We're totally grown-ups now.

As a kid, I always thought going to college would make me a grown-up. Alas, it didn't. Then I moved into my first apartment, and nothing changed. Getting a real grown-up job? Nope, still didn't feel like a grown-up. Getting married? Still felt like we were faking it. Buying a car, and paying off said car? No and more no. Having a baby? Just made us act even more juvenile. But now - now, we're seriously going to be real actual adult-type people. As most of you know, we're buying a house. If this doesn't work, I'm just going to give up on the whole adulthood thing.


Jim is living in a box-filled bedlam.

I'm not going to go into huge details about the place right now (except it's huge and has an awesome barn and Noah is going to have to devote the rest of his life to mowing the yard and we're going to have chickens and goats and pigs and llamas and giraffes and geese and muskoxen and a pear tree*), but it looks like we'll be closing in the first week of November and moving in shortly thereafter.


In an effort to cope with the trauma of packing, Jim has adopted this box to be his very own.

It's definitely going to require quite a bit of work. The place has been foreclosed on twice in a row, and it's been vacant for close to a year now. Everything is massively overgrown - you basically need a machete to get into the barn, which is, incidentally, also infested with hornets. The house itself is in decent shape, except that the previous owner apparently fancied himself quite the electrician and screwed up the wiring something fierce. All the lights technically work, but you have to flip the switches in the right order. The lights in what will be Jim's room, for example, go on just fine, as long as you already have the upstairs hall bathroom light on too.


Left: Observe, mortal! Right: You're clearly not observing, mortal.


This box provides him with literally minutes of fun at a time.

Still, our loan is a super-fancy FHA 203(k) loan, so it'll cover needed repairs, and we'll have contractors out to fix the major stuff in a hurry. The biggest thing I'm worried about is actually something really minor: the stairs have no bannister. This isn't problematic for us Real Grown-ups, since we have great stair-climbing skills, but it may prove to be an issue for a tiny little Jim. Every time we've visited the place, he has exhibited great interest in improving his stair-climbing skills, but they're still a little lacking, and I'm afraid he'll fall right off the stairs and crack his poor adorable noggin.


Pfft. Like I'd crack my noggin.

Anyway, expect to see many, many, MANY pictures of the new place come November, along with frequent and long-winded details about what we're doing with it.


Jim can hardly wait.

*You decide which ones I'm joking about.