Our New Home

We spent all morning signing papers, surrendered a check for a very substantial sum of money, and are now the owners of this amazing 7 bedroom house.







These are pictures from the Real Estate listing. The house is empty right now, and we have plans for remodeling a bathroom, and lots of painting. We want to try to do as much as possible before we move. Our lease is until the end of May, so we have some flexibility.
I'm so excited.

I can't wait to wrap her up in this.

8 weeks left

Here I am at week 32. And starting to feel quite huge.

I've had a rough last couple of weeks, I think due in large part to a nasty little virus that decided to invade my body. I actually lost a couple of pounds, but have gained them back and have really started paying attention to what I eat. My appetite is pathetic, and I'm trying to make sure I don't just live off of cereal (there have been days where four or five bowls of cereal is all I've eaten). I've been forcing myself to eat things like protein bars, and adding protein powder to my smoothies, and even consuming strange things like quinoa. I know our Little Girl is growing rapidly (the books say she is about 19" long and almost 4 pounds) because my abdomen doesn't have any room left. She likes to get a foot up under my ribs, and I'm still surprised at how far to my side she kicks. And I can't really bend over to put my socks on any more.

8 weeks left, give or take. I think I can do this.

A Little Koala

I've always had a strange attraction to koalas. There seems to be a vague memory of a fuzzy little toy as a toddler that may be the spark of this interest. And ever since we found out our Little Girl is on the way, I've wanted to find a way to make a little stuffed creature for her. After sifting through a few pictures online searching for inspiration, I found one that I liked and gave my best attempt at re-creating it. Seeing Ali's adorable creatures probably had something to do with my recent motivation. That, and feeling too crummy to tackle larger projects such as dinner.

The Teaching Home

Several years ago, on a much needed Christmas Break, my dad pulled out a piece he wrote many years ago. I think it was inspired after he read an article in some homeschool magazine about the picture perfect family having an ordinarily perfect morning. He knew it had to have been staged. Life in the morning of a busy family is always chaotic. The following dialog is especially hilarious if you know my family at all. Try to imagine us almost 20 years younger than we are now.



Dad: "Ow! Somebody left Legos in the chair! Here. Push this stuff back so we'll have some room here. These things are supposed to be..."

Samuel: "Hey! Dad! Watch out! That's an Allosaurus eating the Empire State Building."

Dad: "Oh. Well put it over here - I'll be careful. Here, his toe fell off. You can fix it later. That's the Empire State Building?"

Samuel: "Sure, Dad. He's already eaten most of it. Those are the structural underpinnings. He sucked 'em right out of the bedrock. And here's blood running down the side..."

Katie: "Oh Samuel, you're so gross. Don't talk about blood when we're trying to eat."

Bess: (* superloud) "Mom, the oatmeal's burning!" (smoke detector squeals) "I'll get it!" (runs to wave rag at the hideous, chirping siren)

Mom: "Don't do that first! Turn off the burner, for heavens sake! Oh!!!" (oatmeal, smoking, goes out. Door slams.)

Katie: "Tabbachah won't eat it."

Dad: "Did you put your PMS patch on?"

Mom: "YES!!!"

Bess: "Mom, Daniel's poopy. Daniel, you're so gross! I want the red cup! HEY!"

Dad: "I'll change Daniel. He's not gross. That's just what babies do. Don't play with Legos now. Get 'em back there so we don't spill something on them. Katie, put your book away. We're going to eat."

Samuel: "It's okay, Dad. Last week Daniel spilled orange juice all over them and now they stick together better. I want the red cup!"

Mom: "Are you going to change him or do I have to?"

Bess: "Dad, Katie's still reading. I want the Illuminator Hat box!"

Samuel: "You got it yesterday! Daniel, you stink!"

(3 minutes pass. Daniel is changed. Cereal of four different kinds are poured. Each child slumps behind a box so they won't have to see anyone else. This requires continual maneuvering. Samuel falls off his chair.)

