Unsettled

It's been a weird week for our little city. Last week, a dog walker found a decapitated man at the park next to a junior high. Apparently, the man committed suicide at 4 a.m. by strapping a pipe bomb to his chest and setting it off (people in the neighborhood woke up to the sound of the explosion). Can you imagine finding a headless man like that?? It's so horrible. A few days later, the high school had a bomb threat. Weird to have two incidents like that in one week.

And closer to home, like AT my house, someone tried to break in to our house. It's SO CREEPY. Thankfully we had shut and locked all of the windows that night... The burglar pushed the window screen in and used a pry bar to try to open the window, but he wasn't successful (thank goodness).

I'm pretty sure this happened in the night, because I noticed something was awry when I went to open the front window on Friday morning. The screen had been pushed in (and was bowed in a way that looked like it had been pushed in the middle). The metal frame was a little bent too. When Ben came home from work, we went outside and looked at it more closely and saw where the guy used a screwdriver or some other tool to try to wedge it open (there is an indentation in the metal frame).

I've felt unsettled lately after having a nightmare a few weeks ago that someone was trying to break into our house. It really spooked me and I kept trying to brush it off, thinking it was just me being paranoid. Of all the houses to rob on the North Shore, I'd say ours is pretty low on the totem pole in terms of valuable stuff inside. You want my ugly 10-year-old t.v.? It's yours. Just ask me! But don't break into my house.

I get the city's daily crime report by email, and sure enough, today there were multiple listings of homes where someone attempted to pry open a first floor window. There was one home where the burglar was successful, got in through the window and stole a laptop and backpacks.

At least now I don't think I'm totally crazy - the fact that there were other reports from the same day makes me fairly certain that someone did attempt to get in our house. We don't currently have an alarm system, but you can be sure we are getting one now. Thanks Mr. Burglar, for freaking me out enough that I will ALWAYS close and lock our windows at night.

It's Wet Here too

I've been following a lot of the Hurricane Ike news and feeling so sad about all of the destruction. Chicago is getting hit with a ton of rain, obviously not comparable to what's happening in Galveston or Houston, but I took some pictures this morning to show how much rain we've had in the last few hours. Here are some cars driving in front of our house:

In the meantime, we've discovered our basement is not as waterproof as the sellers alleged it to be. Ben is outside in the torrential rain trying to block off our window wells because they are filling up with water and causing problems. Fun fun. I guess it's a good thing the tile guy kept flaking on me this week after all, because we don't have anything over the cement at the moment.

We're supposed to get more heavy rain through today and then again tomorrow, in the aftermath of Hurricane Ike. It makes me want to stay inside and not go anywhere!

Crazy Week

It's been a crazy week, which explains my lack of posting. After much deliberation, Ben and I actually decided to put our condo up for sale (our orig. plan was to wait until next spring, but we changed our minds). We found a house that falls in the sort of-affordable range (for around here at least) and while it needs lots of work, it could be a really neat place. And the location is the best - it's a 3-minute walk to the train for Ben and the house faces a cute park - what more could you ask for??

So now the fun begins. We started boxing things up on Monday and had some friends from the ward come on Thursday to help Ben move junk into a storage unit, with the hope that this would clear our place of the clutter we've accumulated in the last six years. We filled at least 30 boxes, moved out two bookcases, a dresser, a trunk, and a few other things, and what a difference!

We had our first showing yesterday and have an open house planned for this afternoon. We're selling by owner and will keep you posted on what happens. My biggest nightmare is that the house we love will go under contract before we have a solid offer on our place (a problem b/c the house sellers aren't taking contingency offers, which really limits us since we need the money from our condo for the down payment on this house).

One funny thing - my mom came on Friday to help with Eli (but stayed much longer to help get our place ready... thank you!!). We have something called the Flip Fold, that I bought from the Container Store last year, but then never got around to learning how it worked (I am terrible at folding clothes nicely). Well, we opened it up and my mom flipped and folded ALL of our pants, shirts, etc. so they would look good in our closets. My clothes have never been folded so well!! And it's really easy to use - you'll have to check out the link to see the demo on the Flip Fold site.

Here are some pictures from this week:

Above and Below: Eli still adores his sheep rug from Gram! We have had some miserably hot and humid days this week (yesterday it was 93 percent humidity with tornado warnings), hence Eli wearing just the cute Beatles onesie :)

Below: Eli's favorite hiding spot - the radiator cover in the living room. He loves flipping up the panel (inside is where you open or close the radiator) and putting little treasures inside... whenever I can't find something, I check this spot - and it's usually there!

Below: A small portion of the boxes before we packed this week. Eli loved having an obstacle course and had fun peeking around them to see us.

Below: The living room after we got rid of the boxes, hallelujah!