Sadly, intern Derek is moving on from the PH family, so Elizabeth and I made him a sparkly, sticker-covered parting gift. Sadly we didn't think of making him wear it to his farewell lunch. He definitely deserved our token of appreciation after putting up with 6 months of PH's good-natured harassment. Cheers to Derek!
So this one house on my way to work has their own version of what I can only guess is a nativity scene. It's up pretty much from November to March, but now that the extended Christmas season is over it appears that the plastic figures have been banished to the porch where they peer lovingly into the window of their owner's home like some creepy, cheap plastic peeping toms. The assortment includes a kneeling adult Jesus, two altar boys with open mouths, a sheep, two candles, and a tiny snowman. "One sheep shy of an orgy" according to Doug's analysis of the situation...
Everyone that I work with knows about and has seen this strange assortment of characters (located not too far down the road from the Jamaican place with the life-sized plastic, neon palm trees), but no one has ever stopped to take a picture of it. Today on the way back from Derek's farewell lunch, Doug drove really slowly up the shoulder of the road with hazard lights on while I took a picture and Doug and Steph giggled from the backseat so that everyone could enjoy...
So for those of you who haven't heard, after many months of keeping track of hundreds of emails and a veritable ton of information from our Lady Gaga lovin' realtor, we're finally done with the search. Our offer was officially accepted on the house over the weekend (I have a 50 page PDF to prove it), so we will be homeowners before you know it! Settlement is April 15 and I'm guessing move in will be that Saturday, April 17. So if you happen to be free and want to carry boxes in exchange for beer and pizza afterwards....
For those who are interested, here's the down low on the neighborhood from the listing:
"Thompson Homes introduces Canal View at Crossland, Middletown's newest luxury Townhome community, located on the canal in the absolute best location, just seconds from the bridge. Several floor plans to choose from in a well-designed community that is surrounded by open space and water. Each plan features spacious eat-in kitchens with center island and 42" wood cabinetry, high profile moldings including 7" baseboard, 9 foot first floors, sumptuous master suites with walk-in closets, good size secondary bedrooms, full poured basements with options to finish as well as lofts. Grand Opening incentive includes Trex style decks on all models! Maintenance free exterior with no landscaping or grass cutting, yet minimal monthly fees! Interior features also include Andersen windows & doors and tankless hot water systems from New Castle County's first Gold Level Green Builder."
And here's the answers to all the questions everyone has been asking me:
- Technically its listed as Middletown, but I think St. George's is a more accurate description of location. You can see the new St. George's bridge from the neighborhood (and alternately you can see the McMansions in front of our community from the bridge). It's pretty much as close to halfway between my job and Alex's as you can possibly get.
- It's a townhouse. We're the third in a cluster of four, so on the interior. We're the first cluster of townhouses to be built, but more are coming.
- It is new construction and we will be the first ones to live in it (yay!)
- Three bedrooms, two bathrooms upstairs, a powder room downstairs, full basement (unfinished now, but easy to finish at a later date), deck, huge closets (walk in in the master that is bigger than my Mom's bedroom growing up according to her), oversized living room/dining area, kitchen with island in the middle, upgraded 44" cabinets (that I can't reach the top of), new stainless steel kitchen appliances, etc.
- Everything in it is energy efficient and bills are supposedly going to be less than living in our apartment
- It comes with all sorts of upgrades that this builder does standard: tankless/on-demand hot water heater, 7-inch moldings, huge closets, updated lighting and fixtures, oversized window in the basement that doubles as a fire escape if you want to finish your basement in the future, deck on the back, lawn service, Anderson windows, upgraded railings, etc.
- No, we don't have another house directly in our backyard. There's designated open space that will reside between us and the next row of houses, so we'll have a nice view from our deck once construction settles down.
- Yes, I will have you over for dinner as soon as we get in and get settled, I promise.
And for those of you who want me to stop blabbering and just get on with the rest of the pictures, here's the entire album, complete with my quirky comments underneath.
