Good, Busy Day

I should be in bed.

We worked hard this morning getting the house 100% ready to show to realtors. Doug did touch up painting all morning while I mopped and cleaned, organized the girl's bookshelf, etc. Once that was wrapped up, I worked the census for 4 hours because I've hardly worked at all this week!

After that was our ward's annual crawfish boil. As usual, a much larger turnout there than is at church, but that's okay. I met several new people so that was good. Unfortunately, our two crawfish eaters (D & A) were too busy at the waterslide until the crawfish was all gone, so we all had hamburgers and hotdogs instead. Just the smell of those things makes me sick. They call them mud-bugs for a reason (sorry for those of you who like them...but yuck). They had a blow-up water-slide and some other water activities for the kids. It was fun.

Then we hurried home to meet with our first realtor. We really liked her. Didn't love what she had to say so much, but it's not her fault that the comps are going to stink. We are just hoping for the best - which would be listing it and selling it on our own so we don't have to worry about the buyout. One good thing with the comps is that all 5 comps that she showed us sold within 90 days - actually I think the longest was about 40 days, and the shortest was 15 days. We are hoping for something like that, of course. We meet with another realtor on Monday and then choose which one we want to go with for the listing, and get this thing on the market. We are ready! We laid tile this week so our house is now 100% wood and tile. Touch up painted, built and painted new porch columns, boxed up a bunch of stuff that can go into storage to make things look better around here. Once we meet with the other realtor, we list the house within 5% of the average of the two market analyses. Our first appraiser is scheduled for Wednesday, and we haven't heard from the other guy yet. Whew. Oh, and the moving company is coming next week to assess our load weight. So yeah, busy-ness!

After we met with the realtor, it was time for some FUN! We went to the fabulous concert that they have every year at the park with the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra. This year the theme was dance music, and it was a lot of fun - waltzes, tangos, a medley from "Chicago", a Duke Ellington medley, etc. It was a beautiful night for beautiful music. I am really going to miss the arts in Louisiana. This is a place that seems to value the arts and offers great music programs in the schools. I'm sure we'll find that element in Michigan too (there are actually some very good music schools nearby). But really, there is nothing like sitting by the bayou on a beautiful May night and listening to wonderful musicians. Love that stuff. It was fun to watch my kids recognize their instruments and listen for them (M could pick out when violas had the melody for example, and E enjoyed watching how the cellists achieve their vibrato). Ah, music calms my soul. Unless I'm teaching it to Primary kids, of course. Then it stresses me out! (not really)

I did take a bunch of pictures today, but honestly I am just too tired to change the battery that I would need to load them. So perhaps I'll post them tomorrow. Thank goodness for a day of rest. I think after church I'm going to sleep and then we're going to have lunch with a friend and drive by Matt and Amy's new house (they are moving here in just a few weeks!!). We've been excited to see where they will live, but it's about a half hour from here so we haven't driven by yet.

Now, if I can get these aching feet up off the couch I will drag myself to bed.