Here we are

The profile picture of our family on the upper corner of this blog seems awfully overdressed for the weather today.  Still, we ate outside, a hot meal, since we didn't get salad greens in our CSA basket yesterday.

I am 26 weeks along now with Baby #3 and can't wait to meet and hold her.  We usually like to meet the baby then choose a name, which I think we'll try to still do, but so far we only have one name we like, which we're keeping a secret so we can have something to announce on her big day.  Ben says her birth is plenty news, but I think the giving of a name is also worthy of a headline.  So, we wait.

July seems to be a month of sickness for us.  We have each taken a week (I guess my week was at the end of June) and filled it with hard to diagnose symptoms.  Juju just finished with her fever (that Z had last week) yesterday.  She still has a cold, but that's practically normal.
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As I was typing this, Ben rushed in with Z saying he just puked everywhere outside.  Now that we've got him cleaned up and fed again we've decided, rightly or not, that he drank too much pool water this evening and tossed his cookies after jumping on the trampoline.  We're going with this theory as we're done being sick.  Not sure how moms with five kids manage sickness after sickness, but I'm not that seasoned of a parent yet and I'm praying we get a break.

I've been busy doing virtual tours for a local realtor.  She actually has her house up for sale now too, the one she really lives in.  It's beautiful, you wanna see?

Here's a tour I just finished today.  The house is only $119,900, it's 4,600 square feet and has really cool features like a third floor. It needs some work (like the kitchen), oh, and A/C, but otherwise, it's got a lot going for it.  I just love taking pictures of cool old houses!  

I made popcorn balls today with Z and ate at least six of them myself.  My mom used to make popcorn balls with me as a kid.  I remember she made tons of them.  I also remember she loved them. Now, I'm that mom who loves them more than my kids do as I relive my childhood.  Good times.

Historic Zoar House

I finally finished this and had to share. I won't share all my virtual tours, just the outstanding houses, I promise! If people haven't noticed yet, the property prices in our area are fabulous! This house is asking $229,900 and it's worth every penny if you see it in person and the house I showed you yesterday is only asking $109,900! Crazy, huh?

When did our little girl get so big? She'll turn one year old this month!

Above is a sample of what's been keeping me so busy! Yes, Juju too, but my computer time has been zapped by my new job. Right now I'm working on a super cool historical home in Zoar, Ohio. I took almost 200 pictures of it because it was so beautiful and now I'm sifting through them to make the tour. For those that don't know, virtual tours are not videos of the home, but rather panoramic pictures of a room stitched together with software then they just pan the still shot so it looks like a video. Stitching software is awesome, you just upload the pictures and it pretty much does the rest. I'm learning to better take pictures for stitching, you have to overlap 20-30% of the edge of the picture and if you tilt the camera at all it doesn't work. I probably would benefit from using a tripod, but it's working fairly well to just wear contacts, use the view finder and hold the camera against my face for stability.

I had my first paid staging consultation on Monday. It was difficult actually because the home owner actually had cleaned well and had bought lots of fancy decorations. She graciously accepted my suggestions on defluffing her home. I'm NOT a decorator. What I do is equip sellers with the knowledge to sell their home for the maximum profit for the least amount of expense. So, I have a standard list of tips I hand out that I wrote myself and then I go through their home and write personalized ideas to better stage their home for sale, most of which are free for them to do. Decorating implicates artistic creation and I mostly deconstruct and tell people they have too much stuff. Very different.

Just as a disclaimer, if I ever come to your home, reader, or you come to mine, I'm not examining your home in this fashion any more than I'm trying to counsel you every time I talk to you, I'm helping people try to sell their homes, that's it. I like to think that I'm putting seven years of higher education in psychology to work when I go into a home and see it from a buyers perspective. The counseling part comes in when I try to convey my thoughts to the seller. That's an art, let me tell ya!

Mr. Big Boy Pants is doing spendidly! I'm so proud of him! He was telling us he needed to go just a few days after we started training. He rarely has accidents, except in the #2 department. That's a hurdle we're still working on. We weaned him from the dollar store presents by telling him he only gets presents for poopies now. Let me clarify: Poopies IN the potty. He's motivated, there's just something scary about it still and he's holding it for 3 days at a time. Yesterday, I think Ben thought I was being too pushy trying to make Z try to poop on the pot, so I said, "Are you going to clean it up if he poops in his pants?" He thought about it awhile and he told Z that if he pooped in his pants he'd clean him off with the hose outside and it'd be cold! That's probably exactly what he needs! Maybe I'll try that if he goes today.

Now, on that note, have a lovely day and when you go potty, just take a moment to be thankful that somebody taught you how!

{quick update}
I no more had clicked "publish" on this post and Z told me he needed to go potty and whaddaya know? He got his first present in a week! If he keeps this up, the whole earth and all it's landfills will breathe a giant sigh of relief. Here's hoping!