update

A quick update on happenings:

• Abbie was verbally approved by the HOA board for my new place. My realtor is working on getting the written confirmation. 
• The new place has undergone inspection. That went well. 
• The house on Sunset has had the hardwoods redone (they look great!), new carpeting put in the living room, and new carpeting on the stairs and hallway upstairs. I love the new living room carpeting. The carpeting I picked for the upstairs isn't as high of quality as the original carpeting, but it matches well enough. You can still see seams, but it's not too bad. 
• I hope to have the (non-new) carpeting upstairs shampooed on Tuesday, cleaning will happen on Wednesday, hopefully photographs on Thursday and it will be listed on Friday. Fingers crossed it all goes that quickly. 
• I've started two piles of stuff in the garage: keep and get rid of. Actually, there's a third: Gorsegners, but it's a relatively small pile. 
• Avery's preschool is moving from their current location (inside extra space within a church) to a new one next year. As such, I believe they'll have more room. This is great for me as I can donate many items to her school. They've been so good to and for Avery. 
• Abbie's training - the five week program where she's with a trainer all day once a week - has gone great. I saw the results first hand yesterday. I took Avery and Abbie over to the house to start sorting through stuff in the garage. I just left Abbie off the leash and let her loose in the front. She stuck around, came back when called, didn't run after dogs that were in the neighborhood (!!!), and was generally very controlled with her impulses. Impulse control is what I've asked the trainer to work on. I can see a huge difference. The training was worth every single cent. And given this is how she is at 6 months, she is going to be amazing when she's a bit older. She still does pain in the butt puppy stuff and jumps all over people and gets excited, but I could see the dog she is becoming. It was nice. 
• Living at Mom's until we move into our new place was definitely the right decision. I really don't know how I would have kept the house clean enough to show. The hardwoods show all dust  tracked in from outside (disadvantage of a darker stain) and that would be the least of my worries. 
• Barkley and Abbie are kept separated the whole time. They had a little kerfluffle the other day and we decided it was best to just keep them separated. That means Barkley is basically banned from inside his own house. I feel badly, but given he prefers it outside and only goes in one room of the house anyway (he won't go on hardwoods or upstairs, so his options are self-limited), it's not too bad. Abbie is doing well. Mom has an affection for pine cones as does Abbie. As such, there are now pine cones at eye level through out the house, instead of in various decorative bowls. :) Kleenexes are another vice of Abbie's, so trash cans are on the counters. Fortunately Mom is not the person to be bothered by me coming up and shifting all her stuff all over the place. 
• Avery, the most important person, is doing pretty good all the changes and stresses in her life right now. The impact and behaviors linked to the separation I'm not going to address on the blog. It's hard to separate what is related to the separation versus normal 5yo behavior vs Avery's individual personality. The move seems to be confusing to her. She is very concerned about the people who move into our house writing on the walls of her nook. She is being very mature about not taking everything. We're going to have her do a video tour when the place is all cleaned up so she can tell her favorite memories from around the house. 
• She'll be going to a different elementary school. We have the kindergarten round-up on Tuesday for that school. It's also good that she already has a friend who will be going to kindergarten there this fall. It's the daughter of a coworker of D's. He's had several playdates for the two girls at his place or at fountains downtown, so that is good. She only knew/knows one girl who is going to the elementary school close to our Sunset house, so it's not too devastating of a switch for Avery. I wanted to be sure that I moved before kindergarten since I knew for sure I didn't want to stay in the Sunset house (regardless of the outcome with D and me).