Now that we are semi-settled in Nephi (got home on May 3rd)--time to throw out an update! Haven't yet decided on a a new title for our blog, so we'll compromise with the interim Budapest-to-Nephi Palmers. The Nephi Palmers was just too "ehhhh...", and some of us aren't yet ready to detach from Budapest just yet. Call it paprika withdrawal syndrome...
Ah yes. Semi-settled. I say that because our garage is still full of unpacked luggage, and what IS unpacked is still piled around the house as we decide Where To Put Stuff. We basically transferred our gypsy caravan look from the airport to the house.
Not helping us abandon the whole gypsy theme is our basement--just after we had THOUGHT we'd fixed a leak in our water heater that flooded the basement in April, the main line to our house backs up (again) and floods it all over. Basically a repeat of last summer. Its now cleaned up, and thanks to the polite-yet-expensive gentleman from Rescue Rooter, we now have fiber-optic camera evidence that our main line, 9 feet underneath our driveway, is cleanly separated and about 3 inches off each other. I don't know who to voodoo-doll first--the previous owner who must have had the same water-back up problems we do (being we have only spent about 40 days total in the house since purchase, and it has backed up twice--like clockwork every three weeks) and 'conveniently' forgot to disclose it, or the idiot contractor who didn't lay pipe properly 12 years ago.
Judging from the settling in the driveway, the break has already been there for years on end. Mr. Rescue Rooter says something of this nature doesn't happen overnight or even over just two years. It settled a while back... Meaning the idiots who sold us our house knew about it and didn't disclose it. Meaning on top of all the drama of finding gainful employment, I now have to somehow find a way to spend 12K ripping up my driveway, digging down 9 feet, replacing a section of pipe, and backfilling the immense hole with two dumptruck loads of gravel to prevent further settling. Until then, to keep from flooding, I need to run a waterhose down the front back-drain-fill-stop pipe in the front yard and power flush the line--also helping shrink the sinkhole! Every time water runs down there, the sinkhole gets a little larger. One day the entire house will probably drop directly into the burning pit of hell. Perfect metaphor for our life right now :-).
ANYWHOO.... We did manage to sell most of our household furniture in Budapest before coming home. We were stuck in a Sophie's Choice of
paying 15K to send 25k of furniture home, or selling the furniture for whatever we could get in 6 weeks. We compromised and sent three pallets and 1500lbs of books and smaller items home for 3K, and managed to sell off the rest of our stuff in Budapest. Thank you
budapest.Craigslist.org! We also had to part with:
1. the close-to-fulfilled-dream of adopting a little girl
2. Our two awesome Vizsla dogs
3. The kids' awesome school
4. Our sweet branch.
On the plus side we:
1. No longer have to speak every month in church
2. Can allow the kids to go into gas stations again without blindfolds.
3. Will have real school sports teams (now if only Nephi schools had soccer teams, the boys' college scholarships would already be in hand...)
and
4. Can watch the Jazz games on real live TV, not a crappy streaming internet radio feed at 3AM.
I jest. One day we'll look back at this whole clusterfrak
(come on, I know you all secretly love Battlestar Galactica...) of a spring and shake our heads and laugh. Sometime after we fix our driveway that is... they say adversity makes you stronger. We'll be a veritable family of supermen when this is all over.
The kids are excited that the summer break for them came three weeks early. We aren't going to bother putting them into school for only three weeks. I'd rather they be the 'new' kids at the START of the school year, when chances are they'll have other new kids in new classes with new teachers anyway. Should make the transition easier for them. Plus Agi and I have the three weeks to put them to work weeding the garden and clearing out rocks and logs from the landscaping.
Agi has taken to her gardening these last two days with evangelical zeal. She finally has the space to get her pre-marriage gardening freak on. It is awesome to behold. We'll be doing tomatoes, peppers, strawberries, green beans, and who knows what else...
Well--the day dawn is breaking! Time to get back to work. Today is lawn mowing day and -rip-the-rest-of-the-carpet-out-of-the-basement-day. And roto-till-the-garden-day. And of course find-a-job-to-pay-the-mortgage-day :-) ....
