August Augmentation

Last Tuesday was the first of the month. Riley went over to my mom's for a bit to see Taylor, Ahlina, and CJ. And Kevin continued "deconstructing" the apartment.

But Penny doesn't seem to approve, does she?

But Kevin chased her away:

In a reality where we've been marking a good 90% of our moving boxes as fragile, Kevin wanted to make sure this one stood out as... well, extra fragile. So he went full kindergartner and summoned the timeless "infinity-infinity" declaration:

Then he said my excessive duct taping "blocked all the good writing areas" on this other box of glass. So he got creative with the fragile label on that one as well:

Things are emptying out fast around here!

...And filling up quickly at Kevin's parents' house:

Luckily they have four guest rooms since all the kids have moved out. So they have no problem with us storing boxes in Kevin's old room as we go down to the bare essentials at our apartment:

Thursday the 2^nd, Kevin decided to try his hand at cooking cheeseburger mac from scratch (since the grocery story had been all out of the boxed Velveeta meals we keep in stock for an occasional quick and easy meal).

He had dinner ready to go when I got home from work, but there was apparently a caveat attached:

Needless to say, dinner was... cheesy.

But, more importantly, Kevin told me and Riley that our realtor Angel had called him halfway through dinner prep!

We've been planning to put in an offer on the Kutztown property we visited last month, and we recently asked Angel to feel out the seller's realtor a bit.

Angel had reported back that the seller is very firm on his asking price (which helps explain the mystery of why such a beautiful piece of land has been sitting vacant since 2017). And so, we had asked him to inquire about whether the seller would be willing to pay our closing costs for us if we offer him full price instead of trying to lowball him.

So, Kevin said, Angel had called to tell us that the seller and his realtor had verbally accepted that offer and were prepared to sign it as soon as they formally received it!

Then we continued eating our very cheesy cheeseburger mac, and we sat around the table for a few minutes after we had finished, until Kevin's phone rang again!

This time it was Brody from Clayton Homes, calling after hours to tell us that he finally got approval to work with the USDA's draw schedule.

So, just like that, we were suddenly good to go (after three weeks of being caught in limbo and agonizing over whether or not we'd be able to work with Clayton or would have to start looking for a house elsewhere).

And, of course, the entire reason for asking the seller to pay our closing costs on the land was to free up a bit more of our cash in the event that Clayton wanted a down payment from us to get started. That was now a non issue, but the seller had already agreed to it anyway.

So... a big win for us on two levels! (And a huge weight finally lifted off our shoulders.)

Meanwhile Taylor had called me to ask if she could stop by. So she showed up a little while later with CJ and their friend Alex, and we had a brief but pleasant visit.

Long story very short, the girls wanted my advice on how to coexist with my mom in a more... sensible capacity. Now that the girls are slowly becoming more mature (working to clean up my mom's trailer, contributing to her lot rent and utility bills, and so on), my mom is now the one settling back into some of her old habits.

Given the financial assistance she receives from the girls now, she has started to let her personal spending get out of control again. And, much like she once did to my sister and me, she has taken to shouting for Taylor's assistance for every little thing she needs, like getting up to bring her a glass of water at 3:00 in the morning on a school night!

So, the girls have been feeling overwhelmed between my mom's antics and my Uncle Kevin's insane outbursts that we wrote about last month.

The girls apparently are also considering getting rid of the... chihuahua (?) mini dobermann (?) whatever breed of dog Ahlina brought home last year, that she and Taylor proceeded not to train in any capacity, so that it has yapped around the clock ever since and attacked everyone in the house numerous times now. And since this is the second dog they've done this with, as bad as I feel for the dog, I have to say this is one of the wisest ideas I've heard come out of the girls' mouths since they moved in with my mom last June (at least as long as they don't run right out and bring home another one).

On Friday, a colleague of mine (also named Kevin) who went through a move with his wife a few months ago, and is a serial hoarder of boxes anyway, brought in a few dozen boxes for me to bring home.

My Kevin had tacos all ready to go when I walked in, so we (and Riley) ate a nice dinner together before reading over the mountain of paperwork Angel had sent over earlier for us to sign.

And then we signed it so he can formally submit an offer on the land :)

We spent Saturday morning and afternoon packing enough boxes to fill the car. Then we headed for Kevin's parents' house to unload and have dinner with his family.

