Catch-up!

The view from our back yard at the rental house!

Grampy took the kids for a walk all around

Danny got to open his presents from his aunties!! :)

The girls got goodies too!

We went out to the Lobster house for a late lunch - yummy!!!!!

Adding temporary fencing to keep the kids and dogs off the steep old stairs!

But of course there is an ice cream truck and grampy was easy to convince!! :)

Dan spraying the doors with WD-40 :)

The other side of our temporary fence :)

Our first morning waking up in Gloucester, bit cold :) :)

Sitting inside playing while we wait to go to a family bbq

watching a movie after breakfast

playing with aqua sand - so cool :)

Then we headed for the family bbq - very tiring days :)

The kids all swam and swam!!

The 4th of July bonfire is ready in Rockport!!

We have been settling in! The house if VERY old and has lots of antiques. We had to go through and take all the lamps off tables, move antiques to the side. We already made one trip to the trailer to take stuff out. We are using the downstairs living room for storage and using plastic bins for food, shoes, jackets, all sorts of misc stuff. There is very little cabinet space :( Luckily I packed all the plastic plates and cups since all that is here is very old china :)
The kids are pretty good about not touching anything, we don't let them play in the house at all.
We lost internet and cable for 2 days, but the landlord got it fixed late yesterday.
Dan and I spent all day Tuesday with our realtor, saw 10 homes, drove by a couple more, visited 3 cities and found 2 possibles. Nana stayed with the kids for the day and they were all tired when we got back :)
We then spent all day Wednesday with our realtor, saw 8 more homes, drove by 2 more, visited 4 cities and found 1 we both liked. So we made an offer :) The kids stayed with sissy Tracy (Dan's grown daughter) and her husband for the day, went swimming, watched movies and cartoons and had a ball!! Tracy and Danny were exhausted :) :)
We already heard back last night that the seller's are working on a counter offer, answered all the questions we had and are happy that a family wants to move in. They are the second owners, the house was built in 1978, raised their family there and it is now just the 2 of them. They are older and the wife is sick and they cannot handle the house and yard any more. We actually met them when we arrived at the house, they seemed very nice!! They plan on moving down to the cape and now need to make sure they can get what they want down there in the time frame we need.
We already have the home and pest inspections scheduled. The home inspection is going to take about 4 hours!! Dan and our brother in law are going to be there for that! The Seller's were positive enough about us reaching an agreement to allow the inspections :) We have a tight timetable to get in and settled before school starts. The schools in this town are excellent!!
The house is bigger than we need, but we just loved it the minute we walked in!! And it is on 2 acres, at the end of a cul-de-sac and was custom built by an interior designor who had Mexican hand made doors, tile and glass brought up. She actually hand picked every brick that went into the fireplace!
Once we have an accepted offer I will post some pics :)
The kids don't understand why we can't move now! It will be a long 5 weeks!