More new house photos

Here are some shots of the house we have a contract on in Barrington. Jim took them during the inspection a couple of weeks ago. Right now things are on track for us to close on June 1st and move in on June 4th. Keep your fingers crossed. Meanwhile here in Athens, we close on our house here (to sell it) on May 31st.
Here's part of the sunroom looking down the stairs from the dining room. The kitchen has an opening looking out at the sunroom which would be on the left here. The door standing open is to the half bath. You can see a bit of the patio out the window.

This photos if on end of the living room showing the fireplace and the matching bookcases (one of both sides) which they are leaving for us. I wish they were leaving the rocking chair and paisley throw too.

Here's the dining room. They are leaving the gorgeous arts and crafts chandelier. The front door is to the right of the rug in the foreground and the sunroom is to the left down a few stairs. There is an opening from the dining room to the sunroom you can see where the plant is on the left at the back.

Here's the full bathroom in our new house. I'm not sure if the wall is beige or pink. If it's pink we will have to change it, but I like the bright teal green.

Leaving for the Camping Trip

Here's Emma bright and early (and dark) in the morning (7:15 am) ready to go on the Vikings Class camping trip.

A shot of all the luggage loaded on the bus and ready to go to YMCA Camp Greenville on the SC/NC border in the mountains.

And lastly a shot of the bus right before I got back in the car. Leaving Emma there for two nights away with her class, teachers and chaperones was a right of passage for me. She's growing up. When I left her with her friends in the classroom to wait to load the bus she didn't cling at all and didn't need me either. She was SO excited about this trip and we have been counting down the days since January.

House buying and selling

Jim and I signed a contract on this house in Barrington today. Hopefully this one will work out for us. It was in our top three that we looked at in mid-March and is very cute and has great space for us. The bay window is the living room and the small window is in the kitchen. The house goes back on quite far on the left side and is in an L-shape with a patio in the empty space. More when we know what the inspection report says.

In house selling news -- we had two offers for our house here in Athens over the weekend. We have accepted one and are still waiting for the signed paperwork. More celebration to come when we get that. They offered us our asking price so that's great. If the deal goes through we close on May 31st. I guess I am really leaving Athens! That makes me both sad and excited. Athens has been good to us and is a great place.

The twins at Easter

For those of you who haven't seen my sisters twins in a while -- here's a recent photo. Jim took this on Easter when they were together with my Mom in Stone Harbor, NJ. Nikolas is doing his signature thumb sucking which means he is probably tired, and Amelia looks a bit miffed in her gorgeous blue and white dress. They are 15 months old now. Boy how time flies. I can't wait to see them again in May.

Easter in Athens

Here's Emma, all dressed up and ready to go to church Easter morning.

We had a little modeling session and these two were the best shots.

Emma on the patio outside our church waiting for the Easter egg hunt to begin. As you can see she has a coat on. It was very cold for Athens, Georgia this Easter with highs only in the low 50s and lows in the mid 30s. It was sunny and bright though.

Emma and her friend Rachel -- ready to hunt for eggs

The Easter egg hunt in progress in the garden at our church -- St. Gregory the Great Episcopal Church. You can just see Emma in the background running towards the low stone wall.

In the afternoon Emma and I celebrated Easter by going to see a movie. We saw Meet the Robinsons in Digital 3D. It was the first 3D movie I recall seeing and certainly the first Emma has ever seen. It was neat to put on the glasses and watch together. It's really cool when things come flying out of the screen at you! They also showed a 3D cartoon from 1953 before the movie.

That about sums up our Easter Sunday. Hope yours was great too.

House deal fell through

Well, I know now that I shouldn't put any photos up until after the closing -- or at least after the sellers response to the inspection. The inspection turned up some structural problems with the detached garage -- not major, it wasn't going to fall down, but important enough. The sellers were not willing to fix them or to give us money to do so. They felt they had given us a good price and that was that. Considering that they misrepresented the cost of the required flood insurance, either accidently or on purpose didn't help either since it was adding to the monthly cost which was already at the top of our price range.

So Jim and I went back and talked about the other two houses on our short list from house hunting in mid- March. Both are still available and we put a bid in on one of them today. So we will see.

Never a dull moment in our lives at present!

They let dogs in the coffee shop in RI!

Jim has discovered a cool coffee shop in the next town over from ours -- Warren -- where they allow dogs inside. It's called the Coffee Depot. Here are a couple of photos he took this past weekend. We both thought it was cool that the dogs he saw were a Pug -- like our Maggie, and a bulldog -- a reminder of Georgia. Oh, and the other great thing about the coffee shop -- free wireless Internet access!