Could it be.

It is possibly the end of an era, maybe more of an epoch really. The Easter Bunny doubt has started to creep in. The oldest is seven going on seventeen these days and there was some distinct doubt being spouted in the back seat on the way home from "How to Train a Dragon." which was very exciting and though formulaic enjoyable. Shout out to Chris, the best trailer was for a movie called the last airbender. Anyways, back to doubt. With the last tooth that was lost there was some serious investigation. Notes were written to the tooth fairy and the hand writing on the response notes was matched with parents writing to see if there was any conclusive evidence, none was found. However, Easter is taking a beating. She knows that parents hide the eggs for the hunt but is still not certain how the chocolate enters the house. I have to admit that I am not really as down for the subterfuge as many of my parenting peers seem to be. I mean in our daily walks to school we are debunking organized religion these days, how can I look myself in the mirror if I am trying to hold on to the Easter Bunny. This may be one of those paradox's I just have to live with.

On a different front we have successfully sold our home, packed up our junk and got the hell out of there. We are still moving in to the new place. An alarming amount of our stuff is moving in with us. The storage is almost full but it looks like it will take the rest of the stuff we planned to pack in there. I am worried about the stuff we didn't plan to pack in there and now look like we are going to try to. Here are some pics of the new place.Living room shot.Close up of the three for Auntie Joey who asked. We will try for head shots some time soon.Still not unpacked kitchen and dining room.The son photo bombing another picture. This time of the kitchen facing the other way. Nice enough but small.
Tooth brushing time in the new bathroom.The kids are loving the bunk beds. I took a trip back in time and we played pirate ship on them. I honestly can remember doing that when I was like five years old. Maybe only Auntie Joey will remember that. Down stairs at the Keith Road house.
Here is where the Mrs. and I bunk down. King sized glory. Thank goodness I will be spending a year in Japan. The Queen will be super sized by the time we get back. Otherwise it would be pretty hard to down size.
This is the final picture taken at the old house. Caption, " do you want crackers or cookies?"

Mokatte iru.

Which basically means I'm making money. This is what we were doing today. We managed to sell almost everything that was meant to be sold. Okay, okay we gave a lot of stuff away and there were a couple of people who filled up a box for two dollars but overall people ponied up for the stuff we no longer have a need for. Case in point. We sold 7 chests of drawer/dressers today. We only bought one of them and that was at a garage sale so we are definitely up in that department. We sold a lot of stuff that had been handed down to us. We also got rid of a lot of stuff that we had garage saled to begin with. Toys were pretty popular today. Considering the bags of toys that we have received over the years from various folks it only felt right to give most of them away for a song. The madness definitely started early, 7:40 to be exact. The wave crested at 8:00 and I struggled in the rip tide for a while as various groups made their various piles of loot. By 9:00 the sea had calmed and we were left with about half of what we started with. I thought it was over but by 1:30 the scavengers had picked the remains pretty much clean. Just to refresh your memory we have the before picture from two nights ago. Then today.What was the wife doing in the mean time. She was selling the big stuff inside and baking cookies. We have to use up the sugar and white flour so she made a plan and stuck to it.
It looks like we will not have the trampoline much longer so the kids got in some quality playtime today. I put together a little bit of video. So here it is.

Early Start

Well lets start with dinner. After a busy day with early birds arriving to check out garage sale items (two day early, can you believe it -- more on this later), the pizza ended up coming out a little late so the Mrs. made veggies and dip to tide the crowd over. The crowd was pleased as you can see above they were vieing for optimal position in the bowl. Below our youngest diner is enjoying some of natures harvest.
The regular was up for pizza tonight although the Mrs. threw in a nice twist. She got the big green olives from extra foods. The kind you choose yourself and then put in a little plastic container. So salty and meaty. So good.
The kids had the usual ham and pineapple goodness.
This evenings dough is worth mentioning. I used one cup of whole wheat with two cups of white. Then prepared the dough two different ways. Two of the crusts were hand spread using the technique that sister R brought back from Italy with her. The other two were dusted then rolled with rolling pin. The rolled crusts were nice and uniform however the pulled crusts were fluffier and fuller. The rolling pin crusts made larger area pizzas but the thrown ones weren't that much smaller. I think the one whole to two white is the highest whole to white ratio I can do and still manage to throw it. Anything higher and if I throw the dough it ends up with rips. So we are still learning lots. I do need to add a third flavoured pizza to my rotation. I don't really want to cook a meat for it but I am also not a big lover of vegetarian pizza. I think the bacon cheeseburger pizza with ground beef, onions, cheddar and maybe some bacon might be the answer. Or we used to make a bbq chicken pizza which was pretty nice. Then again there is the feta, spinach and tomato pizza which we have done on occasion. I just need to work on one of these so when we have guests and have to make more than four pizzas I can add another flavour into the rotation.

