progress
Very full of chili at the moment. I had to supplement the cheese topping with crushed tortilla chips instead of crackers, since we were all out of the latter. It’s a big lump in my stomach at the moment, but it’ll keep me going all afternoon.
Good Christmas and New Year’s holiday. Diane and I agreed last night that we’re happy to be through it, so we can focus on the house purchase and just returning to “normalcy” as a family. Every December seems like it’s more of a roller coaster than the last.
The kids got many good toys. Luke’s big item this year was his long-awaited violin. I’m still in the process of lining up lessons, but it was enough for him this year just to have the instrument. Penelope’s big things were her kitchen set (with a veritable deluge of toy kitchen foods and cookware) and her dollhouse. Both kids have been playing with all the toys (except for the violin, which is exclusively Luke’s).
New year’s was just another night. Diane’s been sick the past two weeks, and Friday was a particularly bad night, so I think we went to bed around 9:30 PM. The next morning we greeted each other with an absent-minded “Oh, happy new year’s.” Pretty low-key.
The house purchase is moving forward. There was a bit of an incident a few weeks ago in the aftermath of the home inspection. The house passed with flying colors, except for a few ticky-tack kinds of things. Until, that is, the inspector returned two days later to pick up his radon testing equipment, whereupon he discovered a big pool of water in the kitchen and sizable stains on the basement ceiling immediately underneath the kitchen floor. Turns out the dishwater had sprung a leak from not having been run in a year or so (since whenever the previous owner vacated the house). Thank goodness the inspector ran the dishwasher or we’d have been up a creek (pun intended).
The silver lining to the situation is that we’re getting a new dishwasher (replacement being cheaper than repair in this case) and the seller is going to foot the bill for ceiling repair in the basement, along with all the other standout issues on the home inspection report. Lord willing, we’ll be closing in less than two weeks!