Dad: "Okay, Daniel's clean. Here y'go, eat your cereal. Well, Daniel's still got diarrhea."

Katie: "Oh GROSS Dad! Don't say that while we're eating!"

Bess: "Mom, Samuel's smacking."

Dad: "Chew with your mouth closed. Use your best manners here. Remember the Queen of Manneria. Are you going to eat, Diana?"

Katie: "Oh Dad that's a stupid story. You just made it up."

Mom: "No, thanks." (sits down tired) "I've lost my appetite. Maybe I'll eat later."

Dad: "We need to pray. Did anyone pray yet? The Queen of Manneria was actually quite wise. She made the slobs in her kingdom not eat. They learned quick not to be slobs."

Mom: "Quickly."

Dad: "Daniel, will you pray? Let's thank Jesus for our food."

Bess: "Samuel's still smacking."

Dad: "Samuel, take small bites. Everybody stop. We're going to pray. Okay Daniel. Pray."

Daniel:

Dad: "Pray Daniel."

Daniel:

Mom: "Daniel, you can pray now."

Katie: "My cereal's getting soggy."

Bess: "Me too."

Samuel: "Me too."

Dad: "Say 'I too.' Pray, Daniel. Do you want Samuel to pray?"

Daniel: "Thank you Jesus fo' my food, an' for my milk, an' my Legos, an' for da clouds, an' for da sky, and twaactors, an' Mama, an' cereal, an' my spoon..."

Katie: "Dad?"

Dad: "Wait Katie."

Daniel: "... an' for whales, and da twees, an'... Amen!"

Mom: "That was a good prayer, Daniel. Now you may eat."

Dad: "Samuel, if you don't slow down and eat quietly you’ll have to go all week without food.”

Katie: “Really Dad? Samuel, keep smacking!”

Mom: “Greg, that’s unnecessary. Samuel, eat quietly of you’ll have to leave the table.”

Bess: “Mom?”

Mom: “What Bess?”

Bess: “Do worms have appetites?”

Mom: “I don’t know. Ask your father.”

Dad: “Sure Bess. I guess so. They like leaves and dirt, so they must have appetites. We can look it up.”

Bess: “Mom?”

Mom: “What Bess?”

Bess: “Daniel’s taking off this clothes and pouring syrup in his diaper.”

Dad: “Don’t tell Mom. I’ll take care of it.”

Mom: “No, I’ll do it. Daniel, what are you doing? What is the syrup doing out anyway?”

Bess: “I was going to put syrup on my oatmeal.”

Dad: “On oatmeal? We don’t put syrup on oatmeal.”

Bess: “I do. It’s really good. You should try it but I think it’s all gone now.”

Asian

Dinner last night: Pan fried noodles, orange veggies, fried brown rice, sweet and sour chicken and mongolian beef. I think I even got in my protein quota for the day.

Oh yeah.

For those of you who haven't heard, everything seems to be coming right along with The House.

Early last week The Sellers accepted our new-and-improved offer which includes the back lot. We are waiting on the official appraisal to be done, and then we will sit down with the bank and sign away our life savings. We are set to close no later than April 29th. We aren't sure exactly when we should plan to move, and I have a few grand ideas about re-modeling the bathroom before we move in. Our current lease is through the end of May, so we'll have at least a month of over-lap to play with.

God is good.

Third Trimester

Week 29. The pregnancy books say she must be about 17 inches tall, and weigh almost 3 pounds. She must be getting a little cramped in there. It seems like her movements aren't quite as karate-like as they used to be (not as much elbow room for a wind up, I guess), but when she decides it is time for dancing, B and I can't help but laugh at how strange my belly looks squirming and jumping around. Almost every night when I go to bed, she decides it's time practice her epic dance moves, and often wakes me up in the middle of the night. She got hiccups for the first time last week, and still makes me jump with her sudden movements, and I think she found my ribs with her toes for the first time yesterday.

