Ocean Shores - April 2009

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We had to wait until the house was on the market to take our first road trip in "Ruby Tuesday", the VW Vanagon Westphalia camper van we bought a couple of months ago. That finally happened last weekend and we headed out of town for Ocean Shores.

Ocean Shores is where my family went for getaways when I was a kid and I have lots of fond memories of it. I've gone back there all my life every couple of years. It's a typical ocean beach tourist town: a little bit tacky. But it has a miles-long wide sand beach.

We didn't finish up the house until afternoon so we left home about 3:00. We made a stop on the way to get Charlotte a sleeping bag and arrived at the beach about 7:00. We grabbed dinner to go and ate in the van on the beach watching the sunset. It was such a switch from the house prep death march to having fun with the family that I was pretty giddy. Plus it was the first sunny weekend in ages after an unusually cool and moist winter and early spring.


Ocean Shores Video

After sunset we drove to nearby Ocean City State Park and found a spot to sleep. The girls had been asking all day when we were going to put up the pop top, so they were excited. We had a great time playing and getting set up for sleeping and reading stories. I don't think we settled down to sleep until 10:00. Audrey started out in the upper bed with me but after 45 minutes of restlessness she decided she wanted to sleep on the floor.

We all slept pretty well in the van. I went to the bathroom about 4am and was surprised that opening and closing the sliding door didn't wake up the girls. When I woke up to daylight I figured it was 6:30. But when I looked at the clock it was 8:15 and everyone else was still sleeping. Amazing! But by 8:30 we were all awake and laughing.

We went back into town for breakfast and then back to the beach. It was relatively warm (50's) but with a steady strong breeze so coats were required. After playing in the dunes and watching other people fly kites I decided we needed a kite or two as well. The kite store was only a short distance away so I went and bought a Spiderman kite for Audrey and a ladybug kite for Charlotte.

When I unwound the kite strings and handed the spool to each girl and launched the kites they were thrilled. They happily flew their kites for a long time. The wind was perfect for it. As the day wore on it got warm enough, for Audrey at least, to be comfortable in just a t-shirt.

We hung out at the beach until mid-afternoon and then left for home. I sat in the back with the girls most of the way home and we had a good time together.

It was a very successful first road trip in the "new" van. We look forward to many, many more of them. We'd be gone somewhere this weekend but I checked the weather reports yesterday and it's raining all weekend everywhere within driving distance.

OK, That Sucked

In my last post a month ago I implied that March would be spent getting the house ready to sell and would not be enjoyable. It turns out that was an understatement. It completely sucked. Every free moment was spent working on the house.

Alas, we finished on Saturday and the house gets listed today. Yeah! And the listing price is right what we were hoping for. That's great news.

When I've whined to people about the work on the house, they often ask me, "What do you have to do?" So here's a list of what we've done:

Outdoor:

• fix sagging house gutter at se corner
• fix garage man door gutter leak
• fix garage exterior lights
• clean mailbox/porch light/house numbers
• build fence at alley
• replace west gable siding
• replace south window trim x 2
• install gutters on garage north side
• clean up back yard
• extend cement block wall
• level alley & spread rock
• install fabric & river rock in water barrel area
• install water barrel & downspout
• replace kitchen door
• paint green parts of house/touch up blue everywhere
• scrape/sand/caulk/paint all exterior trim
• paint porch rail
• paint front door
• paint underside of greenhouse window
• paint whiteboard on studio east end & around garage door
• paint man doors & trim
• clean gutters
• wash all windows
• install fence post caps
• clean greenhouse window exterior
  
• fill alley potholes
• install sod patch & side sewer cleanout cover

Indoor:

• paint studio trim
• clean up studio
• clean under refrigerator
• replace master bath faucet
• replace master bath light fixture
  
• install/paint kitchen door trim
• caulk kitchen counter
• caulk/clean greenhouse window
• cover junction box above breaker panel
• fix carpet padding downstairs hall
• mount smoke detectors
• grout added kitchen tile
• clean all windows
• touch up all interior paint
• paint new bannister
• finish bannister base
• clean downstairs door
• clean studio threshold

This doesn't include the many hours Carol spent getting the house declutterred, organized, cleaned and staged. She spent many days reuniting toy parts with each other, sorting and triaging kids clothes, cleaning out closets, packing "extra" stuff for storage and many other tasks - all while wrangling two temporarily attention-starved kids.

Whoever buys our house is getting a "perfect" house with absolutely no maintenance needing immediate attention. Perhaps a lot of sellers don't do this much work, but we can't imagine listing a less-than-perfect house in this market.

We finished the last of the work on Saturday afternoon and immediately packed up the camper van and headed to the ocean. We had a wonderful time. As soon as I have some time I'll post photos and video. Now that the house is done, I need to focus on final projects for my two classes. Both are due in two weeks. After my last final exam of the semester on May 8, life should improve dramatically.

OK, I'm done whining now.