Under Contract!

After over 3 weeks of negotiations and walking away twice, Doug has worked his magic once again and we are officially under contract on our house in Horseheads, NY. Hopefully all goes well with the inspection so we can close by the end of April.

I guess we are really moving! ;O)

Now Doug is on to negotiating with the furniture store salespeople. Wonder how many times he will walk out of the store before we buy a bed?

Where in the world is Horseheads, NY?

Yes, that is a For Sale sign on our condo in Charlestown. For those of you that don't already know, we are headed West to Horseheads, New York.

"WHY would you ever leave such a great city?" you ask...

Well...Doug has received a very exciting promotion to work in the Epic group within the Life Sciences division of Corning working with technologies that will improve and hopefully speed up the drug discovery process. So, Corning will be moving us to NY where we will start our next chapter.

While it will be very bittersweet for both us (ok...probably more for me as Doug is sick of Boston and alot of the baggage that comes with living here), it is a very exciting move for us. We will finally have a real house with room to spread out and actually entertain more people when they come to visit, a yard (even though trees are hard to come by in Horseheads!) and we will all get to experience a new area of the country. Wine country is right up the road (Reisling, here I come!) and the summers are gorgeous. Winters...well, it is still the North and the snow and cold is abundant, but we will have to work on that aspect of the location with our next move.

Here is some fun info about our new home...You are all welcome to visit anytime! (PLEASE!!!!)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseheads_(town),_New_York

So, we have spent the last month or so looking for a house in Horseheads, getting our house ready to put on the market, and now keeping it clean as it has ever been in hopes of wooing someone to buy it. (Please interest rates, keep dropping!)

Did I mention we are having a baby in 5 weeks? ;O)

Can you tell me how to get...how to get to Sesame Street?

Eric doesn't watch much TV. His TV watching experience has been mostly limited to football and a few episodes of Sesame Street. However, he has really gotten into Elmo lately with a few of the books that we have around the house and somehow he remembers that he had seen Elmo and Big Bird on TV.

For the last week or so he has been trying to tell me that the Big Bird he sees in his book is also on TV. Grandma Lohse finally deciphered the code and figured out what he was saying. So, we turned on the TV and let him go nuts. He was very excited to see his "friends" on the TV and was running around and screaming.

After 10 minutes or so of all the excitement, he was exhausted. So, like a typical man, he collapsed into his chair. ;O)

Independence at its finest

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Bammmmm!

Eric may not be the famous Emeril Lagasse yet, but let me tell you, he is on his way. Eric loves kitchens, preferably the real deal. But when he finds a kitchen his size, he goes to town. Opening and closing the microwave with food inside, then putting it in the oven, and turning the burners on and off. It definitely could keep him entertained for hours. Most likely, that will be the first thing we buy him when we get a new house with a bit more room.

And to kick it up a notch...maybe an Easy Bake oven (do they even make those any more?!)

Baby Fred

No, no...we didn't have Baby #2 early and we didn't decide to name him/her Fred. Baby Fred is Eric's second best friend (after his monkey that he sleeps with). We gave him the baby for Christmas to hopefully start to expose him to babies in preparation for the real thing.

Baby Fred helps us out alot. He shows Eric how yummy his veggies are, he sits on Eric's potty (even though he has been pushed through the hole a few times!). Eric even puts him down for a nap and to bed everyday with a kiss and a belly rub. Unlike Monkey, he is allowed out of Eric's room and even on car trips with us to the grocery store.

Grandma Lohse caught a great photo of Eric and Fred that I just had to share. It may be one of my favorite pictures to date.

Now if Baby Fred could only help cook dinner and take Pokey on walks...

In Daddy's shoes....

And Doug complains that I leave alot of shoes around the house!