We made a pit stop on the way, at Coyle's Music in Richboro. Riley's friend Kassie gave her a beat up acoustic guitar (months ago at this point), and the thing was missing half of its strings. (Riley has been begging me for forever now to take her to Guitar Center just down the road, but Coyle's is small and family owned, and Kevin has only good things to say about them. So I wanted to give them our business instead.)

And since Kevin's cousin Pete works weekends at "the beer store" just across the street from Coyles (and his cousin J.D. also works there when he's home from college) we popped in there to see if either of them was working... and they both were!

Pete offered us a few more boxes they had on hand at the store. And luckily we had one empty couch cushion left for them to sit on when we got home :)

At Kevin's parents' house, we ordered pizza and cheese steaks for dinner. Then Kelly asked if we wanted to come for a walk around the neighborhood with her, Steve, and Liv.

Riley asked Kevin if she could borrow a bike again (since Kevin and his friend Fotini's bikes are still in Catherine and Ron's shed for the time being).

And Liv decided she wanted to be just like Cool Uncle Kev:

Then our walk was underway!

Steve ended up pushing an empty stroller the whole time, and Kevin captured a rare shot of Riley's elusive chin in the wild!

At one point I stole Riley's bike. And Liv was content to go on ahead all by herself, until Kelly had to run and stop her from a live action game of Frogger:

Then Liv wanted walk the final stretch with Cool Uncle Kev.

(But Hannah didn't think he was cool at all. She felt betrayed that we had all gone on a fun walk without her.)

You might think that Sunday was a day of rest. But, no.

I spent two hours at the laundromat. But then when I came home to start meal prepping our lunches for the week, Kevin had surprised me by pulling all the screws and nails out of our walls and spackling and sanding the holes.

And he did a much better job than our maintenance guys do!

Angel called early evening to let us know that he had submitted our offer to the seller's realtor. The seller is away at some cabin with no cellular service whatsoever, so we'll have to wait until he gets back in range to receive and digitally sign the paperwork. But we're good to go on our end!

Monday evening, we had another carload worth of moving boxes ready to go. So Kevin and I packed the car and made a quick trip to his parents', hoping to get there and finish unloading before the impending downpours that had been forecasted all day.

We wrapped everything up with about 10 minutes to spare and stayed to chat with Ron and Catherine for a bit, and then we got drenched running out to the car in the pouring rain.

(And we had a riveting drive home behind slow idiots who forget how to drive when the roads are wet. Like this one...)

But when we finally got home, we had a surprise for Riley: Coyle's had called earlier in the day to let us know the guitar was ready for pickup, but Kevin had asked me not to say anything to her about it.

You know "kid logic": She'll want to come along with us for the drive, just so she can get the guitar half an hour sooner. But that will be half a dozen fewer boxes we'll be able to fit into the car for her to tag along for basically no reason.

So if she asks, just tell her you haven't heard from them yet. And then she won't want to come with us. And we'll just grab the guitar while we're out and bring it home to her just as quickly.

Better yet, Ron had offered to drive over and grab it for us just in case it was already pouring when Kevin and I made it over that way. So, it was all taken care of and we already had it in the car when the rain arrived.

And when we got home and walked back into the apartment, Kevin stood in the living room and started strumming the guitar like a madman until Riley opened her bedroom door to see what all the noise was.

(She had been a bit sour over dinner over the fact that I hadn't heard from Coyle's even though they'd said it would almost certainly be ready today. But after 48 grueling hours without her guitar, she finally had it back in her possession now, and everything was right with the world.)

...At least with her world.

And then the next morning, Kevin finally got the update he and I had been waiting 48 grueling hours for.

Angel texted Kevin just before 9:00am to let us know the seller accepted our offer!

So, all was now right with our world for the time being as well :)

Movin' on!

Several days before, Kevin had let me know that he and his Mom had lunch plans Wednesday afternoon, which they do periodically.

But this time he invited Riley to come along as well :)

As a bonus, Catherine stopped in Langhorne to visit Kelly at work on her way over to our apartment. And Kelly passed along nearly a dozen more boxes for us :D

The rest of Wednesday, and today as well, were uneventful by comparison. Although Kevin did reach out to our contact Brody at Clayton Homes, and Brody confirmed that their site visit to our property will be tomorrow!

(We made our offer on the land contingent on builder approval, so we just need an engineer to go out and assess the land to ensure that we'll be able to have our house built there within our budget. Since it's flat and open and already has utilities installed, we're not anticipating any surprises.)

Of course we'll keep you posted!