Clara’s 11th Birthday! (01.02.23)
For breakfast, Jonathan and the boys made Clara a delightful breakfast: a breakfast sandwich (courtesy of Jonas!) and a banana and nutella “crepe” (made from those tortillas that you buy raw and cook).
For her birthday, Clara wanted to go to one of our favorite museums in Seattle: the Chihuly museum. We brought art supplies with us and we chose a sculpture that we wanted to draw. The kids really enjoyed the museum and they were pretty well behaved.
After we had finished the museum, we went over to the Artists at Play playground. Which is another favorite. By far the notable part of the playground is the 30-foot climbing tower and the slides attached to it.
We played for a while and then headed to the mall, where we had reservations for an early dinner at Din Tai Fung, one of our very favorite restaurants in Seattle. (Fun aside: the first time we ate at Din Tai Fung was actually in Manila, when we were living in the Philippines.) It is a Taiwanese restaurant that specializes in Xiao Long Bao (soup dumplings) and so many other delicious things.
We are all obsessed, especially Clara.
After our amazing meal, we came home and Clara opened her presents. And after we were all a little less full, we had ice cream too.
It was a fantastic birthday celebration, start to finish.
We are so grateful to have such a smart, creative, thoughtful, passionate, funny girl in our family!! Happy Birthday my Gaga!!
The House Hunt
The other big thing today, our realtor officially put in an offer on the house!! Then the owners counter-offered. And we accepted their counter offer!! So, we are now under contract, pending the inspection! Hooray!
Basically, this week entailed phone calls galore…. (all done by Jonathan because he is the nicest and handsomest man ever and he knows how much I dislike talking on the phone. 🤪)
I stalked the Zillow listing a lot (especially the 3D tour) and I started putting together vision boards for the rooms. We got rid of a large portion of our furniture when we left on the nomad year. And so, we are going to be re-purchasing stuff over the next little while. I incorporated what we already have and added some other stuff in.
Here are a couple of the vision boards:
Potty training the Twins (01.03.23)
Once we were under contract and we wouldn’t be driving all over kingdom come to look at houses, I started potty training the twins.
They were potty trained at the start of the nomad year. But, in all the chaos and especially the drive from Washington to Florida, it basically all went out the window. In the end, we decided that it wasn’t worth our sanity or theirs to force the issue and so we put them back in diapers.
So, now I can say that I’ve potty trained twins twice. I know, it’s all very glamorous.
As you may know, potty training is intense… So Jonathan kicked me out of the house one evening. And I went to Ikea. Cause I have a one-track mind right now: all the house things.
Home Inspection (01.06.23)
Finally, finally, finally it was inspection day. Angela recommended a great inspector to us, who was totally fine with us tagging along throughout and asking him a million questions. It was really nice to get back in the house again, to check things out. And answer some questions we had. I also measured all the rooms while the inspector was checking the crawl space and the attic.
The kids sat in the laundry room and watched a movie while all this was going on.
In the end, the inspection went very well! There were a couple of small things that came up, but nothing major. And the current owners decided to repair the things that needed attention before moving out.
Tacoma Children’s Museum (01.07.23)
Saturday morning was a drizzly, chilly morning. Jonathan decided that we would go to the Tacoma Children’s Museum. He even packed everyone a lunch in their Bento box. He’s a good fella.
I think the rest of Tacoma had the same idea. Cause it was bumpin’. There were a LOT of people there. And I can understand why, it is a good museum. There are a wide variety of activities: climbing, water, building, etc. The kids had a great time.
Jonathan, Clara, Jonas, and Logan go to Ikea
After the children’s museum, Jonathan dropped Evie, Isaac and I off at the house. And then he took the other three kids to Ikea. Just for fun. They didn’t end up buying anything. It was just to help the kids get excited and to see what they liked. (They liked everything. Especially the ice cream.)
ETC.
All in all, it was a fairly eventful week!! And things are moving right along on the house front!! (Though we still wish that we could speed up time!)
We ordered a couch.
We had a few potty training accidents; but we are getting close!
Also, Jonathan and the kids have been getting back into running.
We’ll see what next week brings!
