Fixing A Hole

yep, a lot of things to fix, or at least improve, before we can rent our house. But first things first.  A few things have happened since my last post, so here's an update:

Andy's job: He gave 4 weeks notice, and his last day was Friday the 15th. His coworkers sent him off with a nice lunch and some go-kart rides. We'll definitely miss the gas discount, as well as the ability to work from home. He started his new job on Mondy the 18th at a local office in Irvine. Lots of familiar faces there, including someone he went to grad school with. He has one more week for training, then he leaves on Friday for four weeks in Australia.

Alexi's job: I got to go on a video case study shoot on Mon/Tue. It was a walnut farm and processing plant.  A fifth-generation farm, lots of great people, fascinating process. It's really amazing how much work it takes to get the walnuts you buy in a store. Oddly enough, I was in a truck with Brian, one of the two sons, along with my coworker Ben (from Australia) and turns out Brian spent 5 years in Melbourne with the Navy! What are the odds? It seems that everywhere we go, whenever we tell people we're moving to Australia, half the time they either lived there themselves, or know someone who lives there or lived there, or they want to go there. Given the relatively small population of Australia, it's amazing how many Americans have a connection to the country. Thursday I talked with a coworker and found out another coworker was a missionary in Australia. Friday I met a parent at school whose friends just got back from there, and apparently the dad of these friends is a famous musician in Australia and is about to be inducted in their music hall of fame. Today, Saturday, I...well, you get the idea.
Back to my job, I'm busy wrapping up some loose ends. I have two months to go, but the time will go by too quickly.

The girls: They seem to have flip-flopped a bit on their attitudes. Aliya is now more excited, and she no longer cries at the mere mention of Australia. The other day she started making a list of Australian animals. Alanna is really loving her new school, and doesn't want to leave. She recently wrote an "I wish" poem and among other things, wished for just one more year before we go. She'll be okay though. Tonight I installed Skype on Andy's new laptop, and showed them how it will work. I'm really hoping I can get some of their friends set up with it so they can stay in touch.

The house: We'll be renting our house while we're gone. Our future property manager felt pretty strongly we needed to renovate the bathrooms a bit, if we want to get top dollar for our house. So we had tile installed in all three bathrooms. Sure wish we had done that years ago to enjoy it, but we remind ourselves we'll see it when we come back home. We've stripped wallpaper in two of them, and bought new vanities for two of them. We're completely re-doing the master bathroom and putting in a bigger shower (the old one was miniscule and completely unusable). New water-saving toilets all around, and we sure didn't appreciate having three full bathrooms--nothing like having just one toilet to ensure both kids will need to go to the bathroom at the same moment! We're doing all this frantically, to get as much done before Andy leaves on Friday. It's difficult when there are delays in getting materials, or when 40-year old plumbing breaks and floods the downstairs, or when Andy actually has to go into the office instead of shopping for cabinets or tile...

That's about all I can think of for the moment. Off to research more schools and Melbourne suburbs online! That's my biggest concern at the moment. I really feel that the success of this venture depends on finding a good school and nice place to live. Maybe not depends, but the right choices here will definitely make life more enjoyable.