Have I mentioned that we bought a house? Probably not since I’ve been so wrapped up in Erik’s return (thank you for all the warm welcomes!), various deadlines, various kid colds, and life in general. I figure it might be time to make our announcement, though.

We bought our first house!

Actually, it went down like this: I told my husband, “Come Hell or high water, I will buy a house before you get out of the Marine Corps.”

And he, being the intelligent man he is, said, “Okay.”

Yes, it really was that easy.

Erik’s return from Iraq comes just in time to sign all of the loan and closing paperwork. We’re scheduled to close in about two weeks–a week after Erik arrives and the day after deadline for issue 118.

Olga helps Uncle Robby (my middle brother) hang Christmas lights.

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I’ll be posting mostly photos during the next few weeks. I hope you enjoy this beautiful season.

One of two jungle gyms impressive piles of boxes in the house (the other is in another room).

Our move is sneaking up on us at an alarming rate. Thankfully everything is going as planned so far. We only have about two weeks left here (schedule always subject to change, when dealing with the Marine Corps), but I really need to have the house empty by next weekend so I’ll have enough time to get the inside ship shape… and also enough time to resolve as-of-yet unrecognized impending disasters (like, the Marine Corps).

Today the children helped a great deal with picking out a few books (okay, a whole box full of books) to keep out and hopefully take with us to Oregon. We may have to go through them again and pare down some more, depending on which of our vehicles we drive out. Going through books has really been the hardest part of packing (for me, anyway). I love my books. Love.

Moving on.

Yesterday and Tuesday my friend Katie came over and we worked in the kitchen cooking and baking all day while the children played together. The idea is that if I have a ton of stuff prepared in the freezer, meals will be easier to prepare as more of my kitchen stuff gets packed up, and we won’t have to spend so much money dining out or ordering in. Oh, did I mention that my friend Katie actually did my grocery shopping for me? It so happens that I have EXCELLENT taste in friends, and it also happens that the one household chore that I despise more than any other (shopping) is her most favorite household chore. (And not only does she like it, but she also knows how to score the very best deals, and rounded out my slim-pickin’s pantry with enough food to last another two weeks for only $75–including beer.) But I digress…

We made angel food cake, roast chicken, corn bread, wheat bread, a massive batch of salmon patties, and two pie crusts (soon to be filled with pumpkin pie, made with pumpkin still frozen from Halloween). I also made and froze two huge (and if I say so my self, beautiful) pizzas, which will be for our moving party next week (date and attendees yet to be determined, Erik is in charge of that). I used Jackie Clay’s pizza dough recipe from our very own Backwoods Home Cooking (page 137). Yum!

At least we’ll have good eats during the move!

I spent a good part of the day cleaning. Not my usual M.O., but the house needed it. I suppose it’s some sort of freakish nesting-by-proxy, as my friend just had a baby on Friday. (Congratulations, Katie!)

It’s funny, but even though I don’t consider myself a very good housekeeper, I always accomplish so much more on a day that I get down to cleaning. I know that my Dad will get what I’m trying to say. It’s like my brain has to be organized and put away before I can be really productive, and organizing my surroundings is the only way to do it. Today, for example, I did two loads of laundry (Olga matches and puts away all of her and Gavin’s socks and underwear), all the dishes (Olga puts away the silverware), scrubbed all the gunk from around the sink (gunk seems to build up very fast in this climate), cleaned out the refrigerator (Gavin ate most of the cheese and tomatoes before I could put them away again), vacuumed the main areas of the house (both children run around squealing … very funny), made two loaves of bread with my cooking helpers (wheat yeast bread and banana quick bread), and even attempted to remove some stains from the carpet (unsuccessful, as of yet).

And then after breakfast ….

Just kidding, but actually I got all that done by three in the afternoon, and then I swilled down another cup of coffee and played for the rest of the afternoon. And by play, I mean I dug all of the sewing machines out of the closet to fiddle with them. My old Viking and my Singer embroidery machine have been in the closet since we moved here, because my sewing desk is only comfortably big enough for two machines, and really, I can’t sew on four machines at once anyway… In the back of my mind I remembered that there was something wrong with my Viking since the last time I took it in for service, and hauling it out of the closet revealed all — it is caked — CAKED — with grease. I don’t know what kind of “oil” the technician used on my machine, but he certainly gobbed enough of it on there to keep it from rusting… and enough to attract every particle of fiber in the county to stick to the gears. So this evening I cleaned it out, then ran it hard for a while to heat up the oil and get it flowing. Now it’s running great, and all that is left to do is to change the light bulb, which blinks on and off.

This machine is great. My mom bought it at a thrift store for around $20, if I recall right. It was my very first sewing machine, and I used it to make a LOT of stuff in high school, including the first shirt I ever made for Erik, back when he was only 15. It’s a Viking 4700, probably built in the 70s, if the color scheme is any indication (dark brown, tan, orange). It’s a machine that would make any do-it-yourself kind of person proud: it’s so easy to open up to get at the guts that I’ll probably never take it to the shop again. The body and innards are all metal, so unless it gets hit by a truck, I doubt I’ll ever have to worry about replacing any parts (except for that light bulb). And the best thing of all about this machine, is that it makes such beautiful, consistent stitches. Even my newer Viking, which is my every day machine, can’t quite match up to this one. Because it’s mechanical, and not digital, I can fine-tune stitch length all I want and not worry about presets. Really the only drawback I can think of is that it’s difficult to sew slowly, so I use the hand wheel a lot more with this machine…

Oh, sorry… you all must think I’ve completely lost it to be oozing over an old sewing machine, but the truth is that I fell in love with it again today while I was tinkering with it. I did see a close cousin, the model 4500 for sale, which is only a slightly scaled down version of my machine. If I needed another machine, I’d definitely snag it.