Randoms from the Month of April

Things have definitely slowed down again around here. . . thank God.  March and early April were absolute insanity, what with the house being being packed up, my parents coming in to town and loading up the truck, our house being listed and the flood of potential buyers that besieged us as a result, multiple family adventures (Clearwater, St. Patrick's Day, etc.), and all of this outside of the usual work/school/piano/girl scouts bullshit.  Only recently, in the last week or two, have things finally calmed down and we can actually have a day off where nothing needs to be taken care of.

It's awesome.

Anyway, here's your monthly installment of Holy Random from the House of Houghs.

Enjoy:

Yes, it's that hot out already.  By the time mid-March rolls around down here, it's time to start swimming in the backyard.

Our backyard grass is beyond help.  I'd care more about this, but. . .  hell, I'm moving soon.

Watson's definitely intrigued by the pool, but has yet to jump in.

Showing the girls - fresh out of their nightly baths - the new Star Wars: Episode VII trailer (featuring a couple of my childhood heroes.)

Checked out a new micro-brewery in Winter Garden with Adam a couple weeks ago called Crooked Can Brewery.  Winter Garden is kind of a yuppy/hipster-ish community (Michigan people, think 'Grand Rapids'), so it was only a matter of time before they built themselves a local brewery (in a brick building, to boot.)

This particular brewery wasn't anything too out of the ordinary - I'm finding a lot of microbreweries start tasting the same after awhile - but their higher ABV IPA wasn't bad (I didn't care for their Stout, my usual go-to beer.)

Adam and I bought a couple flights (seen here) which are nice if you've never tried a brewery's different beers and want a sample of several different ones before committing to a single selection (these here are all about eight-ounce glasses.)  I want to find one of these bi-plane flights - they're awesome.

Found this on one of my students' homework assignments earlier this month.  I get hell from my kids on a regular basis because I refuse to buy/wear tacky Air Jordans (which are insanely popular with today's youth.)

. . . then you find shit like this, and can't help but wonder if this is some kind of a political endorsement.

The Cannonball decides to help 'sell our house.'  Rest assured, we made sure to take this down prior to showing the house.

Yes, that's our kid cramming an ice cream sandwich in her face.

Once again, Alayna got a hold of the Powershot.

This year's harvest was about as big as last year's - hope the new homeowners enjoy peaches.

- Brian

The Offer

Hi, Nation.

Hey, remember when I said we were moving?  Back up to Michigan?  Well, a big step of that process, in addition to the packing and moving and getting jobs and all that crap, is the selling of our current house.  The housing market has improved somewhat since when we bought the house three years ago, so we were optimistic about selling our home relatively quickly.

But we had NO idea just how quickly it would go.

We hired a realtor named Ken, who came highly recommended from one of Kris' church friends and happens to be one of Central Florida's Top 100 realtors, and he came over and snooped out our house.  Now, we're not slobs or anything, but we didn't realize our house was as well-maintained and clean as it was - Ken looked around, asked some questions about the property, and informed us that our house was in amazing shape and we should be able to get what we wanted for it no problem at all.  This was indeed good news.

See, three years ago the couple that owned the home (the only people to ever live in the home, by the way - they built it) put it on the market at a pre-appraisal rate their selling agent recommended.  We checked out the home, loved it, and put in an offer for that was about two grand less than what they were asking for, as that was all we could get from our lender at the time (despite our excellent credit rating, we had no money for a deposit, having not all that much saved up at the time, thank you very much second child.)  Despite our lower offer, the elderly couple liked us, thanks to our 'adorable' little kids who we brought along with us to view the property, and accepted our offer.  When the property appraisal came in, it valued the house a little less than their initial offer, which is what we ended up paying for it.

(Hooray.)

Don't ask me what the hell's up with our tree.  I won't miss it.

Fast forward three years to Present Day.  In the couple years we've owned the joint, we've paid off about $7,000 on it, and it's valued at over thirty grand more than what it was when we bought it.  Ken decided to list it at that price, based on comparable properties in the area, and see what happens.  We figured we'd generate a few bites in the first weekend, but none of us - Ken included - dreamed of the amount of frenzy our modest, little house would generate.

The ad went up Thursday morning, and within hours Kris (who was the contact number for the property) started receiving phone calls from buying agents like crazy.  She showed the house to one set of buyers that morning, before she went to work, and scheduled six showings for the next day, during that hour between when she had to drop the kids off of school and when she went to work.  Then, on Saturday (when Yours Truly was dealing with alligators, six-year-olds, and oppressive Florida sun with the Daisies, if you'll be so good as to recall), our house was bombarded with a steady stream of buyers.  

Long story short, we received over a dozen offers - some generous, others comically awful - and lost count of how many people viewed our house, but by Sunday morning we had narrowed down all of our offers and interested parties to two buyers.  Of these two, one ended up being cleared right away, and we pounced on it.

And so, dear readers, we have now begun the so-called 'closing' process once again, this time on the other side of the bargaining table.  We'll be walking away from this whole house-thing with a considerable nest egg, having nothing more than the dumb luck of buying a house when the market sucked, taking care of the place, and selling it back when the market was awesome.

To say we're happy about this turn of events would be. . . well, one hell of an understatement.

As our good friend John "Hannibal" Smith used to say. . .

- Brian

And Through the Gator-Infested Swamps Go the Girl Scouts

Scenic, perhaps. But you don't care about scenery when it's in the 90s.