I keep hoping that some of the inconveniences of being pregnant will slowly resolve... but I guess my body just isn't very fond of building another. The morning sickness has improved since the first trimester, but certainly still lingers. Some days I eat very well, with lots of fruits and veggies and proteins. And then there are the days when cereal and potato chips make up most of my caloric intake. I can't seem to go more than a couple of days without throwing up. And the less room I have in there, the worse it seems to get. The same goes for the heartburn. I haven't been able to sleep lying flat for several weeks now. It doesn't seem to matter what or how I eat... I can have a bowl of cheerios and be miserable for hours. And then there's the restless legs, the unbelievably sore neck and back, the muscle twitching, the headaches and migraines, the calf cramps, the sore tongue, the veins everywhere along with many new spider angiomas, the dizziness, and the general fatigue... I really don't think my body enjoys this process very much. Thankfully some days are better than others, and I haven't turned into a complete couch potato. And I know that all of this will just be a faint memory when we finally get to hold her in our arms.

Time and Energy

A couple of days off work, along with strong urges for particular foods, accompanied by the energy to be productive: Dinner.

Oh my goodness. It was all amazing, if I do say so myself. And I didn't even throw it up.

I did a lot of improvising, which I always seem to do when I cook or bake. I looked at about a dozen recipes for the Shrimp Bisque, and wound up piecing together what looked good to me.

Bread Bowls

2 packages (or 4 ½ tsp) active dry yeast
2 ½ cups warm water (110 degrees F)
2 tsp salt
2 tbsp olive oil
7 cups flour (I used half bread flour and half all-purpose)

1 egg white
1 tbsp water

In a large bowl, dissolve yeast in warm water. Let stand until creamy, about 10 minutes.
Add salt, oil and 4 cups flour to the yeast mixture; beat well. Stir in flour, ½ cup at a time, beating well with an electric mixer at medium speed after each addition; knead in remaining flour when dough is too thick for mixing. Knead until smooth and elastic, about 6 minutes. Lightly oil a large bowl, place the dough in the bowl and turn to coat with oil. Cover with a damp cloth and let rise in a warm place until doubled in volume, about 40 minutes.
Punch dough down, and divide into 6 equal portions. Shape each portion into a 4 or 5 inch round loaf. Place loaves on lightly greased baking sheets, cover and let rise in a warm place, free from drafts, until doubled in bulk, about 35 minutes.
Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. In a small bowl, beat together egg white and 1 tablespoon water. Lightly brush dough with half of the egg wash. Bake on middle rack for 15 minutes, remove, and brush with remaining egg white mixture. Return to oven, bake an additional 15 minutes or until golden. Cool on wire racks.
To make bowls: Cut a ½ inch thick slice from top of each loaf; scoop out centers, leaving ¾ inch thick shells. Fill bread bowls with hot soup and serve immediately.
Shrimp Bisque

(I could not find seafood stock anywhere in WinCo, so I resorted to chicken stock with a few teaspoons of fish sauce. And finally, we didn't have any brandy in our liquor cabinet, so I resorted to whiskey, but couldn't get it to light on fire after I stirred it in. Oh right.)

1 cup butter, divided
1 ⅓ cups all-purpose flour
3 quarts seafood stock
salt and pepper to taste
1 ½ to 2 pounds medium shrimp - peeled, deveined
1 large sweet onion, minced
1 large red bell pepper, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 bay leaves
¼ cup tomato paste
3 fluid ounces brandy
1 quart heavy cream (or half-and-half), heated
¼ tsp of cayenne
3 dashes Worcestershire sauce
½ - ¾ cup dry sherry

In a large stock pan over medium heat, combine ¾ cup butter and flour. Cook, stirring, until flour taste disappears, about 7 minutes. Stir in seafood stock and season with salt and pepper. Add bay leaves. Simmer 15 minutes, then remove from heat and set aside.
In a large saucepan over medium heat, cook red pepper and onion in ¼ cup butter until onion is translucent. Stir in garlic and tomato paste and cook until brown. Stir in brandy and light it on fire. Let it simmer until reduced and thickened. Stir it into reserved stock, reduce heat and simmer 45 minutes.
Remove bay leaves. Pour in cream.
Dice shrimp and cook until opaque in a medium skillet over medium heat. Stir into soup and simmer 5 minutes. Season with pepper sauce, Worcestershire. For a creamer soup, remove about half of the soup and blend in a food processor or emulsion blender, and return to stock pot. Stir in sherry just before serving.

