Seasonal Differences in the regions of the USA:

60 degrees – Floridians wear coats, gloves, and woolly hats. Chicago people sunbathe.
50 degrees – New Yorkers try to turn on the heat. Chicago people plant gardens.
40 degrees – Italian cars won’t start. Chicago people drive with the windows down.
32 degrees – CHICAGO–NO PLACE LIKE IT! Distilled water freezes. Lake Michigan’s water gets thicker.
20 degrees – Californians shiver uncontrollably. Chicago people have the last cookout before it gets cold.
15 degrees – New York landlords finally turn up the heat. Chicago people throw on a sweatshirt.
0 degrees – Californians fly away to Mexico. Chicago people lick the flagpole and throw on a light jacket over the sweatshirt.
20 below – People in Miami cease to exist. Chicago people get out their winter coats.
40 below – Hollywood disintegrates. Chicago’s Girl Scouts begin selling cookies door to door.
50 below – Santa Claus abandons the North Pole. Chicago people get frustrated when they can’t thaw the keg.
60 below — Microbial life survives on dairy products. Illinois cows complain of farmers with cold hands.
460 below – ALL atomic motion stops. Chicago people start saying. . .”Cold ’nuff for ya??”
500 below – Hell freezes over. The Chicago Cubs win the World Series

As far as the list goes, I was doing gardening well into the 50s and 40s, have driven with my windows down when it was in the upper 40s, didn’t put on my winter coat until it was in the 20s (not minus 20s though that’s too cold), and last year I did do some BBQing when it was in the 20s.

The first annoyance was that some of the paper work made showed that we were supposed to have brought a few thousand more to close than we did. I was freaking out for a while trying to figure out how to come up with the extra couple of thousand, but luckily the last few pages that number $500 less than what we had actually brought. That was nice, but we already spent that money a few days later buying new homeowner crap like a ladder, paint, etc.

The second annoyance was that closing took two and a half hours which most of that was waiting for the seller’s wire transfer. Apparently, the seller had to bring about $9,000 to close which completely floored Kim and I when we heard that. Now we know why she wasn’t willing to negotiate on price that much.

I started moving stuff over after closing on Friday, and then about eight people from the ward showed up to help us on Saturday. We got pretty much everything moved over by noon and sent everyone home; I thought that spending two/three hours on a Saturday helping move was plenty and didn’t want them to spend any more time than they had too. We had dinner that night and Sunday with friends who knew that we didn’t have any food in the fridge, condiments don’t really count as food.

Last week was spend unpacking, doing minor repairs, painting, and not vacationing even though I’d taken the week off from work. We put the three girls in their newly painted pink and green room. Emma and Abby have new bunk beds, and Lily is still in the big-honking crib. I’ll post the pictures we’ve take of the room sometime in the next few days. We also decided to make the third bedroom into their playroom which is helpful since we can just close the door if it gets too messy and pretend that the room is clean. I still have a lot of my crap to unpack and put away, but I fully expect that this won’t get done until we are about to sell the house.

On an unrelated note, I got home from a meeting late last night and Kim called me over to take a look at some pictures she had downloaded off of the camera. Apparently earlier in the day, Emma and Abby took turns taking pictures of their butts. I don’t think I’ll be posting those.

And this was no walk in the park either. Our realtor estimates that we looked at some 60 houses before we found the right one; toward the end there we were pretty burned out. We also had some lending troubles. We were going to place an offer on a house, interestingly enough on the same street as where we are buying, only to have our lending fall though. Something about the loans not existing, but I guess that’s what we get for thinking we would still be able to get 100% financing in the middle of the credit crisis. But all’s well that ends well.

Here’s a picture of the house. The driveway is a mess, but the house has been completely rehabbed. All we have to do is sweep and we can move in. I was a little saddened that I wouldn’t be able to do a lot of fixing up, but then I remembered how much I hate working all day only to come home and work all night.