Like an idiot, I told my wife awhile back that I 'wouldn't mind' chaperoning a hike with Alayna's Daisy troop.  Stuff like that just spills out of my frickin' mouth and I don't even think about it. . . then, weeks later, when I'm looking forward to a nice quiet day off of work, I'm reminded that I have to get up and around and take my kid on a stupid hike with the girl scouts.

Awesome.

I envisioned a boring stroll through the woods. . . which, in view of what actually transpired, would have been amazing.  No, we were all in for one hell of a forced march through swamp country, under a blazing sun with no sunscreen or bug repellant to be found.

Behold:

Our troop wasn't the only troop to be hiking this trail this afternoon - there were at least a half-dozen others - so they split up all the girls and hodge-podged them up into random groupings of six, led by a high school-aged girl scout and accompanied by an adult.  This meant I would be spending the next few hours walking through the wild with the Cannonball, five random first-graders from other Daisy troops, and some high school chick.  Cowabunga.

Walkway over the previously-shown river.  About 1/4 of this hike was through the woods, and that part was decent (mostly due to the shade.)

I brought up the rear to ensure we didn't have any stragglers. . . such as the blonde girl shown here.  If there's a marching line to be formed, you can always spot Alayna in the back (by a ways) dragging her feet and looking bored.

I was pissed Alayna and I were rushed out the door prior to this hike - we were both running late - and consequently neither of us put on sunscreen or insect repellant.  Not that the bugs were that bad, but I would eventually catch a tick in Alayna's hair towards the end of this hike.  And those assholes carry diseases. 

This is where things took a turn for the worst.  We followed the trail through the woods until it came out into a clearing, where there was a wooden bridge (see above.)  Much to my dismay unbridled horror, we instead hung a left and proceeded to walk the other way. . .

. . . for about two miles, underneath power lines, with nothing but clear sky above of us and swamps to either side.  Thank God it was in the 90s and 100% humidity. . .

Some local wildlife.  I'm not a birdologist, so I'm not sure what we're looking at, here.

Resilient to the last, she refused to put her hair up, despite the fact it was matted to the back of her neck with the heat.  After awhile, she wanted me to carry her, which, based on the circumstances, is entirely believable.

A Zebra.  As we all know, indigenous to Florida.  There was some kind of scavenger hunt the girls were supposed to do along the hike (looking for things that began with different letters of the alphabet, hence the 'Z'ebra), but everyone was too sweaty, tired and miserable to participate, so the high school girl scout more or less just talked to herself.

. . . then we ran into this guy.  About fifteen or twenty feet off to the left of the path, with nothing but grass separating it from a slow-moving, uncoordinated group of six-year-olds.

My plan from the get-go was, if this 7 foot-long beast were to charge, I'd kick the high school-aged girl scout directly into the creature's path, scoop up Alayna, and run like hell.  Fortunately, it didn't come to that, and the alligator just glared at us as we walked by.  Another chaperon - some stupid soccer mom - quipped, "It's probably more scared of us than we are of it."  I seriously doubt it, lady.  I seriously doubt it.

Trees down here look weird.

The Forced March of the Daisies continues. . . all we need to do is replace the power lines with helicopters and  swap the girl scout vests for M-16s and this would look like something out of Vietnam.

See the kid in the blue headscarf?  She bitched the whole time about having to pee. . . so I suggested she pee in the tall grass,  only to watch out for alligators like the one we saw before.  She eventually stopped complaining.

Bringing up the rear.  As usual.

After walking a couple miles under Florida's merciless sun, we veered off to the right down a little two-track trail. . .

This is where the different troops would participate in an arts and crafts activity, drink some water, have a snack, an awkward pee break in the tall grass (I had no hand in helping out with that one), and heading back.  As a welcoming gesture, what could only have been a bunch of teenagers had left a slew of cheap beer cans and empty cigarette packs strewn about the place.  Which was pretty cool of them.

Alayna and her partner-in-crime, Holly, representing the blue-vested 1311s among a bunch of other random kids.

Seriously.  This looks like shit straight out of a Dinosaur book.  What the hell, Florida?!

Making 'binoculars.'  For spotting wildlife, fauna, and fellow Daisy scouts gypsy-squatting among the tall grass after drinking too much apple juice. . .

A bunch of the girls - my eldest included - decided it'd be cool to 'spy' on the other girls taking a piss.  'Cause that's totally appropriate for kids to do.

Exploring

Emulating the L.A.P.D.

Heading back.  Finally.

Funned.  Out.

Peril afoot.

After hours and hours of trudging through swamp country, we once again crossed back onto the bridge leading back into the woods. . . and the shade.

Crossing back over the river on our way out of the woods. . .

Rewards for valor.

To top off this not-quite magical morning, once we had been given the go-ahead to leave, Alayna and I grabbed some Slurpees (a mandatory purchase, at that point), and headed home.  We both wanted nothing more than to change out of our sweaty-ass clothes, take a shower, and then lie on the couch and watch TV all afternoon (before heading over to the Voigts' house for dinner - friggin' plans. . .)

But, NO.  When we got back, Kris was hilt-deep in total chaos - our house was flooded with buyers and their agents, walking around through our house, asking questions, and handing out business cards.  We had no choice but to stand out in the front yard and let people have their tours. . . but I'll talk more about that whole house-selling episode later.

Just rest assured that the last thing I wanted to do after stumbling under the sun for three hours was stand in my front yard and wait for people to leave my house.

Under the sun.

- Brian