1.22.2011

Low Key

Things have been pretty quite and low key for us. Temps outside have remained rather cool so we are hibernating. I planned to post videos of the pups opening their presents on Christmas but the slow internet connection is unfortunately not allowing me to do so. :( They were rather cute about tearing up the wrapping paper though.
Our cat, Misty, has found a new favorite sleeping spot. As you can see below, the hounds don't mind. She has become quite loving. Her personality has changed over the last six months. In September just before we went on our beach vacation she had a blood clot form. She was not able to use her back legs and was dragging herself around with her front legs. It was awful. We had no idea what had happened. She was walking around fine all day and then all of a sudden she started crawling. It was scary. We rushed her to the vet. The vet was able to give her an injection of Heparin to help move the clot and luckily it worked, but she did have loss of use of her back legs for a few days. It was very sad to watch her going through that. :( She has since made a full recovery with movement in her legs. Upon that vet visit, she was diagnosed with Cardiomyopathy and Hyperthyroidism and is currently on daily medication. The meds so far seem to be helping her maintain a good quality of life. Two months after starting the meds, she had follow up visit and blood work which looked good and indicated that she is on the correct dose of medication. She will go back in April for another check up. Fingers are crossed that the medication continues to help. :)
Booyah likes to ball his blankets up and then lay on them. He is a goofy boy.


Cueball prefers to lay on our bed and use a pillow for a head rest.


Maggie was having good dreams. Content and happy.


We will be putting our house on the market next weekend. We are hoping to move closer in to the Richmond area. We have been living out in the country for the last ten years. It has been good, but it is time for a change. We did not have any luck last year with selling. We went on the market in Feb. and took the house of the market in Nov. We had several people who wanted to buy our home, but they had houses to sell and that did not happen. We also had a young couple (jokingly known as "our friends") who submitted three offers to buy our home. Unfortunately, they were all low ball offers and it was a no deal for us. We did counter offer and gave them our bottom line price also. They wanted it all, but did not want to or could not afford to pay the price.
We still feel we have a lot to offer though. We have a 3+ garage with partially finished attic for storage, large storage shed, 6.49 acres of land, a 1988 square foot cap cod (built in 2000 and open concept), refinished deck, large patio, fenced rear yard, etc. The process of selling can be frustrating. We have a good real estate agent, we learned a lot last year through the experience and are hoping for better results this year.
In the meantime, we refinanced to take advantage of the low interest rates and reduced the years on the mortgage. Through the refinance we now have a recent appraisal which indicated that our asking price was reasonable (it was a sigh of relief to know I was not crazy and our price was a good price). The appraised value was $7, 000 above our asking and $11, 000 above assessed value. Although we wanted to move very badly, we were not willing to give it all away, and I am glad we did not. It is a new year and I am staying positive! This will be the year we sell! I will keep the readers of this blog updated on our progress.
Hope everyone is having a great 2011 so far!