Now we still have the garage sale update. As of close of business today we have sold the trampoline, ping pong table, rototiller, guitar case, tree sprayer, kids john deere tractor, wheel barrow, black couch, one dresser, various kitchen implements, five movies and possibly my golf clubs. Almost managed to sell the bedroom set but the guy backed out at the last minute. Apparently his wife didn't think they were dark enough to match the bed frame. Picky picky.

Did I mention the garage sale doesn't start until Saturday. Early birds have taken a lot of the good stuff but there is still lots to go. If you look at yesterdays blog you can see the difference a day makes. Things are starting to come together in the old garage.

There is still lots of organizing to do tomorrow but at least stuff is mostly in the right spot now and everything is accessible. I sure hope we get enough young families through here as the toys we are getting rid of are pretty awesome. I am definitely going to have my salesmans cap on come Saturday.

What I will not have to sell is our video collection.
Yes they are cassettes but if you double click the image and take a closer look you will see how many true gems there are in the collection. The guy who picked up the ping pong table today actually said, "you wouldn't happen to have adventures in babysitting would you?" and I said no because I recommended it to the people who bought the tiller and tractor this morning. However, as the daughter pointed out they took stuart little 2. So there it was and now it has found a new home. Videos are 2 for a dollar or 5 for two dollars. Can't go wrong at that price and I hope everyon takes home five. I will miss having them but I have to say there is something very cathartic about getting all your worldly belongings down to a 10 x 10 storage area.

Wish us luck for tomorrow.

ps. Does anyone want a set of Encyclopedia Brittanica circa 1980. Beautiful books, almost totally useless today. I wonder if they can be recycled.

Gearing Up.

So this is what one would classify as the current state of the carport (here after called the garage, no one has a carport sale)We have yet to move out the kitchen items that will be up for grabs but the rest of the non furniture items are outside. The couches, dressers and chairs will all be shown in the living/dining area. I just don't have the room to store them outside and the day will be busy enough without having to move dressers and such.

Our stack of, to put in storage stuff, in the living room has begun to grow. I measured out the 10x10 spacing on the floor and put down some tape markers. Currently it looks pretty good but with all the odds and ends and what not I am sure the space will quickly disappear.

With the desk and the TV table as part of the storage I am pretty sure we will be able to pack it to the rafters. Then the bikes and ugly non stacking stuff can be put underneath. The real dream would be to get it all into a five by ten but that is probably a bridge to far.

Here is the youngest, we were startled by his initial call only to look behind the chair and see him sitting in the pasta pot. We all had a good chuckle.
As for dinner we went out. I know, stop the presses. But it was Wing Wednesday and some plans to go for dinner at a friends place fell through (young kid wouldn't mix well with our sort of sickies). So we ponied up the cash and enjoyed a frustrating 40 minutes of trying to eat around a baby squirming.

Beauty and the Beast.

So the beautiful home lasted for three days. Then today we started getting ready for next weekends garage sale. Today was toy day and we basically took all the toys out of the basement. The keep pile would easily fit in one largish box. The garage sale/give away pile was enormous and took about ten trips up and down the stairs to move into the garage. So yes we have no bananas but toys for those aged 1-5 we are overflowing with. We even went so far as to pack all the farm animals into a bag that is attached to the farm house. I am telling you there is some amazing garage sale goodness coming someones way this Saturday, 8-2. Of course after the organizing and before the up and down stairing I had to get the carport into ship shape. Things are definitely looking like they will come together for Saturday. Everything that isn't sold or given away will be taken to the dump. I am really hoping one of those scavenger types arrives at 2 and offers to take the rest of it away for nothing. The answer will be yes.

So to recap, by Sunday morning I am hoping we have boxes of clothes and beds in our bedrooms. Nothing else.

Tomorrow is tools and clothes day. With the tools organized then the rest of the garage will be fillable and with the clothes done we will be able to start moving dressers out. I worry that no one will want any of our crap and I will end up carting the lot of it to the dump. However, a friend offered up his utility trailer so I will not have to make quite so many trips. Now that is a big yeah. The Mrs. has decided the official price for anything without a tag on it shall be described in two parts, 1) make us an offer, 2) no offers will be refused. She basically wants to give everything away by donation and I am holding out for enough money to pay for the classified ad that will run Wednesday and Friday.

The awesomeness that was our living dining kitchen is now filled with boxes again, some empty, some full. I also priced out storage today. They aren't giving away space but it won't break the bank.

Well I hope you and yours had a great day.

Night.