Our Lady of Peace

The last night of my parents' visit, Craig got a call that one of the retirement homes Tom and Donna have been looking at, Our Lady of Peace, had a room available!  They've been on a couple different waiting lists for months now, so this was very exciting news!  Craig scheduled a tour for the next day and crossed his fingers that this would work out for everyone...

And it was a little crazy, but it did work out!  Basically, the apartment they were seeing was only one bedroom and it was a little dated: oven with those old-school electric coils, ugly cupboards, ugly carpet...  It was fine, but it wasn't nice.  And we knew it would be hard for them to downsize all the way to a one-bedroom apartment, but the waiting list for 2-bedroom units could be years, so we figured we'd just have to take whatever we could get.

As they looked around and tried to make the best of things, the lady giving the tour mentioned that they had a two-bedroom unit that had suddenly opened up, also, and asked if they wanted to see it, too.  (I feel like I should clarify that it opened up because there was a mix-up in how the resident gave her 30-day's notice, NOT because someone had died suddenly!)  This place was gorgeous!  Not only was it way bigger (an extra bedroom AND an extra half bath which included a washer-dryer unit!), but it had all the upgrades-- a sparkling, new kitchen, crown molding, beautiful floor-to-ceiling windows in the living room, new carpet.  All the stuff that makes a space feel nice.  When the lady told them it was theirs if they wanted it, they jumped at the chance.  We could not believe our luck!

Of course-- nothing is easy, so while we were thrilled to finally have a place for Tom and Donna, this also meant that now we had a ton of work to do getting them ready to move and getting all their ducks in a row so they were eligible to move in.  So for example, they needed a negative TB test within thirty days of their move-in date, but then we ended up having to delay their move, so they had to get new TB tests...  Stuff like that just sort of kills your soul after a while, but Craig managed to shepherd his parents through the whole process.  

And, of course, the way it all worked out, Tom and Donna moved the same week that our own tenants moved out so we were trying to clean and rent out our own rental unit AND it was also the same week as my choir's big Elijah concert!  Like-- how can all three of those things end up happening at the same time?  It's insane!!!!

So that explains why I haven't been blogging much these last few weeks.  (And it turned out the kids still had things going on, to boot!)  But I will be getting caught up now that we're through the worst of it-- hold tight, it's been a wild ride here!