June 2009

May ended with a trip to Whitby/Oshawa to check out a few houses and see what the housing market in general was like. June started off with no answers to our pressing questions: should we hold off for an offer that makes us happy, even if Rob had to live with his parents for months? Do we upsize our house since we're moving anyway (and the house we were in was proving to just not cut it sizewise)?

We hosted a surprise 40th birthday party for my older brother, Ted, and a mini-party for Huey's 9th birthday (and recognizing all the other May/June birthdays!). Most of our family had never been to our 'new' house in the 3 years we'd been there! The pinata was a trouble-maker. Auntie Cheryl bent our broom trying to smash it open (it actually lasted until this past weekend when Rob fatally cracked it). Why is this underlined? I can't even see an option for underlining!Huey finally resorted to the plastic baseball bat.

The hot tub was enjoyed by all the kids. From left--Lucy, Meg, nieces Allie and Abby, and Jasmine at the front right (my cousin's daughter). Huey got in later, and I think Logan was away with his Daddy.Even Cooper had a great time at the party, especially with Ted!From left, Cheryl and Mike (my younger brother), Uncle Duncan (Jasmine's grandpa), Lucy and Rob; enjoying my FIRST attempt at cooking ribs!The ribs were such a hit, I cooked them again later in the month.

Mid-week following the party, we listed the house for sale. Despite our carpet salesman's attempts to win us over, he didn't, LOL. We'd been working with Andrea since Sept. 2002 and had no reason to leave her, even though she wasn't optimistic with the listing price Rob insisted on. Showings started a little bit slowly, with the first one being cancelled, but on Sunday we had a showing that resulted in an offer being presented that night---3 days on the market. There was a lot of back-and-forth negotiating, and in the end, the client wanted to sleep on it cause it was getting late. We settled in the morning with our conditions being met...at almost the asking price. A closing of Sept. 30 meant I'd have a few weeks while all kids were in school for packing, and they were happy to not start at a new school on the first day of school, where they might get lost in the shuffle. The purchaser had a condition though that he'd sell his townhouse in two weeks, which our agent was happy with. We continued with showings and silently laughed when several agents said during the agent open house, that it was priced too high!

However, Rob still did not officially have a new job!!!

In between showings, we still had speech therapy, pre-school 'tutoring', child development social worker visits, swim lessons, and my dad was in the hospital.

The offer we had was accepted on Monday June 15, which meant his two week clause should have been over on June 29, but the next part of the story happens in July. So maybe we had given him three weeks.

On June 30, Rob got an email from the 'manager-to-be' with an email attached that Rob never responded to, about employment verification. It was dated June 4. We looked closer at it, and the original sender had spelled my name wrong and we had never gotten that email. He immediately sent off the employment info, which wasn't acknowledged until July 6. We were beginning to realize just how SLOW things could be there!