Bought a House (and a new camera!)

We closed on our house on Friday! Since the main deadline for getting the house "livable" is the impending arrival of the baby, it was great news that we could close so quickly....more time for Joe to work on the house! There is a LOT of work to do on the house (pictures will come soon...you will have to see the "before" shots!)...and even working full time on it, it will be a challenge to get it livable in a few months. We're discussing what livable really means...the house definitely won't be DONE in a few months, so what are the requirements to be living there? It's easy for me to take for granted how knowledgeable and skilled Joe is at so many aspects of construction and house stuff....it will be fun to see what he gets accomplished in the next months.

I'm definitely ready to be in our own, stable place for awhile...and the "nesting" hormones (which are very real!) that come with this third trimester of pregnancy are only amplifying that desire. My mom jokes that I'm "nesting" in her garage, because that's where all our stuff from the RV is being stored...so I'll go in there and pull out baby things, see what might match for a nursery. And I'm nesting at Tom and Stacia's house...they get the girls in mid-November, so they've had to re-arrange bedrooms and get beds/dressers all situated for two more children....and I've been (happily) helping (nesting) with those tasks.

Joe has been battling a respiratory thing for several weeks now. A few weeks ago was the worse...he was laid up for several days with a fever, aches, and deep deep cough. He had a chest x-ray, and it wasn't anything bacterial...so at this point he's still just trying to let it run its course. But it's been no fun. He's just been fatigued and sore....

We're also been waiting to hear on the firefighter thing. The "tentative" schedule said that the next round of testing (oral examinations) would be at the end of this week. But no one has been notified as to whether they have advanced or not. Someone Joe knows who also took the tests called Human Resources at the end of last week (even though, at the first tests, they had strongly been instructed NOT to call Human Resources to find out results! but come on, this is getting ridiculous!) and they told him that nothing had been sent out yet....couldn't tell him when results would be sent out....but then said if he didn't hear by the end of this week it probably wasn't a good sign. I guess the fire department doesn't mind the potential of over a thousand people calling to see what's going on?

We replaced our camera. Ironic time to fork out that kind of cash, but oh well. So there has been a lack of pictures, obviously, and I will try to make up for it now that the camera is back in my hands! I included a few shots of Rowan...I took some pictures of a friend's family (see below) this weekend and Rowan helped me scope out some locations beforehand. The fall days here have been gorgeous (although not quite warm enough for no sleeves...that's just Rowan for you...and the hat, of course, what can I say? I just ordered a copy of "The Highly Sensitive Child"...several friends recommended it and when I did the little self-test on-line for her, and she matched just about every criteria, I realized that I could benefit from a little more understanding of her particular ways). Speaking of Rowan, she loves pre-school....is loving all the time she gets to play with cousins and friends...is eagerly anticipating her new sibling (she has her heart set on a sister) and told her daddy this morning that "some people think that an asteroid hitting the earth killed off all the dinosaurs." She got a (bad) rug burn a few days ago on her abdomen...but refused band-aids or any sort of care for it (that highly-sensitive thing, she won't tolerate band-aids) but was keenly aware of how it was healing. She told me the next day that there was "interstitial fluid coming out, it's kind of like a liquid" and when I asked Joe about it, sure enough, he had told her the day before that the burns were wet because of interstitial fluid....not thinking she'd actually retain it! Rowan is a lot of fun to be around...and while of course the never-ending routines and tasks of parenting can get old sometimes, for the most part it's just a pleasure to be with her. We have great conversations, play hard, read a lot. I'm trying to remind myself what a newborn requires...and trying to soak up these last weeks with just Rowan. Here she is:


Just a quick shot of the Herweyers from this weekend...I'm not done editing all their photos yet...but what a gorgeous family on a gorgeous day! I'll share more later.