The Vacation

This was not really a vacation. We just had the time free from work to make lots of arrangements for the housing situation. Things seem to be falling into place. On Friday we are scheduled to sign a contract for the sale of this house. The problem is that they want to get the keys before we can move into our new place. So we found a temporary spot to stay, a moving company to take care of all our stuff, and window and carpet people to get to work as soon as we are able.

The girls were happy to have a week where we were able to spend a bit of extra time with them. They had so much fun yesterday playing in the window store and the carpet store, although they got a bit tired toward the end. Other than Abigail climbing up on a chair and banging her head when it tipped over, they did really well.

Naomi also got to spend a bit of time with some friends which was good for her. We just finished up the text for our website too, and hopefully get to see a concept of it today. I have a few projects that I would like to finish up in the next month, so I will need to be busy with the business as well. Glad that February is almost over!!

The Signature

It has been quite the week. We signed for a house on Wednesday and also had it inspected. The amount of money the inspection report said the house needs is more than we expected, so we are trying to re-negotiate. Not sure we will get anywhere though.

The problem for us is that we have someone interested in buying our house, and they need to be in before the first of May. This means things could go really well, or they could go in quite the opposite direction. No way to say at this point, but Naomi is especially fried so we are looking forward to a bit of a vacation this coming week.

Abigail has been sick with a nasty cough this week, and Amélie has been rather reluctant to take her naps, so it has been busy with the girls too. Other than that they are doing really well. Communicating with them becomes more and more possible. Abigail learned to say 'yeah' and shakes her head for 'no', so we can ask her lots of questions and she will respond with a yes or a no. She understands our questions in Dutch and in English.

I finally got around to taking some pictures of the latest projects I have been working on. They turned out rather nicely. Busy with a TV cabinet now made from oak and jatoba. It is coming along well too...

Amélie on the potty - it was working for awhile, but lately they have lost interest.

Claire's IT table - Canadian Maple and Jatoba.

Cutting boards - the ones on the bottom are supposed to look like surf boards.

The Contract

We spent a lot of time (mostly Naomi) this week going through the sales contract for the house that we want. I was hoping to get it signed but we will have to do it this coming week, hopefully on Monday. Stressful. Hopefully I will feel less stressed once it is signed.

After meeting with the other mortgage guy - this one is a middleman who represents lots of banks - we decided to stick with the one who we saw a couple months ago. He represents the one bank that isn't represented by the middleman and happens to be in town. The interest rates are a bit higher, but the up front fees are lower and he is a nice guy that we can walk to. We will make things official with him on Thursday.

Wednesday is the inspection. Hopefully we don't get any nasty surprises, but if we do we can get out of the contract. It will be another busy week, but the next one is a vacation. We have a week off for spring break, so that will help a lot.

Our media player stopped working, Philips decided to cut off the juice for some reason and promised to give us a refund, so I picked up an Apple TV yesterday. It is really nice. Good news channels, Netflix, sports, and other things. Fun to be able to watch so much from the States.

Other than another cough Abigail picked up, the girls are doing well. They are getting much better at drinking milk out of a regular glass at dinner time and eating with their spoons. Now it is time to make them some pancakes for breakfast...

Recovery

I spent much of the week in bed or on the couch, but after some antibiotics things are looking up. Back to my normal 75-80%.

The good news for the week is that we are one step further in finding a house - we have agreed on a price. Not really sure how things work from here on out, so we will need to figure that out.

All three girls have been a bit sick too. Thankfully just a mild version of what I had. Naomi is pretty stressed out about all the stuff that is going on. She stayed up until nearly four in the morning working last night. I will need to use my favorite alarm clock on her soon - Amélie.

Haven't made any progress on the novel this week, so hopefully I can work on it a bit today. Made some nice cutting boards though. Having fun with those!