Okay, so before my non-Facebook friends disown me, here’s an update on what’s been going on!
My grandmother – she enjoyed the rest of her visit and by the end decided she wanted to move to my town permanently. We went apartment hunting and put her on the waiting list at two places. One is just a normal complex about a mile from my house, and the other is a 55+ community about 15 minutes away that would be PERFECT for her. The waiting list there is lengthy (she’s #28) but I’ve been told that she may get a spot in 4-6 months, which would be perfect timing with the lease she’s currently in, which ends next February. I’m very excited because I had a total blast with her while she was visiting us, and can’t wait for her to be here permanently so we can hang out more often.
The addition – we’re moving ahead and breaking ground this week. We finally picked our contractor and he begins pouring the foundation on Wednesday of this week. He’s already ordered the new windows and sliding glass door, and as soon as those arrive he’ll begin framing the addition portion of the renovation. Denis and I are now in ordering mode. We recently bought our new wall ovens (we’ll be going from apartment-sized ovens to 30″ ovens – a whole new world!), and we’re currently working with a kitchen designer on the cabinetry, which will arrive about four weeks after we finalize the plan and order everything. Then we’ll move on to finding the flooring tile and deciding what to do about a backsplash.
The kids – summer vacation ends in 16 days! It went by so very fast this year. I had some many plans at the beginning of summer, and it seems like NONE of them came to fruition. But I still think the kids had a good summer, and are looking forward to being back in school with their friends. They received their teacher assignments this past weekend – CootieBoy was thrilled to find out his teacher was someone we know from our church, but I warned him that she may be tough on him because she knows his true potential. CootieGirl was hoping for one teacher, and got another. But I’ve heard nice things about who she got, so I think it’ll all be okay.
Work – it continues to go well. Today I arrived at my desk only to find out that our employer awarded our entire department with a market assessment wage increase of 1.4%! It’s not much, but I’ll take it (especially since my review is in three months and will be based on the new salary)!
Disney in 2013 – we’ve known we were going to go to Disney in 2013, but were unsure of the timing. For a while we thought Thanksgiving week, then perhaps in early June, and then flipped back to the week AFTER Thanksgiving. We hesitated though, because we didn’t necessarily want to take the kids out of school for a vacation. In the end, we decided to stick with the week after Thanksgiving. I priced out staying at a Disney property with the dining plan – YOWSAH. Last time we went, in 2008, I was able to keep the Cootie family cost down to about $1700 for the entire trip (it helped we paid $180 for a week at a timeshare). This time around we’re looking at about $4K to go. That’s unbelievably crazy. I’m hoping that the “free dining plan” option comes up soon for the week we plan on going – that’ll save us about $1200 or so.
Olympics – yes, I’ve been staying up every night watching the sports spectacle. I was disappointed by the opening ceremonies, but have loved the swimming. I’ve also been disappointed by the VERY heavily edited men’s gymnastics. No, we may not have the best team, but why are they only showing brief snippets of only a few of the men’s events? What about still rings? The still rings is my favorite men’s gymnastic event, and they showed NONE. But I still love the Olympics – always will.
I think that’s about it for this month’s snapshot of the Cootie goings-on. *lol*
I’ll add that last night they finally showed still rings, albeit at 11:30 p.m. and only for 15 minutes. But I’ll take it!
Cheers for the update from your non-facebook buddy!