I had a couple days off for xmas, which was nice, then it was back to getting the old house into shape so we can put it on the market. Luckily, we've had a ton of help from both my family and Elizabeth's to pull it (and ourselves!) together.

Elizabeth's family is good at the real estate side of it, especially "staging" the house, which means you basically get rid of all the clutter and personal stuff that could distract a potential buyer from thinking about living in the house (they get all taken in by your cute baby photos and forget they're there to buy the house).

You also don't want a ton of stuff hanging out of your closets or cluttering up a room so you can barely walk through it. You want to make the house look so big that you can't even fill it with stuff (not easy to do with about 1100 sq. ft.!).

And my family is good at getting the big stuff done -- they came up on Tuesday and while my dad was powerwashing our fence, my mom and sister-in-law were painting the hell out of the inside of the house! Thanks, guys! And my brotha was busy fixing up the wood outside that needed work. I know next to nothing about all this stuff, so I can't tell you how meaningful it was to have their help. (Oh, and Elizabeth's brother also replaced our bathroom faucets for us -- we've got some great family support, man!).

So now we're almost ready to choose a realtor (we talked to another one today who said he could give us the price we were looking for, which was awesome). And we have to continue packing. Ugh.

And the year is about over already. Where does the time go? So many highlights from the past year -- I need to start a list for my end-of-the year entry... Latest Drew news is that he's taking more and more steps -- his personal best is seven, I think? Does that mean he's walking? At some point he started just letting go and tottering off. Crazy! I remember when we were ecstatic just to have him hold his own head up, not so long ago... Later!