Teeth and Tulips

It's been too long since we blogged, though, in our defense, we've had the craziest last two weeks probably since we got married. Things have calmed a little this week. Really a little. I mean, when you're packing up one house, remodeling and preparing to move into another, some craziness is bound to remain. More info on the house move and photos of the remodel work in progress to come.

In the meantime, Grace has been doing great. A bit of a cough for about a week, but that's gone now. She's gobbling up mushy food of all kinds and gumming everything she can get her hands on. The middle lower teeth are both in, and two on the upper left are poking through. She is sitting up, teasing Vic with "dada" kinds of sounds (we're pretty sure she has no idea she's calling his name), and trying desperately to crawl. The playpen stands ready to hem her in once she's mobile.





We took a trip up to the tulip festival on Sunday. The weather was overcast but warm, and the drive was relaxing, with the Peanut napping all the way up.

am I not supposed to eat these?

The Before

Well, it looks like (if everything goes as it should) we have ourselves a house. It's been a really long process and we'll wait to celebrate until we have the keys in our hands.

It may be a good time to buy a house in terms of home prices and interest rates, but it's not a good time if you want to do it quickly. Because so many homeowners owe more on their mortgage than their house is worth, any offer you make has to be approved not only by them but by their bank. The banks have thousands of such cases crossing their desk these days and, of course, want to get as much for each home as they can. So it can take months to get an answer. Out of the probably 100 homes we saw over the past six months, I would guess that 80-90% were in this situation. The home we're buying is bank-owned -- they just wanted to get it off their hands quickly, so they priced it competitively and got back to us with an answer quickly.

Although the closing date will be sometime in mid-April, we'll wait until early to mid-May to move in. There are a few things we'd like to do in the house, and it would be great to have them done before moving in. So here are some "before" photos, taken the day of the inspection. We'll post the "after" photos once the work is done.

(And for those who only read this blog for photos of Grace, don't worry. She's in one of the pictures. Sort of.)

Melinda

the front

the backyard

it has a fireplace, something we've missed having

the living room and entry

the kitchen pantry -- we'll be taking this out to create a more open feel

the living/dining room -- the arch and half-wall will be taken out

the garage -- we're excited to have one of these