It seems like forever that we've posted anything. There's has been so many things happened the last few weeks Abbey and I have dealt with that we didn't have any time to post anything.
Let's start off with looking for houses. We've been looking for a bigger house for our family for a couple years now. The boys are just too cramped running around our little house and trying to destroy everything. So finally we were able to close at the end of November after 4 months of waiting for bank approvals, etc. Once all things were approved, the ball got rolling and we had like one week to accept, gather the funds, and process a whole lot of paper work to sign on the house.
While trying to get all that together, Abbey still has to run her daily routine taking the kids to school, cooking and feeding them, and maintaining the house. On top of that we have to start organizing what we want to keep and what is trash so we can start packing. Then listing the old home for interested people.
After signing off everything at the Title company at literally the last hour (actually we had to stay hour and half past the scheduled time) to sign off all the paperwork. I immediately went to the new house to get estimates for painting the new house. Abbey wanted some more exciting colors than just the original white. So we spent sometime looking at colors for rooms, etc. She also wanted to update the kitchen floor. So we spent endless nights making all these decisions, while packing, while trying to read what we just signed, and braving our bigger monthly mortgage.
So then I, of course, trying to be as frugal as I can, started working on the kitchen floor once Abbey choose the material. It took me a whole 4 nights each night from about 8pm after we put the kids to bed until 3 or 4 am until my eyes couldn't stay up anymore. I tend to loose track of time when I am working. Then went home shower, sleep and go to work at 6am. Though we hired two painters, I decided save money by painting the lesser seen rooms like the bathrooms, closets, and pantries myself. I think I did a good job but you'll have to see it to believe it.
On our first day to move in, we found out a couple things about the house we missed during home inspection: there's a gas leak! yeapers what luck we have! we called the gas company, they came and confirmed and shut our gas in the beginning of Winter and there were several cold nights. We called the plumber and he found the leak after destroying several big spots of drywall with his hammer. It appears the leak was from a nail punctured by a nail gun a long time ago. Not sure how long its been leaking since that part of the house seemed to be original, it could have been years and the never dislodged from the nail until we moved in and shook/settled into the house with our stuff.
On top of this whole event, my cousins from San Francisco informed us that they're getting married at the end of November. We're like great! all this stuff going on and now we have a wedding to go to as well. So I bit the nail, purchased the tickets and we went over five days after after we moved into our new house. So as you might expect, everything are still in boxes. Gladly Abbey knew where all her stuff and the kids stuff are. I just had to find my own clothes to fly over.
Over there, we had several objectives such as visiting my gramma's grave site, attend the wedding reception, tour Chinatown, and most importantly keeping the kids occupied. And one way or another we were extremely blessed because we get to stay with my uncle's son whom has two kids who ages are similar to ours. Originally we were going to stay at my aunt's house but somehow it worked out and the kids just got along immediately and the first night they wouldn't go to bed, period.
Then we were very blessed to have Thanksgiving dinner at my parents house with my dad cooking his incredibly delicious duck! So through balancing the kids, packing, bills, plane tickets, more packing for SF, gas problems, painting, no gas heat, no hot water, and no gas to cook, I think we've managed pretty well with the exception of updating our blog. And many thanks to the wonderful donors of space heaters to get us through the cold nights, my sister cooking for us, taking the kids to her house to play, and letting us use her house for basic necessities we have finally fix the gas problem, the painting is also done, we've unpacked 1/3 of our things, and lastly all the bathrooms, closets, and kitchen are fully functioning!!!
We will get our walls patched today with the help of Abbey's friend and hopefully everything will go smooth sailing from this week on and have a peaceful Christmas and throughout.
