Today is the day...

Well, if all goes as planned, we will own a house today. So the
blog might have more pictures soon... We got a check yesterday
for the settlement amount, or at least what we know to be the
settlement amount; these numbers seem to change until the last
minute, but personal checks are accepted, or given, if the amount
varies at the end. It's only the second largest check Rich has
carried around in the last week or so...

We received some good news last night about our air shipment;
it's in Georgia already. It makes its way to Augusta today, and it
seems reasonable to believe we will see it soon.

Kelsey and Joanne have signed up for day camp next week, and
seem very excited about the prospect of meeting and playing with
other kids. Of course, it beats driving around and handling house
stuff, which is what they have been doing the last couple of weeks.

Karen and Rich both visited their new employer this week. Both
Karen's and Rich's jobs have changed since our last contacts, in
strange ways. Karen's job seems far less defined than it was when
she was interviewing, which is strange because she had applied
for an established position. Rich's job was completely undefined at
the time he was offered a position (as a working spouse, after
Karen had landed her job), but now has evolved into a supervisory
position, for a new mission. Rich has never come close to being a
supervisor before, so this will be a very new experience for him.

These kitchen countertops will be among the first casualties of interior decorating...

 

The basketball hoop is not staying, but Rich has one coming...

 

Yes, JoJo is still with us, too

 

We own the car in the foreground, and will own the house soon, if all goes well...

 

Kelsey modeling Karen's new CR-V

 

A better view of the cul-de-sac (our house is on the right side of the picture)

 

Okay, sometimes a bored cat is a content cat...

 

Really, she's bored... :-)

 

Banking conclusions (for now)

Well, we seem to have the money we need for closing on our house in a
Georgia bank. We cannot think of any further complications, but with a
whole week to go before we close on the house, there's way too much
time for something else to come up.

The ease with which we deposited the check we obtained on Wednesday
can be attributed to our mortgage broker, one John T. Chandler Jr. He
spoke with the bank and assured them that we did indeed have the
money we were attempting to deposit (he ought to know); this seems
to have worked. Indeed, the tellers at the bank expressed their
surprise at the rules placed on new accounts, especially in the case of
a check like the one we obtained.

We learned on Friday, when we obtained an earnest money check for
the house purchase, that the president of the realty company with
which our agent is affiliated is on the board of directors of the bank
that we chose. That probably didn't hurt our cause.

Jasmine

One additional complication with returning from overseas, for some,
involves their pet or pets. Our cat Jasmine has had the dubious honor
of moving along with the rest of the family. While we were stuffed into
coach seats (not enough upgrades were available for our entire family),
Jasmine was in a cat carrier that had to fit under a coach seat, and was
not allowed to get out of the carrier while on the plane. She did get out
in a bathroom in the Nagoya, Japan airport, and drank some water
on a Burger King table in the San Francisco airport. Now, after a night
in an Atlanta airport hotel, and a drive to Augusta, she's cooped up in
a two bedroom apartment (as are the rest of us); while she was happy
to be out of her carrier when we arrived (and we bought her a
climbing toy/scratching post that day, which helped), she's now, well,
as bored of the apartment as the rest of us. In a week or so, hopefully
she'll be a bit happier, at the new house (with a screened-in porch,
for starters...).