A slight change in plans

Life is full of opportunities to learn flexibility. Does that give you an idea of what this post is about?

Friday was a busy day with the house walk-through that I did with the contractor Frank. There are many things that a crew will need to come out and fix. The paint crew seems to have used semi-gloss to spot paint the living room and dining room, which were done in flat paint. Ah, its great to know the paint crew is so knowledgeable. :) But overall the house looked great and Frank noted all of my concerns. It will probably be the new year before they are all fixed, but that's okay. Jon was able to get off work a little early to attend a special scholar assembly at school where Joshua received an award from his teacher for being a math scholar. Yes, his former-math-teacher mother is very proud, as is his literary father. :) Then there was the Christmas, I mean Holiday class party, where the kids decorated the store-bought gingerbread men I bought with frosting and candy -- what fun. I was going to bring cupcakes, but the kids seemed to enjoy this more since they got to decorate AND eat their treat.

So the opportunity to learn flexiblity came when I called the Claudia, the woman who is coordinating our loan and found out that she was not in the office and no one else had our case or could help me. UGH! I called Lydia, our sales rep. and she was shocked to hear that Claudia was not avaialbe. But Lydia had Claudia's cell phone and promised to call me back. Turns out the bank, which is located on the east coast, didn't get the appraisal until Friday morning and they had told Claudia that they needed one day to review it. All of our credit stuff was done, but this final issue was the hold up. What is very difficult for me is that I spoke with Claudia twice Thursday afternoon and she never told me the truth that escrow could not close on Friday. Well our sales rep. and her boss felt terrible and said if we signed a hold-harmless form and promised not to tell anyone, we could move in and live in our house until escrow closes on Wednesday (delay due to a weekend and Christmas). Unfortunately, neither Jon or I feel comfortable doing something that we "are not supposed to tell anyone about." It feels shady, unethical, something. We had been told that right before escrow closes its okay to move stuff into the home, but we cannot sleep there until the papers are signed, sealed and delivered. It was all very anticlimactic.

But our friend Pati Toole had arranged for a moving crew, so we went forward with our plans for Saturday. We had an awesome team: my dad and mom, sister Sandy and brother-in-law Sonny, Jim Craft who organized the loading of the trucks, Ryan Romberg who is just a great funny guy who overloaded his truck to get everything to our house, Kellie Bieber who helped my mom, sister and me to put down shelf-paper (that Pati bought for me) and unload the kitchen boxes, Jack Bieber who played with Joshua all morning, Jim Toole who came to be part of the unloading team and then, with Pati, Jake and Conor took Joshua to the local petting zoo in the afternoon when Jack had to go home. What a team. We got everything moved out of the storage shed and into our house. It will be a while before everything is put away, but it is great to have it all there. Actually, we still have some of our outdoor sheds and tools on Heidi's driveway, but she has been so generous and is not in a rush to have her clean driveway back.

We worked all day and then came "home" to Kristin and Rani's to watch a move and go to bed. We were all asleep by 8:30. We have one final opportunity for flexibility. Kristin and Rani have friends coming. Since everything seemed to be on scheduled for us to be out this weekend, they went ahead and invited some friends to come stay with them -- yes, they are very generous and hospitable folks. So now we are looking for a place to spend our final nights before we can sleep in our own beds in our own home on Wednesday. But we know that God will provide.

Thank you all for your prayers and the many, many of you who participated in helping us move. We are so blessed.

Sheryl