Potpourri

 I feel like I have updates akin to the potpourri category in Jeopardy!. So here they are, in no particular order. 

We are no longer homeowners. The new owners took possession of our house in Saskatchewan on February 16, and everything there is now finalized. We are free!

We have now looked at just about every available house in Corvallis, so we know now that we don’t want anything that is available and we are waiting for the right house to appear. Fingers crossed that happens soon!

We took a long weekend vacation to Sunriver, which is a resort town at the base of Mt. Bachelor, with my mom, sister, and niece.

There has been some really nice weather, and lots of time outside at parks.

And here are some photos:

Sewer! Or! Death!

We are playing a game of “is it sewer or dead animal” right now. We have so much experience, but somehow we are still not very good at it 🤣 

Both toilets clogging/gurgling, and smell emanating from the bathroom? Must be sewer, right? Nope, camera from roof vent through to city main shows it is clear. Toilet problems got fixed, and smell continued to get worse. So probably dead animal (most likely a rat, since we know they are here), in the wall between the two bathrooms.

It is awful and disgusting, but I keep imagining that we are contestants on a horrible game show. The theme music plays, and then the studio audience shouts “Sewer! Or! Death!” And the game is just our lives, and there are no winners. It’s probably German.

In all seriousness, Jeff spent almost an hour in our crawl space yesterday, unsuccessfully trying to locate the presumed dead animal. It was both hilarious and terrifying. 

We cannot get out of this house fast enough 🤣

SOLD

 Our house in Regina finally sold! It was not super smooth, it sold for a fair bit less than we would have liked, and it took forever. But it finally sold. Possession is on February 16, so fingers crossed nothing bad happens before then (like water in the basement, or something else random). 

Selling for less, and having to pay a high interest mortgage for months longer than we expected, means we have less buying power in the tight market here. But we are highly motivated to leave our current rental, which keeps getting worse and worse in terms of disrepair. I don’t even want to get started, but rats, horrible smells, standing water under the house, now a toilet that is sitting in the middle of the room plus more horrific smells, all among other things - it’s just too much. I’m hoping that the perfect house will just appear for us!

But here is some fun news. On Thursday night there was a family dance at Maren’s school. As part of the dance there was a hula hooping contest, and Maren won in the second and third grade category!

Sharing

 About a week and a half ago a smell started coming up from a trap door (that goes into the crawlspace under the house) that is in Linden’s room. It was a moldy smell, and gave me a headache right away. I submitted a maintenance request to the property management company right away, but of course we had no idea how long it would take them to get to it (a plumber is now coming out on Wednesday, so that will be two weeks later) so we had to take some kind of action to protect Linden from the mold.

We moved Linden’s bed into Maren‘s room, and now they are sharing. It is going surprisingly well. We may end up just keeping this arrangement for a while even if we don’t have to!

Ice

 On Friday night, we had freezing rain, and then all day Saturday we had a little ice pellets falling from the sky. It seems that overnight last night. There was a new batch of freezing rain, so the city is covered in a thick hard layer of ice.

On the one hand, it isn’t so great to be stuck at home, unable to drive anywhere or do anything. On the other hand, it isn’t so bad to be stuck at home, unable to drive anywhere or do anything. 

Plus we are used to it. We have appropriate clothing, sleds for the kiddos, and we are very familiar with snow and ice. The kids have spent lots of time playing outside. 

We will probably be at home until Wednesday, when we return to our regularly scheduled warm (relatively) rainy weather 🌧️