but when that happens I am no where near a computer...then I used to think I could just tap one out on my Blackberry but this website seems to never load so that rarely helps.

Dexter Stats Update

Okay, what do I need to share? Hmmm, well Dexter weighed in yesterday at 14lbs 15oz with diaper but without clothes & 65cm. My doc says that puts him just about the 50th percentile which means he is pretty average. That could also explain why half the people I meet think he's big and half the people I meet think he's small! I just changed over his drawers with the 3-6 months clothes and so far they are fitting pretty well. It's exciting having all new clothes for him to wear again :-D

Moving Update

We have made pretty much no further steps to move yet. Theortically we are both on board and think its the best thing to do but we're both procrastinating...not sure why? I guess it's just a big change for us right now and does include some major effort and is a bit risky. I get very excited about looking for a new place, but very unexcited about "moving" and being out of our comfort zone.

Mommy Update

I still very much like being Dexter's Mommy. Generally speaking he is a pretty good baby, but lately he's been having shorter naps and being fussier and not liking being left to his own to much right now, which makes life a little more challenging for me. In analysis, I'm not sure if Dexter is fussier or if I'm trying to get more done?

On Thursday, I am going to my Women in Business luncheon. From drop off to pick up I'll be gone about 2 hours and I won't lie, I am very nervous! Dexter will be watched by June (Tyler's step-cousin's wife & my friend) who is very capable as she has three kids of her own, two of which will be in school at that time. But it's Dexter's first time without me or Tyler there except for the one time he stayed with Mary while we went to Kevin Smith. I'm worried he'll be sad without me but I'm also worried he won't be LOL

New Year's Resolutions

Well one of my resolutions is to make blogging a priorty. Another one, is to go through the house, room by room and do a deep purging of our crap. On the one hand it would be super awesome to make some money off of the purged items, but on the other, sometimes it's best to get it out of the house & out of sight as soon as possible.

Hmm, I haven't made too many more resolutions, but I'll probably come up with some more as time goes by :-)

My Teeth

In September I was esctatic to get my braces off. Life was going to be so much more wonderful without the pain causing metal mouth piece...however one of my discoveries post-braces is that my teeth suck. How do they suck you might wonder? Well essentially they are crumbling apart. At this point I have a minimum of four major cavities in my visible front teeth and who knows how many more that aren't visible. A major suckage of front cavities is that the freezing needles, which I already hate, need to go through the roof of your mouth. So back in November I called around looking for sedatation dentistry & found that the one office really close to my house does it (my current office might as well but I am SO over that office right now). The catch is that my first 'meet & greet' appointment isn't until Jan 22 and who knows how long it'll be before I can get in. I'm hoping that they'll be able to work on all the cavities at the same appointment down the road as Tyler is working in Fort Sask during the week and I'd like this to be as inconvenient as possible. I'm not sure if my cavities are due to pregnancy, poor genetics, not so great brushing, my tendency not to drink milk or my sugar obsession or a deadly combination of all the factors.

Baby Savannah

Oh & my friend Shelley had her baby girl Savannah Mirjam Elizabeth on December 20th. Between the holidays, her c-section & this being baby #2 I've put off my first visit until tomorrow (Wednesday) to give Shelley time to adjust. I'm super excited to meet this new baby though I'm sure I'll be sad to see how small she is compared to Dexter now!

happy new year!

I promised myself I'd make more posts, so here I am, typing one handed so that I can use my breast pump & type a blog @ the same time lol I scheduled myself massage for four today as tyler doesn't go back to work until tonight & I really, really need this massage. Dexter & I have been co-sleping which is great for bonding and the amount of sleep I usually get BUT leads to many numb limbs and sore, crampy muscles. This massage should do wonders!

(I'm taking a brief pumping break & I can type WAY faster with two hands ha ha)

Okay, I have much to share about my holidays but little time so instead I will leave you with an obervation: I was shopping the baby formula section (as I like to have a can around for emergencies) and was contemplating buying soy as Dex didn't seem to like the last formula much so I thought I'd try soy. When deciding between brands I decided to look at the ingredients...do you know what was listed as the FIRST ingredient of every brand of soy formula? Not soy, but corn syrup. A crying baby awoke, so I have to leave you to ponder the sense of that by yourselves...