Pending Sale

If all goes well, this will be our new home. We've been house hunting for a few months now. We were hoping we might be able to get into University Place (adjacent town, which, contrary to what you might expect, does not have a university) but we weren't sure if we would be able to find anything there in our price range. Whenever we mentioned this to anyone, they would nod sagely and say something along the lines of, "Yeah, and if anything does come up in U.P. you've gotta be right on it, because it's gone like that." So it seemed like a long shot.  We looked at a few houses in other areas but still hadn't found anything that was quite right.

Well, just a week ago (Thursday) I happened to be looking online right after this house was listed. I called our relator at 2:00, we got in to see the house at 3:00, and put in an offer. They got seventeen offers right after us, within 24 hours, but we were first and they said we could have it if we were willing to pay closing costs.

I wasn't convinced that this was really the house I wanted--I wasn't in love with the layout, and the kitchen is very small, but we went back on Saturday with a contractor and looked at things in more detail (without the kids running around shrieking), and discussed possibilities, and we decided to go ahead with it.  So we had the inspection on Monday, and now we're in the midst of getting things together for our final loan approval. 

On top of everything else, with a week to go before school starts, we're moving Kate over to the U.P. school district (we figured it would be easier to just start her over there now than have to change schools after we move) so we have been up to our ears in paperwork.  Nonstop excitement.  It's amazing how quickly everything has been happening.  We've never done anything like this before so it's been quite the education.

Keep your fingers crossed for us!

Painting for Penzance

The Tacoma Multi Stake Cultural Arts Committee presents:  The Pirates of Penzance.  I got to do some of the set painting.  (Yay!)



My contribution was the big scenic backdrop, and these plywood rocks.    (That's Fiona's library in the background, which was not part of the production--they just hadn't moved it off the stage yet.)



Anne Marie helped out a couple of times.  That green grassy stuff in the background was done by another girl that came to help one day, but it just wasn't working so we ended up changing the whole thing.



This was during the time that my camera died, but Anne Marie got a couple of pictures for me on her phone.   "This is my brush!"



I was still working on the rocks right up until the day of the first performance. You can see the rocks on the backdrop, too. The whole thing was very rocky. (And that backdrop was crazy... it ended up being way more complicated than it should have been, and cost Anne Marie some late night sewing hours.  My part with the painting was relatively straightforward!)



They had seven performances over two weekends, and it was just fabulous.  The house was packed (I heard from many people who enjoyed it so much they went back and saw it a second time).  Patrick Watson as the pirate king really stole the show, but the whole cast was amazing. There was a brief incident during opening night when the Major General's mustache fell off in the middle of the song, but they handled it with panache and some hilarious ad-libbing.  There's a video clip here.  The funny part starts about halfway through. 

Working on stuff like this is always fun.  It's just so cool to see it all coming together and then see it in the performance.