So it's been a bit since I've had time to write because we've had quite a bit of life-changing stuff happening at Casa Rizzbanik. For starters, the engagement. Followed only two weeks later by the purchase of our first house. Yes, I know. We're insane. We didn't plan the timing that way, but cest la vie. First things first, the proposal story:
During the never ending Snowpocalypse of 2010, there was a State of Emergency that started at midnight on February 10th. Since neither Alex nor I have companies that close during state of emergency, we both waved goodbye to our respective PTO days and opted to spend the day in our pajamas. I started my day by emailing work to tell them that the four feet of snow outside would be keeping me from getting in today and then promptly calling my Mom so she didn't freak out and think I was insane and attempting to travel to work. I also remember in this conversation telling her that she should be jealous because in light of the fact that we probably wouldn't have power for some portion of the day (as there were already 6,000+ power outages in NCC alone at that point), Alex had bought her most favorite game and we were planning to play a few rounds. My mom is a Scrabble fiend. She actually was a little jealous.
So after breakfast, we both sat down and played a round or two of good ol' Scrabble. Since there was really nothing better to do, I think we were actually working on game three when Alex pensively stared at his wordbank for quite a while. I was getting annoyed because he was taking forever. Eventually he tentatively threw down his word. I glanced at it and was all prepared to get mad because one of the "letters" he threw down wasn't a letter at all...but then it registered. He had spelled out "L-O-V-E" with the engagement ring as the "O." I know I looked at him puzzledly, but I couldn't tell you much of what was said after that because I was totally overwhelmed and happy. Once things had calmed down a bit, I got the whole story which he had been bursting to tell me for about a week at that point.
The previous Thursday, Alex had gone to the jeweler and picked up the ring after work (Again I had no idea...I just thought he was teaching at the Kung Fu school like always). Being excited about his new purchase, he decided to go over to his parents and tell them that he was planning to propose and get their blessing. Unfortunately his Dad was away on business, but he did get to have dinner with his Mom.
After dinner with his own Mom, he then headed over to see my Mom. Apparently she wasn't home, so he waited ("like a stalker" is how he put it) in his car outside. She came home a short while later and he got out of the car and her immediate response was first, "Do you need to borrow the second car?" quickly followed by "What's wrong with Annie, is everything okay?". Being the wonderful lady that she is, she took the news very well and was supportive of Alex's decision. So two important people down, two to go. Mom-mom and Pop-pop.
Alex headed there on Friday. but Mom-mom wasn't home, so Alex talked to Pop-pop. Pop-pop of course gave his blessing along with lots of other marriage advice including what to look for in a house and the benefits of a joint bank account. The one thing he made sure to throw in was the fact that he was glad that Alex was going to ask me to marry him because he thought that was what my Dad would have wanted. I cried when Alex told me that.
So it turns out that Alex told all these folks (and Pop-pop told Mom-mom who was PISSED that she missed Alex's visit) that he was going to propose on Thursday, Feb 11 — our third dating anniversary. Well, it turns out that the ring was burning a hole in his pocket and he absolutely couldn't wait any longer, so he put his plan into action a day early. It was a lot of fun to call friends and family that day because even though they knew it was coming, they were expecting to hear from me the following day. I think I spent literally 5 hours on the phone that day telling different people and eventually had to give in and send a mass email. I really wanted to be able to call everyone individually, but it was literally impossible. Especially when after the 3rd phone call, I was getting phone calls! I guess good news travels fast :-)
Working from home today, so I only have a minute to update...but here's a reenactment picture of our engagement by Scrabble. It's totally nerdy, so of course I loved it!
All I have to say today is that I have the best adopted family in the entire world, and that Delaware State Troopers are by far the nicest, most helpful folks you could ever ask for.
