December Happenings

I love the month of December! There is always so much to do and so many fun things happening. At Jack's school they had a gingerbread man drawing contest. Below is Jack's gingerbread man, notice the strategically placed acorn. I almost died laughing when I asked him to explain. 

Josie loves to color, just like her sister. You can almost always find them with paper and crayons. 

I had to hide all the markers though because Josie loves to suck on them.

And decorate herself

Josie is as cute as ever. I just can't get enough of her sweet little face

 My dad came over to visit while my mom was traveling.

 Josie loves to mop and sweep the floors. Every time I grab the broom she cries until I give it to her.

Here are the kids on the roller coaster ride at the bowling alley.

Our elf also came back and he brought his girlfriend Snowflake. The kids always have to behave very well in December since the elves are always watching them :) You can see Nicky and Snowflake in the background.

I put my little slaves to work opening hundreds of kisses for the Christmas gifts we made

They also spent lots of time crafting Christmas pictures

And dancing to Christmas music:

 And here is a little Christmas present running around

 The kids had so much fun playing with this tent. Hours of fun with two kids, lots of stuffed animals and a tent

We got a large snowstorm. So much snow!

 I don't like being cold, so Josie and I stayed inside while the kids went out to play

 They had fun for the whole 10 minutes they lasted. It never fails that we spend more time getting their snow clothes on/off then they do playing in the snow.

And another pictures of the littlest doing what she does best... be cute!

Mr & Mrs Claus also came to our gym and the kids got to sit with them. I love my gym, they have parents night out once a month where they take the kids for 3 hours so we can go out. This month we dropped the kids off and went out with our friends to downtown Ft. Collins. It was a great night, but I forgot to take any pictures. 

Jack's class had a party on their last day of school before the break. It pretty much included crafts and lots of sugar. They also played a fun game of building cup towers and then throwing marshmallows to try to knock down the other teams tower.


Marshmallow fight:

After the party Josie still had candy hidden away

And here are some more cute videos from December:

Lily loves to sing. Here is her rendition of "Hark the Herald Angels" 

And here is the time I peeked in Lily's room after her and Josie were being surprisingly quiet. Lily had made a tiny bed for Josie out of a box and was trying to get Josie to take a nap by singing to her. Lily is something special!

We also did the advent calendar leading up to Christmas. This was the first year Josie did one and it was more of a frustration for her because she didn't understand that you only get one chocolate a day. We kept the calendars on top of the fridge, but every time I went to the fridge she would cry for a chocolate. Here she is one morning crying for her chocolate:

Fondue Party

I love Jack's school and how well he is progressing in his French. He is practically fluent and has to speak French all day. No english is allowed in his class. The other thing I love about his school is all the families we have met through his class. We have so many friends who are native French speakers and it is so great to be around people who were not raised in the United States. Many of Jack's friends have left the school so once every year I try to plan a get together to get all the French speaking families back together. Last year we did raclette, this year we planned a fondue party. I was able to get all the cheese from The Melting Pot and several of the moms came to help me. We had over 50 people and it was a great night to see old friends and meet new friends. 

This night had a twinge of sadness attached to it because we had just learned that Jack's teacher has cancer. He has been with the same teacher since kindergarten (3 years now!) and we really love her. She already underwent a double mastectomy and now has to go through chemotherapy and radiation so she will be out for a while. In the meantime Jack has a substitute who is from France, but he is having trouble adapting to a new teacher. He tells us that he gets his name on the board every day for goofing off, and that she is "mean." He has been spoiled to get the same teacher for three years and having someone new who does things different has been quite a shock to the poor kid. But such is life... what a learning experience 2nd grade is turning out to be!

The Nightmare on Rossmere St

For those who have followed all the drama with our home in Colorado Springs you will understand that this house has been nothing but a nightmare for us.

When we bought the house back in 2008 we figured we would be living in it for a long time. Less than 2 years later we were off living in Switzerland and renting out our house in the meantime. Everything was fine for two more years. Then the huge fire swept through the neighborhood and burnt all the neighbors homes to the ground. Ours was badly damaged but it survived. However it was unlivable and we lost good tenants while it took 8 months to repair the fire damage.

Finally we got another renter in who stayed in the house a year and nit picked us every month to pay for random things. We were glad to see him go, but then the next renter who came in had a disabled son in a wheel chair. Why they thought renting our house, which has three stories, was a good idea I will never know. But not even a month after they moved in they were asking us to do repairs to make the home more handicap friendly. We had to put up $6,000 to put in a new front deck since the current one was getting old and they used it a lot with the kids wheel chair. Not too big a deal since we know it needed to be replaced within the next year or so anyways. But then they asked that we build a ramp into the deck which was an extra cost. We told them if they wanted to pay to have a ramp installed and then removed when they left, they were more than welcome to do so. I guess they weren't happy that we wouldn't pay for it so they decided to bail out of their lease with no notice! And usually tenants loose their deposit for breaking lease, but since they claimed they couldn't live their with a handicap son, they got out with no punishment. So then we had no renters for several months. We decided we wanted to sell the house.

The first two offers we got were unbelievably low. Every month we were stuck paying the mortgage with no rental income so we really needed to sell the house. Finally we got a decent offer in January. They wanted to close March 1st so we would only have two more months of mortgage to pay. Everything sounded great! And that's when the roller coaster began.

Two days before closing we were setting up an appointment to do all the paperwork. Then we got the email that the buyers lender couldn't close on time, but that they guaranteed to close by March 30th. I was so upset. I had planned to go out and buy nice champagne to celebrate after signing the documents. Now we would be stuck with another month of mortgage payments. Then towards the end of march we got another email that the lender couldn't close the deal at all. Everything came crashing down. After paying the mortgage on that house for over 6 months with no help from rental income, this was the worst news we could hear.

But the buyer was still interested in the house and offered to rent it until he could secure another loan. We weren't keen on the idea of keeping the home any longer, but we also could not afford to have it sit empty while we searched for another buyer. We decided to let the buyer sign a 12 month rental lease with the condition that he could purchase the home at any time.

Thankfully he has been a fairly easy tenant with no major requests. His one year lease is just about up and we are waiting to hear if he is finally able to buy the house.  I can only hope that this nightmare will soon be over. 

Pictures!

Here are the photos from our latest photo shoot.