Never a Dull Moment!

Unless you are my mother, who I try to update on a regular basis, you are probably wondering what happened to the little house I'm supposed to have fixed up by now.  Well due to a string of rather unfortunate circumstances, we've been delayed from buying our house for about a month.  Most of the details are lost on me in technical bank jargon.  I do know that we are waiting on our contractor to be validated by the state (a process that can take up to two weeks!) before we get the green light to close.

After hearing that news, it became clear to Jared and I that living in a house under construction was to be an annoying reality.  However, we did not expect to be in our current situation!

With the end of our lease, we had expected to move into a mostly, if not completely renovated house.  After realizing that the delays would make it impossible to close on the house, we had to find somewhere to go.  As you may well imagine, finding a place to stay with our three pets and all of our belongings for a few weeks until the deal closed was next to impossible.  Ok it WAS impossible.  So after consulting with my madre, Jared and I decided to appeal the extremely understanding homeowners and see if they would let us move in, for a fee, before we closed with the bank.  Lucky for us, they agreed, and we had a matter of days to pack and move.  Now I'm sure you recall the fact that this house has no a/c.  It didn't escape my mind either.  But as per my mom's advice, we found a window air unit, so that problem, at least, was fixed!

Saturday was the big moving day, as well as the start of what would be one of the craziest weekends ever.  Thank goodness for helpful friends!  Other than some perfectly timed thunder storms, Saturday went as well as any moving day goes.  We sold our overstuffed couch and love seat that very morning, so we had two less things to move.  We also decided to leave our mattress at the apartment and spend the night there (this made for a very interesting occurrence on Sunday).  The next day we spent packing the random odds and ends that we didn't get around to taking care of.  We loaded up the car and truck, situating heavier items around the mattress in the bed of the truck.  However, Jared forgot to bring any tie-downs or straps to secure the cargo...  Let's just say that watching one's mattress fly out of a truck and into seventy mph traffic on the interstate is a very memorable moment...  We were fortunate in that no one got hurt, and our mattress was undamaged.  Still, scrambling to not get hit by cars and rescue our mattress was not a fun task.

After that, we still needed to get Ullr and Loki to the house.  To save space, we put Ullr in his kennel in the bed of the truck with Loki in the cab.  As luck would have it, we decided to move during one of the rainiest weekends ever.  Poor Ullr had to endure the truck ride in sheets of pouring rain!  But with that done, we were moved in to our house, yay!

Yesterday we actually got the water turned on, which some would see as a good thing.  I can only regard it with mixed feelings.  While we do have a working toilet (ok, that's a BIG plus), the kitchen sink isn't hooked up right and doesn't drain, and the rest of the pipes are a little leaky after being unused for so long.  To top off the water situation, we have no hot water.  Thankfully, Jared's work has showers, so we don't have to endure each others stinkyness for too long.

As the day wrapped up, I was thinking to myself, "At least I have a working stove."  After digging out the appropriate cookware, Jared and I discovered that just because the clock on the stove works, that doesn't mean the rest of it does.  In other words, we thought we would be able to use the smooth top range.  Well, that turned out to be a false assumption.  However, in the contrary way of our luck, Jared stumbled across a Craigslist add for a relatively new dishwasher, fridge, and smooth top range for a really great price.  After some adjustment of the budget, we picked up the set, which is now sitting in my kitchen.  We have a fridge!  We have a stove...that doesn't have the correct plug.  However, that's an easy fix.  Hopefully soon I'll be able to cook again soon....never thought I'd be saying that!

As ridiculously crazy as this week has been, I'm crossing my fingers and hoping we've already made it through the worst of it all.  At the end of the day, I'm just extremely grateful that God has provided for us, even though it hasn't been easy.  We have what we need, even though, spoiled as we are, we are used to so much more.  But we have a roof over our heads and a place to sleep in comfort and safety, and for that, I can't help but be thankful.

Sarah