I lost my tof!

Merrick got his first "wiggly" tooth about a month ago.  We've been waiting and waiting for it to finally fall out.  Yesterday while we were at the park he told me that he was ready for me to pull his tooth out.  Knowing that pulling teeth can sometimes be messy (and the fact that just the thought makes my stomach turn) I told him we needed to wait until we got home and got Daddy to help us.

Daddy stepped up to the challenge and once he realized that his fingers were a bit too big to fit in little M's mouth, he got the bright idea to use floss.  Not knowing what the outcome would be, I excused myself and left the boys to handle the business of extracting the tooth.  Thankfully there were was no crying or screaming and after just a few short minutes, Merrick exited his bedroom with a small little tooth in his mouth and a gap in his smile.  I am so proud of him for being so brave and he wrote a note to the Tooth Fairy to make sure she brought him just what he wanted.

For those of you who can't read his letter, here is what it says

I lost my tof

Dear tofarei

Dear tofarei

I wot mune

Fum Merrick Yates

and yes, the Tofarei has tucked away this sweet note.

Change is in the air...

Okay, okay... I know it's been a LONG time since we last posted on our blog.  Since we are going to be moving, I figured now would be a good time to revisit our family blog and recommit to keeping it current.  I've been bad about resorting to facebook posts and face to face conversations to keep everyone up to date on what we're doing, but now that we're moving, I know that will be harder to do.

So here's the nitty gritty on what we've been up to... Travis' company approached him almost two months ago about possibly taking on a new position with them in their Bellevue office.  He expressed interest, but there was no way we were going to move if I didn't have a job.  So... I did what any smart person who works for an amazing company (who also by chance has an office in Seattle) would do.  I asked if I could transfer.  Knowing that there wouldn't be full-time HR work and knowing that I was (let's be honest here) a little burnt out on HR, I asked if they would consider me for a part-time Business Development position.  Once we got all the details discussed and worked out, the end result was we were moving to Seattle. So part 1 of the process was done - jobs - check! 

Now to figure out what to do with our house.  We've only been in it two years and when we bought it we really did envision raising Merrick in this house.  It's in a great neighborhood, close to parks, walking/bike riding distance to the library, shopping, etc.  We were considering renting it, the rental market in Portland is in high demand right now, but then I ran into an acquaintance at the park and we started talking about how quickly houses in the neighborhood were selling.  Trav and I talked about it and decided maybe we would take the plunge and put the house up for sale.  That was almost a month ago.  We spent three weeks getting the house ready to sell and it officially went on the market on Friday, April 27 and by Sunday, April 29 we had three offers to consider.  We've worked out the details and now we're headed to home inspection and a closing date of June 15 (only 6 short weeks away). So part 2 of the process - sell house - check!

Now we'll spend the next several weeks packing and apartment hunting in Seattle.  We decided that for the first year we want to live in an apartment or condo and not have to worry about maintaining a house, plus it will give us a chance to really check out Seattle and figure out where we want to live long term.

We are super excited about this new adventure and we knew that 2012 would bring change, we just didn't realize how much!