blessings

i heard a quote once: nothing happens, and nothing happens, and then everything happens. we had a period of about a week-and-a-half like this last month. first, we found out christopher was promoted to lead engineer! in case you're wondering, he does still work on the hot gas path. while this isn't as hilarious as the first time i heard it, it still strikes me as kind of funny. the next big thing that happened was that i also got a promotion at my job! my new role will start next month as a mental health counselor II. (as opposed to a mental health counselor I; the government is very creative with their titles.) and then, the biggest news of all was that we made an offer on a house, and the sellers accepted!! in a few weeks, we will be calling this home:eva is going to have fun running around in the backyard! we are so thankful for all three of these blessings. God is good!

adventures in house hunting

christopher & i spent the better part of saturday looking at seven more houses with our realtor, josephine. i was curious how long this was going to take us because last weekend, four houses took 3 hours! i guess we're getting faster because it didn't take double that. we saw some great houses, and i couldn't put my finger on why but a few just didn't pop for me. josephine says we have to love it, almost instinctively. i have enjoyed this process so far, and we have a couple houses we really do like a lot.

one really funny thing happened at one of the older houses: we were looking around downstairs, then i was the first one to go upstairs to look in the master bedroom. at first i gasped when i saw this hairy thing in the middle of the floor. then i thought, no- that couldn't be...must be a dog toy or something (keep in mind that the house was completely vacant). but it was, we discovered, a dead squirrel! just sprawled out, legs every which way in the middle of the floor. josephine thought it was really sad and wouldn't set foot in the room, i thought it was really disgusting and tip-toed past so i could look at the master closet, and christopher thought the whole thing was truly hilarious...and took pictures. i'll spare you and limit it to one:
we developed a scenario for what must have happened, based on the squirrel's positioning: christopher thought he got in through the roof. josephine & i thought he must have wandered around desperately, looking for water or a nut. then he dragged his body across the carpeted desert until his strength gave way and he collapsed dead. fortunately he had not been dead very long- so christopher tells me, with his ME experience (as in, medical examiner not mechanical engineer!) from watching law & order reruns.

as we were leaving that house, our realtor called the selling agent of the home to let her know there was a dead squirrel in the middle of her master bedroom. she said a what? after josephine clarified, the agent wanted to know - other than the dead squirrel - what we thought of the house! um, it's not at the top of our list.

busy weekend!

christopher and i have had a fun but busy weekend. it was his first free weekend after having to put in all those extra hours for a design review he had tuesday. (it went well, by the way.) so friday night, we went on a date... he surprised me with these beautiful irises, then took me to a new restaurant in greenville, the nosedive. it is operated by the same restaurant group that owns my favorite restaurant, the lazy goat. the concept for the nosedive is "gastropub," which apparently means common food prepared in an uncommon way. for example, our appetizer was fries three ways- porcini mushroom dusted, sweet potato, and lime salt with dipping sauces of citrus chipotle & truffle aioli. chris had a burger and i had a croque madame, which is a croque monsieur with an egg on top (my high school french teacher would be proud!). for dessert we had the krispy kreme brulee (delicious! though it didn't really taste like the donut) with espresso chocolate chip cookies. we have lived in greenville almost three years and really enjoyed our apartment complex. this year we are starting to look for houses, and yesterday was our first outing with the realtor. it was really fun, but kind of exhausting! there's so much to think about. we saw four houses and there was one that i could really see us in. when you find one you like, it's hard not to imagine way ahead- chris was thinking about having a "man cave" and i was thinking about a craft room for my art projects. when we were at our favorite (so far) house, i ran back upstairs to take one more picture, and i found myself getting a little teary looking into one of the bedrooms and thinking, this could be a nursery one day! i guess it's easy to get emotional buying a house because it is so much more than money or how many rooms it has- it's where you are relocating your life. good thing for me, i have a logical-minded, engineering husband who can balance me out. we are meeting with our realtor again next weekend to look at several more. i am eager & hopeful, but i also want to be patient and trust in God's timing & provision for this (and all!) area(s) of our life.