Just a quick post to let you know we haven't vanished from the face of the earth. I hope one of these days I'll figure out how to catch up with things so I don't feel swamped all the time. There's barely time to go to the bathroom, let alone keep up with this site. I have some pictures but probably won't be able to post them tonight because I have to sort through and rename them first. So those will be coming.

Much of why we've been so busy has to do with our house. First, we decided we were going to look for a larger house, which meant getting this one ready to put on the market. We made a list of all the tasks, big and small, that need to happen. Even after all the improvements we've made, there's a lot to do. We hired a company to refinish our hardwood floors. (That work will start on March 12. I can't wait.) We ran numbers, established a price range, searched real estate listings and finally went to two open houses a couple of Sundays ago. And that is when reality hit. We were shocked to realize just how little our new, higher price range would buy in our area. Nothing we saw, either in person or in the listings, was significantly better than our current house or yard, especially considering the expense of selling, moving, and starting over in a new house with a bigger mortgage. Our new approach has become to improve this house. The main project would be a major basement remodel. The refinished floors and all those other tasks will now be something we do for ourselves, not resale. Eventually, we'll probably look for a bigger house. It's hard to imagine living here with two teenage boys (!), but we'll see how we feel in ten years or so.

That's what we've been up to the past couple of weeks. Of course, we also celebrated a birthday, which I hope to include in a post in the not-distant future.