I almost don't know where to start.

It may be a good thing that I haven't had time to write lately.  Because you all might have whip lash from the speed with which life is sailing along in the Dugan family if I had chronicled each step of our latest adventure in debt loading.

I'm happy to have saved you that kind of agony.

In the past six days a whole lot has happened.

We had a showing of our house on Saturday morning.  The amount of work that went into getting it ready to show is almost ridiculous.  You have to somehow make it look like no one lives there when you do, in fact, live there.

In the 16 days leading up to it that our house had been on the market without any bites, I had more anxiety attacks than I care to recall.  Every scenario I ran in my head ended in a declaration of bankruptcy (as in, the house doesn't sell and we're stuck with 2 mortgages indefinitely, or the ever popular fear of being homeless).  I have since decided that I will not amass my millions by buying and selling real estate.  I'm just bad at it.  I don't have the stomach for the ups and downs (or lack of ups, which really was the issue for me). 

Saturday afternoon we got word that things were going well with the people who had looked at our house that morning.  They had looked at 14 houses and were interested and had been dropped off at their hotel to run numbers and think about an offer.  Then we got a call that they were going to make an offer.  And then the offer came in....we countered once and all of a sudden a SOLD sign was delivered to our front yard.

But we had a problem.  The contract on our new house had us closing on December 30th but the people buying our house had to be in by the 29th.  So we started trying to rearrange closing on the new house.  After being back and forth for a day or so, we got a call yesterday that our closing on our new house is set for December 17th. 

Which means we'll be moved in for Christmas!  Perhaps we won't be unpacked, but at the very least, everything we own will be on the premises.

And since I believe in Santa Claus, I have full confidence that somehow through all of this there will be a Christmas tree set up in our new house, with gifts for the kids that they'll just love, and we'll be able to enjoy the end to all of this chaos in our new home.  I may not be baking Christmas cookies this year and whether or not I'll actually get cards in the mail is debatable.  But I have a feeling this will be a Christmas that we're looking back on in 30 years, laughing with our kids about how we didn't put up the tree until after they were in bed on Christmas Eve.

So...I've been talking about the house for a while, but I can finally post a picture.  Like it?