Taking a break ...

I'm stepping away from my goal of posting once a week, just for awhile.
We bought the hoarder house and are in demo and renovation mode.
Here's what the living room looked like when we got the keys on Tuesday:

 And here's what it looked like 4 days later:

No doors, no floors, no railings. There is a hole in the master bedroom floor into the kitchen and the french doors in the master bedroom have been pulled out. We have drywall guys and painter guys and carpeting guys and furnace guys all coming around to give quotes ... we have a large hole in the hallway closet, pictured above, that is filled with rat poop. We have 2.5 weeks to move in. That's right, 2.5 weeks before we hand over our current house keys to the new tenant.

Beyond the fear and stress of the house though, I have to say I am more and more excited about the new neighborhood. It was a beautiful afternoon yesterday, all the cherry blossom trees were dropping pink petals and kids were running out to meet Liam. Neighbors were streaming over to greet us and tell us how great the block is and how happy they are to see us. I keep telling myself "you can fix the house, you can't fix the neighborhood", and I think we lucked out. Right now I'm busy researching stair railings and packing up the house, so blogging will either be an afterthought or a place to document some of this change. I'll be back later this Spring/early Summer!