1142 W. Columbia Ave.

Thanks to our house inspector, we now have a couple of nice photos of the front of our new home. Grand, isn't it? Ours will be the unit on the 1st floor, left side (west).

The inspection went well and we are on track for a house closing that has been moved up to February 1. We will then have a full 5 months in which to move, so we aren't sure yet when we'll be there, but most likely by early to mid March. Yay!

Merry Christmas

You wouldn't have known by looking at these boys this morning that two nights ago we had one wheezing and the other vomiting. But - and this thows Sadler family tradition to the wind - they were both fully recovered by Christmas Eve. That's gotta be some good Gordon blood working in their favor; Sadlers are not healthy on Christmas, as a rule.

Santa came and all I can say is, he must've been hauling a tractor-trailer behind him this year. I'm not sure how it happened, but the boys had a lot to be excited about this morning. Let's all be grateful for that big playroom in the new house.

I suppose we felt that there was much to celebrate this year: a successful and relatively painless move from San Francisco to Chicago, followed by months of settling in and creating a life here. Matt and I can hardly believe that we've only been here 5 months and yet are looking at closing on a house of our own on February 1st.

We'll have our inspection tomorrow and then are off to the Bay Area on Wednesday for the next 10 days. May this visit bring less disorientation for me than that last one!

We hope all of our friends and family are having a healthy and peaceful holiday season.

Merry Christmas to Us!

You know, it's been a rough couple of years as renters. There's a lot I haven't minded at all about renting, but when you have two nice rentals sold out from under you and then live above some really lousy landlords for six months, you just decide it's time to look into buying a home. So we did. And discovered that we could do it. And a few days later we went out with an agent to take a look at the Rogers Park neighborhood, an area we really liked before moving here but didn't move into because we didn't find a fabulous school there. So, there we were going back because our research showed us that housing was definitely cheaper there and we like its proximity to the lake, urban feel, and diversity. Oddly, on that fact-finding mission we found a beautiful condo and our agent convinced us that we might be able to make it work even though we had many months left on our lease.

Here we are, five days later, with an agreed-upon contract for that home. I never thought it possible to find a place on the first day out and then negotiate our way into a very generous contract with the sellers 24 hours after making the offer. Our agent was rather shocked, too. And all I can say is that at this point in our housing history, we really deserved a break and I'm glad we got one. Not only did we get it for a good price, but we were able to negotiate a delayed closing date of March 1st and - get this - the sellers are paying for the rest of our rent through the end of our lease! The deal you can get in the middle of winter when the market is soft makes it worth dealing with all of this at Christmastime.

So here are some details for you. It's in southeast Rogers Park. It's a 3 bedroom 3 bath duplex condo in a 1920s 6-unit building. We don't know exact square footage, but it's somewhere between 2,000 and 2,200 so it's quite large. It was gutted and completely rehabbed 7 years ago so everything is very new (appliances, roof, electric, plumbing, etc.) but they preserved some nice vintage details. It's on the first floor (hooray!). The downstairs will be a sort of suite of rooms for the boys - a family room (play room), their bedroom, and a bathroom. Upstairs there's a big living room, kitchen, dining room, sun room, laundry room, master bedroom, 2nd bedroom (our office), and two bathrooms. Plenty of space. We definitely don't have enough furniture, which is great - there's room to grow in this place.

But what I love perhaps best of all is the proximity to beautiful Lake Michigan, which is just half a block away. Our street dead-ends right into the beach. As I told my grandmother in Massachusetts today, "You can take the girl away from the ocean but you can't take the beach away from the girl." Or something like that.

We'll plan to spruce the place up after we close in March and then move in during our spring break in April. We are beyond thrilled - it's the best Christmas gift we could ask for.

Mess, Sweet Mess

If you are anything like me, you are on this blog in spite of (because of?) the many piles of paperwork surrounding your computer. Piles that include business documents and reports, written to-do lists, notices from your child's school, receipts, and, more than likely, bills. You are hoping that these bills are benign, given that you deal with billing online, but know somewhere in the back of your head that there just might be something in there you were supposed to deal with last night. Or maybe last week. If you're lucky.

I clean up the piles. Sometimes. Maybe every couple of months. I often think that it's something I should do, and then decide that I have bigger fish to fry, so I go fry 'em. And it doesn't usually bother me. It only starts to get to me when there are other things in life that feel out of control; that's when the piles on my desk and the kitchen counter suddenly grow big, scary fangs and hairy arms with sharp claws that reach out towards me every time I walk by, pretending not to look.

If you can relate to this - and would like to feel better about the little messes in your life - you may be interested in this article from today's New York Times. I can't imagine why Matt thought to send it to me!

Who has time to blog??

If we seem unusually quiet this week it is because we are up to our eyeballs in home-buying preparations! Our supposedly innocent fact-finding mission last Sunday with a realtor turned up a gem of a condo on the lake in Rogers Park. We have been out again today to see a few more just to get a better sense of comparison but we've been back to it three times now and are ready to jump on this place. We are in love!

I won't go into all the fabulous details yet because, you know, we might not get it. But the sellers are apparently desperate to sell it and the market is so soft right now that our agent thinks we can strike a great deal. The sellers retired to Arizona a while back and the property has been on the market for more than 4 months. We'll put in an offer before we go to San Francisco and see what happens. More news when there's something to tell you, but in the meantime we are busily preparing for Christmas and enjoying all the last-minute holiday fun in between meetings with our agent and calls with mortgage brokers.

Never a dull moment, honest to God.

