Just checking in!

It's late, and I am off to bed, but I thought I would post, lest people think I had forgotten (ha! like that's possible!).

Anyway... the past few days have been lovely! Yesterday, Nikos had preschool, and we went to have lunch with Gus after I picked him up. We also made a side trip to Trader Joe's (more on that in a sec!). And when we came home, the new futon/couch we ordered for the play room was sitting on the front porch! It was a HUGE pain to wrestle up the stairs, but we now have seating in that room-- hooray! And, of course, another bed. This house is so huge that it seems like we are always buying new furniture. At the same time, we try to make sure we have as many beds as possible, for those rare occasions when we have multiple guests at once. My dream is to have a big Christmas here one of these years, with all our family members. So, we are one bed closer to making that a possibility! Yay!

At any rate... Today was consumed mostly with the painting of the front room. I think I want to start calling it the parlor, since that's really what it is. Plus, it just sounds fancy! :) We still need to furnish said parlor, but the walls are now the same lovely gray color as the kitchen, living room, and dining room. Once I touch up all the white trim, it's going to look fantastic! I did have to take a break to give Maya an unexpected bath (she leaned against the wet wall and got paint EVERYWHERE), but it was otherwise uneventful. I even had time to make pizza dough and St. Patrick's Day green cakeballs with the kids. Fun!

Pictures? Yeah, I don't have any. Shocking, I know! But it's the weekend now, so who knows what adventures await! Aside from installing our new toilet. Oh yeah... the toilet in the master bath likes to back up and, apparently, overflow. I discovered this when a drip fell from the ceiling onto the couch last night as I sat in the living room. Yes, panic ensued! But it was a very minor issue, and I think it will be solved by the new toilet (with an overflow valve). I never knew I would be so excited about a toilet!

Or alcohol, for that matter! ha! One major, major difference between CA and MA is the availability of alcohol. You have to go to a liquor store to buy anything, which is massively inconvenient when compared to CA. And I love to unwind in the evening with a glass of wine! Furthermore, wine is more expensive in general, most likely because a lot of it COMES from CA and has to be shipped to MA. Long story short, there are three Trader Joe's stores in the state of MA that have liquor licenses, and the one closest to us is not one of the three. The one near Gus' work DOES, though! So we zipped over and bought a few cases of two-buck Chuck. Cheap wine! A little taste of home, haha!