Martha and Ben's Visit

Martha and Ben (John's sister and nephew) came for a "Christmas" visit.  They live in Sao Paulo Brazil and traveled here to visit us the holidays.  They went to Seattle prior to our visit Dan (Martha's son).  We had a great visit.  Jen was able to get a few days off and flew in for the weekend.  My brother's family came down and we celebrated Christmas with lots of presents and a great meal afterwords.

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Jackie, Alison, Jen, and Ben checking out all their presents.

Ben was really surprised with his present from Jen.  It was a marsh-mellow gun.  They had a lot of fun with it.

Jimmy's new blanket

 

Martha brought flip-flops for all the girls. We love them!

#1 Colt Fan

Group Shot of the Webb Family.  This was actually taken Christmas Eve at their home.  We forgot to get a group picture of everyone.

We had such a great visit.  It is always sad when everyone leaves.  Martha is hoping to return this fall.  She is negotiating with several colleges to hopefully come back and teach.  And. of coarse visit her favorite sister in law!

Our Home is now For Sale!

We placed our home on the market January 12, 2010. We interviewed three realtors and decided to list with Jeff Van Utt and Century 21. Jeff has been talking with us from time to time over the past two years and has really helped us prepare.

Initially he went through each room of our home and gave us advice on what needed to be accomplished. Our list was over five pages long but with a lot of hard work we are now ready to go.  Jeff has really listened to us and spent a lot of time helping us achieve our goals. Here are a few pictures of us as we signed the contracts. We were very excited and a little nervous too.

COLTS WIN!!!

We are going to the Super Bowl!  

What an amazing game.  The final score was Colts-30 / New York Jets - 17.  After trailing at half-time we came back to win.  It was an exciting game and Indy is going crazy right now celebrating our return to Miami. Later tonight we will find out if we will be playing the New Orleans Saints or the Minnesota Vikings.  

Get ready, get set...soon to Go

In between holidays, we have been very busy over the past two weeks getting our home ready for sale.  One of our biggest obstacles was the dreaded basement.  It was sort of a "no mans land" where everything has been stored.  If we didn't know where to put something, it ended up in the basement.  The time had come to sort it all out and we really needed to decide what we would be keeping, donating, or giving to others.  Over the years we had inherited lots of odds and ends from both of our families and there was a life time of pictures and memorabilia.  It was quite a task and at times rather emotional as we decided to part with an item. We realize, from what others have told us, that this is just a part of the process.

It took several days and at last its all done.  We found a store in town that can list some of our items on ebay.  We also made many trips to Goodwill.  It looks great and was such a big  accomplishment.

John has also been busy painting the garage and grouting our two bathroom tubs.  I have been organizing and cleaning all our closets, drawyers, cabinets and adding some decorating touches.

We decided to interview three realtors.  In this market, we are hesitant to sell our home by ourselves.   One realtor had been recommended to us a couple of years ago.  He has been in contact with us several times and had offered suggestions on what improvement to make and not to make to the house.  He also helped us with staging ideas for the home.  About a year ago he went through each of our rooms and offered suggestions such as removing all personal items from the home.  He told us if we are uncomfortable in our home, than we had achieved what was needed for it to show well. 

We have one more realtor to interview and our plan is to put our house up for sale next week.  This has been quite a journey. It is very exciting and also scary!