graduation and home inspection

On Friday we went to Chris's graduation. He is finally finished with his MBA! What a luxury for us all to have him home more, and with more free time. I got my little Pita all dressed up, but it was hard to get a good picture of her. She just wouldn't stay still for long enough. It was a long drive to UMass, and the ceremony was about 90 minutes long. By the time Chris's name was called and he walked across the stage, Celia was getting pretty antsy. I took her outside and we just walked around, and sat and had a snack until it was over. Luckily it was a beautiful day.

On Friday night we left Celia with Chris's parents, and we went home by ourselves so we could go to our home inspection in the morning without taking Pita with us. I never like leaving her, but of course she did just fine. She slept through the night and reportedly ate an enormous breakfast in the morning. I must admit, it was awfully nice to go home to a quiet house and get a good night's sleep by ourselves. So, now Celia has had a night away at each of her grandparents' houses, which provides us peace of mind that we can send her to either place and she will do fine.

On Saturday morning, Chris and I went for our home inspection at the new house! Very exciting. It was funny because both realtors were there, and it was kind of a festive atmosphere. The sellers' realtor brought coffee and doughnuts and it was quite an event. I'm sure he was pretty happy that after a year on the market, he might actually get his commission! I was busy taking notes and trying not to miss anything, but I did quickly take a few pictures of the yard and existing landscaping. We will have a lot of cutting back, removing, and planting to do in addition to improving the state of the lawn. There are some very pretty trees in bloom right now. The yard is going to be beautiful once it's gotten some attention.

Overall, the inspection went very well. We found out that the house has a new roof and a new boiler. There are a few other things that will need to be replaced soon, the house needs to be scraped down well and painted (owner did it himself and it's not the best job), and there's a list of other small things that will need to be done at some point but not immediately. The sellers are having the master bathroom renovated, so we saw it demoed. That bathroom was pretty old and dated looking (think tiny pink toilet), and although we would have kept it as it was without worrying about it, it will be nice to have an updated bathroom.

We were really happy about the inspection, and then Chris and the home inspector went into the attic. The attic has some mold, which obviously isn't good. A fan had been installed, but it wasn't installed or wired properly which is a fire hazard. The mold covered an extensive area but wasn't at a point where it was a big problem, yet. So now we need to have someone who specializes in mold look at the attic, tell us what needs to be done, and how much it would cost to do it. We still want to buy the house, but we have to know what kind of cost we're looking at because it could put us in a difficult position. Hopefully that will be resolved this week and we can move on.

Today we've been reviewing the home inspection and I cleaned the house. We all went to Home Depot so I could get some paint swatches for the new house. The purchase isn't definite yet, but I want to be prepared with paint colors if we want to paint before we move in. I had been thinking about lavender for Celia's room, and when I asked her what color she wanted her new room to be she said "purple". Perfect! Although I'm pretty sure she would have gone with anything I suggested. This afternoon it's raining and I'm feeling nauseous. Gingerale is helping. I still have grocery shopping to do, and I'm kind of hoping we can make a family trip out of it later because I don't feel like going alone. I have no energy for meal planning and cooking these days.

Well that was a long post. Told ya I'd start writing more!