Guinness and Baily's Brownies

1 cup Guinness
1 stick Butter
¾ cups Cocoa Powder
2 whole Eggs
2 tsp Vanilla Extract
1 ⅓ cup all-purpose Flour
1 ½ cup Sugar
¼ teaspoons Salt
1 tsp Baking Powder
½ tsp Baking Soda

4 ounces Cream Cheese (soften to room temp)
2 Tbsp Milk
¼ cup Bailey's Irish Creme
¾ cup Powdered Sugar
1 Tbsp Flour
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Simmer beer and butter in large saucepan. Once butter has melted, add cocoa and mix until smooth. Remove from heat. Set aside.
In large bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Set aside.
Once beer mixture has cooled a bit, beat eggs and add them and the vanilla to the beer mixture. Then add the flour mixture and mix well. Pour into an 8×12 inch pan.
For the swirl:
In a medium bowl, beat cream cheese, milk, Bailey’s, flour and powdered sugar until smooth. Spoon mixture in horizontal lines over brownie batter. Use a knife and swirl mixture into batter.
Bake in preheated oven for 30 minutes. Let brownies completely cool before cutting into them.

Frustrations

When B and I first saw The House listed online months ago, it was described as having an adjacent back lot as an option to include in the purchase of the house. Then the sellers took it off the market for a couple of weeks (we heard something about a baby?), and then re-listed it for a higher price that automatically included the lot, but mentioned that one of the features of the property was the "ability to split off the back portion of the 13000+ sq. ft. lot, which is suitable for a single-family residence."

We considered our predicted finances, and decided that it might be wise to give up a portion of the huge back yard to save several tens of thousands of dollars. When we first looked at the house, our realtor admitted he wasn't sure where the property line would be, but there were some clear landmarks that seemed like a logical division. For some reason, B and I didn't really considering looking into it more. After all, my parents had clearly said that they wanted to swoop in and buy the lot. And what did we care where the property line really was if we were sharing it with my parents?

So two weeks ago, a day after the property had been re-listed, we made an offer on the house, detailing the exclusion of the back lot. As far as we understood it, my parents couldn't really take any action to make an offer on the lot until some of the legalities were worked out on our end. Our realtor said he would mention my parent's interest to the sellers, and we assumed they would be thrilled to have immediate interest in the lot, so why would they consider another buyer?

Hmph. Little did we realize there was some other buyer apparently waiting for such a thing to happen. How they got wind of it, I don't know. And what prices were agreed upon, I also don't know. But when we sat down with our realtor yesterday to discuss last week's house inspection, it sort of came up that oh yeah, my parents really wouldn't be able to buy the lot after all because there was already a deal set to close when we closed on the house.

No back yard for our kids to play in? I had a hard time keeping it together.

After further investigation, we discovered that the property line extended a whopping 20 feet beyond our bedroom and back door... just to the top of the gently slopping ugly terracing that I'd already made plans to re-landscape. Visions of small children locked inside all summer while strangers played in our backyard kept flashing through my head. I somehow avoided a complete breakdown right there in our realtor's office.

We met with our wonderful mortgage broker this afternoon, and discussed our approval for a slightly larger loan. No problemo, he said. And the only good news of this short week was: B's secret agent investigation and negotiation of his unpaid phone bill had actually paid off. His credit score had gone up 90 points, which dropped our mortgage rate a bit. That was at least slightly encouraging.

So after much consideration, tomorrow we will propose a new offer to buy the whole house-and-lot package. And if the sellers won't go for it, then I guess God is clearly shutting the door.