So my morning started off a little shaky at the start because our neighborhood is still a bit on the icy side. I made my way carefully to Route 1 and breathed a sigh of relief to be on dry road with a bit of traction. Sadly, that calm didn't last for long as I noticed my left front wheel starting to wobble. I was already past the 40 exit going South on Route 1, so I figured I'd slow down, put my flashers on, and get in the right lane to try to make it to 72 to get off and get help.
In the short amount of time it took me to slow a bit (appx 40 MPH) and start making my way over, my tire went completely flat. Not the usual hiss and thunk thunk thunk sort of flat, but the exploding, tire shredding, shrapnel kind that you hope tractor trailers never have happen when they're in front of you. So now I'm at least in the right lane, but I can't drive on the rim of this busted tire so I have to pull over. This would have been significantly easier if there weren't literally 2-3 feet of snow piled up along the shoulder. So I pull over as far as I possibly can but the tires on the left side of my car are still touching the white line denoting the beginning of the right shoulder of the road. All I have are visions of someone clipping the back bumper of my car and sending me spinning into oncoming traffic. Talk about terrified.
Flashers on, I go to inspect the damage. Waited until there was a lull in traffic and went to look at my left, front tire which was absolutely shredded. Great. And it looked like all the bumping around had probably effed up my alignment as well. Double great. So I go stand in the snow on the passenger side of my car to try to call for help, shaking because I'm scared and getting passed by semis that shake the car and me alike. Can't hear because of said traffic, so I opt to sit in the passenger's seat on the safer side of the car and call. Tried Uncle Barry but I must have the wrong number. Next was Uncle Joe who happened to be on the phone. Third was Aunt Maryann. Of course now that I'm finally getting someone on the phone, I start crying like the little girl that I am and explain to her where I am and what's going on. She took down the info, called it in, and had a police car out there within ten minutes. She also said she would double back since she was just a bit over the bridge and would make sure everything worked out okay.
So true to her word, a car came with lights flashing and pulled up to my rescue. Officer O'Leary, my favorite person of the day, met me at the space between the two cars and I started thanking him for coming out immediately, noting with the eye of the niece of a state trooper that he had remembered to put on his hat before exiting the car (Aunt Maryann and Uncle Joe are always upset when we're watching the news at Mom Mom's and their younger officers forget that they always have to be in full uniform).
So Officer O'Leary helped me haul the spare out of the back of my trunk (politely ignoring the immense amounts of crap I have in there including blankets, dresses, and other stuff that I'm too lazy to bring into the house). Although I know how to change a tire (since Alex just taught me) all he would let me do was help find the support point under the car where the jack can safely hoist up the car. Then he asked me to wait on the other side of the car so I would be safe. Definitely a stand up guy. He then changed my tire like such a pro, that Maryann didn't even have time to get to us before I was on the road again.
She caught up with me around Middletown and tailed me down to Smyrna (I wasn't hard to catch up to since you're supposed to go at max 55 MPH with a donut...especially in cold weather). She actually ended up coming with me to the tire place and helped me get all straightened out before bringing me the extra mile down the road to work. So now despite being a bit shaken, I'm here. I have been well taken care of, and am happy to have such great people in my life that care so much about me. I still maintain that being an adopted Papili child is one of the greatest things in the world and I'm lucky to have such a great family.
So even though I'm not sure if I want to go through with the whole process, I've been gathering some information about how to go about finding my birth parents (with Mom's blessing of course...). Today I looked up a bit on information online and found out that all adoptees in Delaware have two birth certificates, one that was used from birth to adoption and one used after.
More often than not, the original birth certificate contains the name that the birth mother intended for their child. In other words, I could have a totally different name and not even know it.
Mind you, not all birth moms bothered giving their newborn a temporary name (Just "Baby Girl Insert Last Name Here"), figuring that the adoptive parents would take care of that, but it is something to think about.
The cost to have my original birth certificate mailed to me is $25. Chances are it will have no useful information on it, but now I'm dying to find out for sure. The form says it could take up to three months to be mailed back to me, and I don't doubt that based on my conversation with an employee there. But it's something to look forward to.
