Whirlwinds

Busy week these past seven days....here's an update.

The hospital in my hometown was doing its best to gather up our family members last week. My grandmother was admitted with an infection followed by my aunt Karen with a broken hip the next day. My cousin's wife Carrie had surgery and would have been in that hospital had she been in town. They say bad things happen in threes. Best wishes from NC to all the family on speedy recoveries.

On the homefront we continue to move closer to closing on the new house and trying to sell our current house, although not without challenges. In the past week on our current house we have finished dealing with "my-dog-ate-my-homework" contractors who finally completed the siding work, contacted realtors who have shown our house, fixed the window springs, and touched up paint. The house has been washed behind the ears, is wearing lipstick, and is ready for the prom date to show up in the driveway. Unfortunately the housing market here has slowed since Labor Day. We did not have any showings last weekend so we dropped the price today, something that we thought we would have had to do weeks ago. We'll get there....

On the new home front, Amy and I found out last week that the sales contract had to be rewritten because the flooring allowance we got from the sellers didn't fly with the lenders. We are still waiting to hear back from the sellers on this one -- it should not be an issue, but then what in this process has gone smoothly? ;-) Amy & I have met with lenders, mortgage brokers, home inspectors, movers, insurance agents, and flooring contractors. We are thinking about buying a house every three or four months or so just because this is so much fun - ha! It truly will all be worth it though in the end, and we continue to forge ahead.

One of the best parts of the whole house experience happened on Sunday. Our neighbor a few houses up the street just sold his house. The couple has lived in the neighborhood for 15 years, but Amy & I didn't know them very well. As it turns out, they had a lot of the same repairs required on their house that we had on our house. Ryszard ("Ree-shard") offered to help me fix my windows, and after dealing with an awful contractor experience I gladly took him up on it. As it turns out, Ryszard is from Poland (we thought they were Scandanavian) and knew a guy I used to work with at IBM who was also from Poland. And Ryszard knew the Polish mechanic that used to repair my Chevy Cavalier every other week when we lived up in Raleigh. I guess if you're from Poland living in North Carolina you probably network with other Poles in the area. Still it was one of those eerie, small world experiences. What a tremendous person though -- Amy & I just wish we had gotten to know them sooner.

Finally on the monster front, Owen continues to walk more and more. He can still buzz across a room faster on all fours which he reverts to at times. But I'd say he chooses walking over crawling over half the time now. Gus continues his biting tendencies and bit Owen on the cheek Sunday before I took the boys to the park. That was wonderful noticing all the expressions on parents' faces as my child sat in the sandbox with these gigantic teeth marks down the side of his face. And to think, we have years of this ahead of us. The good news is the weather is starting to break here with temperatures in the 70s and low humidity. So we can get the boys outside more often and let them run off all their energy.

Cheers!