Quiet weekend, still no boys

There's not a lot to report really, it's been a quiet week without Jamie and Rob. We last heard from them about Wednesday when they had been to Bourke and were heading towards Wilcania. We'll have to see if we can contact them tonight (they are not always in a mobile phone friendly area) and find out if they are coming home tomorrow (Sunday) or Monday.
Meanwhile we've been doing our normal work routine and Ishbel has been going to Tanderra. She had her mate, Ruby, to sleep over on Thursday night. Having watched a Jamie Oliver program about eating properly the night before, we let the girls order pizza so they (we) had pizza and fizzy for dinner and pizza and fizzy for breakfast the next morning. Being the last day of the holidays Tanderra had a party day that day and they would have been eating junk all day too!!! The sleepover (the first since Ishbel's nightmare birthday party sleepover last year) went very well. The girls snuggled up in Robbie and Jamie's bunks and we heard not a peep.
This weekend and last weekend we have been doing real estate stuff.
Firstly we spend time cleaning up our house so it is always ready for inspection at a moment's notice. I hope it doesn't take too much longer to sell, I don't think the vacuum cleaner will cope!
We had a couple of people do inspections last weekend, among whom were a couple who were viewing the house for the second time but I haven't had any feedback on that. Someone else had an appointment to view on Thursday, again no feedback. Today just as we arrived at Ishbel's soccer we got a call asking if it would be OK if people were taken round. The feedback from that sounds positive - the lady is in the defence forces and is keen but wants her Canberra-based parents to also see it and approve and that won't be before next weekend probably. Meanwhile the house will finally get a For Sale sign out the front sometime this coming week and will start showing up on the internet and in the papers.
We saw a few houses ourselves last weekend. Most of them are boring and the rooms are often not very big. For all ours is a 3 bedroomed house and too small for us now, all the rooms are a good size (especially now they have been divested of all the STUFF they usually contain). We did see an "interesting" house out at Yellow Rock last weekend - it was kind of Swiss Cottage meets Notre Dame!!
This morning we had an appointment to see a house in Winmalee at 10:30. We arrived about 20 past and sat in the car in the street. At about 25 past the tenants left and we sat on, waiting for the real estate agent to turn up. A call to the office had him chased up and we got another call letting us know he'd been held up but was on his way. About 15 minutes to 11 the tenants returned. Ian was out of the car, waiting on the footpath and the lady asked if he was waiting to view the house. She told him the estate agent was always making appointments and running late and that we'd have to reschedule. As we drew away the estate agent arrived but as the woman had made it clear she wasn't going to let us in we kept going; we had to get Ishbel to soccer anyway.
As we drove off we commented that the tenants hadn't been away from the house very long - about 15-20 mins and were making things difficult for the real estate (they'd been very definite about restricting access to the morning). When the real estate man got back to us he told Ian they'd had to get a court order to get the tenants to give access to real estate agents at all. Obviously we don't know the whole story, but it would seem to us that being asked to leave at any time is part of the deal if you are renting and one of the motives for owning your own home and that making life difficult for the estate agents and vendors is surely counter-productive in the long run - no reference for your next rental for instance. I'd be getting rid of them altogether if they were in my property; they probably aren't going out of their way to present the house at its best either. Anyway, we'll have to wait till another time to see that one.
Ishbel had a great soccer game. Although her team lost, the two teams were pretty evenly matched, played well and Ishbel was quite well involved this week and there were some fancy moves happening. Well done Miss Ish.
After soccer we did our grocery shopping. Ishbel spotted Karen and Dan's car in the car park and set out to find her. She was brought to ground, covered in bright purple hair stuff at the hairdressers. We've invited her and Dan to join us for dinner tonight. Ben is home from two weeks with his dad tomorrow middle of the day.
Better go and get some cheese and spinach for the cannelloni I'm making for tonight or it'll be toasted cheese sandwiches for dinner.