A Little Ho Ho Ho

My co-worker and I threw a holiday party today for all of the kids we work with. They came with their parents and brought their siblings, so there were almost 30 kids, all told. It was a wonderful event, held at My Gym, a large gymnastics space where the kids could run and have a great time together in a very safe environment. Matt and the kids joined the party, which was really fun for me. It was funny to be there as a parent and a therapist at the same time, but I enjoy introducing my family to the families I am so closely involved with, and my clients' families always love to meet them. Among some of the generous gifts I received today were presents for my kids, which was very sweet.

Towards the end, Santa arrived with gifts for all the children (these were provided by the parents). Baxter and Lyle were thrilled to see Santa, and in order to help Baxter get over his fear I had told him in advance that this wasn't the real Santa (who is too busy this time of year to attend a party, of course) but that it was actually someone dressed up just for fun. So he wasn't afraid at all and not only accepted a gift from the jolly old elf but actually agreed to sit on his lap for the first time since he was a baby. Lyle didn't seem afraid at all, and hopped up there, too. They thanked him for their gifts and even gave him a big hug.

Movin' on up

Matt and I have something else to be euphoric about. We are going out with a realtor this weekend for the first time to start looking at properties...yes, to buy. We are excited about how much our money can buy here in Chicago - not in every neighborhood, mind you, and we won't be in a mansion, but we expect to be able to find a beautiful, large 3-bedroom condo in Rogers Park or Edgewater. Probably close to the Lake. Not a bad first home. Perfect for us.

So just to amuse myself, I did a real estate search tonight in San Francisco, entering all the same info about how much we can spend, etc. I found a whopping 14 properties in the entire city, and not one of them had more than 1 bedroom. Most were studios that were under 1000 sq ft. I laughed out loud when the first home to pop up was 527 square feet!

I know there aren't many cities you can move from that will make Chicago seem cheap. We are grateful to be from one of them.

Temperate Clime

Jeepers, we finally have a shovel, car scraper, waterproof gloves and enough long underwear to sink a ship. We were acclimating to temperatures in the teens. Bay Area folks, you would never believe that 30 degrees could feel so balmy (no hat! no gloves!). In San Francisco all the elderly Asian ladies in the Sunset are bundled up in their down coats, hats, and mittens on a day like today, and here we are reveling in our 50-degree whether like it's spring. "Whaddya mean, Scooter's is closed for the winter?! Winter was here! Just last week! It's over!"

Right?

When a Plan Comes Together

I'm not really the "it was meant to be" type. But if I was, there are times when I would pull that phrase out of my back pocket and plaster it on my forehead.

This morning, for instance. We took a 10-minute bus ride down Belmont to attend the Second Unitarian Church. Yes, the Sadler Gordons went to church. (And it wasn't Glide.) Having heard all sorts of wonderful and intriguing things from my college friend Cara, we wanted to check this place out.

So first there's the proximity to our house. Then there's the fact that it's a mere block from Intelligentsia coffee shop (this may seem trivial to some of you, but that's only because you haven't actually tasted their coffee). Then there's the fun of seeing Cara and her family there and sitting with them (like us, they have two young boys and moved to Chicago last summer). Next, we discover that we really like this place. I mean, we feel very comfortable there and think it's a community we'd like to be part of and have the boys become part of as well. Then we suddenly look up and realize we're seeing one of Baxter's best friends from his class at Burley. Later, we discover that there are quite a few families from the school there, and realize that in this small church in this enormous city many facets of our new life are intersecting all at once and we are in the fellowship hall meeting so many friendly new people but also surrounded, miraculously, by people we know. Then, in case all that's not good enough, there was the fact that Cara and I could sneak away for the afternoon to talk non-stop in between sips of that good coffee. We even worked in a trip to Target, because, well, we're still busy moms and all.

And I don't know how this would affect any of you, but all of this has left me with a feeling that can only be described as euphoric. We are so completely in the right place.

Christmas Starts Early

In San Francisco, it never would have occurred to me to decorate the house for Christmas this early in December. But here, on a cold and snowy weekend, it was the absolutely perfect thing to do.

Winter Wonderland photos

Dig it

Winter arrived on cue overnight, dumping a metric bunch of wet snow
on our lovely neighborhood.

I spent last night giddy about the predicted storm — snow seems like
a lot of harmless fun when you're both a renter and a telecommuter.
Plus, I own real, honest-to-god snowboots for the first time since I
was a kid. Inside those, I feel damn near invincible.

Then Jordan and I remembered that despite our snowful years in St.
Paul and Boston, we'd never owned a car in a snowy climate. When will
they plow our street? Where will we park? Shouldn't we buy a shovel?

So, on our walk back from Baxter's soccer class at the Y, we stopped
at Walgreen's to buy a shovel to dig out the car. (And, as it turns
out, to clear our stairs and sidewalk, despite our landlord's early
assurances that he's always "right out there with the snowblower when
the first flake lands.") We managed to clear the car this morning in
time for Jordan to get to work, but her lunch-time assignment is to
go to Target to buy a scraper or two.

Baxter was thrilled to don his full snow regalia to school:
snowpants, Michelen Man jacket, mittens, neck gaiter, hat AND hood.
Lyle is eargerly awaiting his first snow plow sighting. I had
fantasies about cross-country skiing around the neighborhood today,
but the snow's far too wet for anything more than some killer snowballs.

I'm sure we'll have more snowy stories over the weekend. This is,
after all, the first time that snow has fallen on the boys' own home.