SOLD!

We signed the papers on our old house last Wednesday.  That is relief beyond measure.  Now we can look at getting some flooring down and saying goodbye to our purple carpet that crinkles when you walk in certain spots.   Did I tell you what our carpet cleaner said when we had the carpets cleaned before we moved in? 

No? 

I didn't think so, and I didn't even go back into my archives to double check.  He said he wasn't able to get out a few stains. I told him that was OK.  We weren't planning on keeping it.  He said, "I didn't think you would."  Enough said right there, don't you think?

Anyway....as we approached the last few days of double home ownership, I began thinking about all the things I would miss and NOT miss about our old house.  Here's a brief run down: (I'm telling you now-- hold on to your seats.  You might not be able to handle this!)

I'll miss being able to watch Annsley and Kennedi drive their battery powered jeeps all over the pasture.  They were truly 4 wheel little vehicles--unless they ran over a yucca plant.  That would stop them in their tracks every time. Nasty little cactus weeds.

I'll miss watching Annsley do her mud cooking on top of the gun range.  She found an abandoned aluminum slide, some fencing material, and old pots in a junk pile on our property and set up a little play area at the gun range. She dragged the slide probably 200 feet all by herself one afternoon.  Independent little thing would you say?

I'll miss Annsley catching horny toads, especially the baby ones. And I guess I'll include all the tarantulas here as well.  They did nothing for me, but they brought my oldest daughter joy beyond description.

This is the house that Kennedi learned to ride a bike without training wheels. 

I'm very much missing our master bathroom right now.  Our new house's master bath is tiny, and Doug and I haven't had to share a sink in 21 years. 

I miss our huge covered back porch.  I miss looking at our beautiful awesome sunsets.

I'll not miss the wind.  We lived on top of a hill.  No wind breaks in sight.  There were some days that I thought the back porch ceiling fans were spinning so fast that they would certainly fly off and become a deadly weapon.  40-50 mph winds nearly daily in the spring--all day long--all night long and the sandy dirt that came with it.

All the ants.  The red ones on the ground and the flying ones that showed up the first week or so in June.  Of course, with all the ant beds we had a plethora of horned frogs running around which my girls enjoyed immensely.  (Well, Kennedi and Andrei not so much.) 

Sand burrs.  Do I need to really go into detail about these stickers from hell?  I'll bet we dug up 1000s over the course of 3 years.  I. HATE. THEM. 

The black widows.  We had our fair share of them.  I will say, however, I pick those things over the Brown Recluse which we had at our new home.  At least black widows make nasty, sticky webs and stay around their webs.  Brown recluses are nasty little brown spiders not known for web making and like coming out to feed at night when you are asleep.  (And as a side note, if anyone in my area needs a good pest guy, I'll get you the name and number.  We knew we had a problem before we moved in, so we had our pest guy do his thing before we actually moved.  He said it was the most brown recluse infested house he'd seen in 25 years.  They sprayed carpet, every drawer, every cabinet, every crack, dusted the attic, etc.  The arachnid carnage that was found the day after the exterminators left was simply short of amazing. We haven't seen a creature AT ALL for the last two months, and yesterday he gave us the go ahead to start putting stuff back in our attic. Whoo Hoo!)

Enough reminiscing.  Our dog chewed up a soccer ball yesterday.  She dumped the outside toy bucket and chewed every cup, plate, baseball bat, and glove that was in it.  Our back yard resembles a small scale war zone.  I keep telling myself that every day she lives, she is one day closer to becoming an adult dog.