Due July 29 or thereabouts, we don't know the gender yet, and we are pretty excited to meet the new Muth...

This year, no Christmas cards were mailed from 3629 E Jane Drive. No update letters were sent, no photos of us with Frank...it was a very busy December. Maybe this year we'll send Valentines.

Our house is shaping up, slowly but surely. We closed December 8th, and since then have hauled out a complete set of the strangest kitchen cupboards I have ever seen, yards and yards of carpet that hadn't been cleaned for over a decade, seemingly 2 tons of asbestos tile, old windows and a wall's worth of bricks, among other things. Praise the Lord for Big Trash Pickup day in the city of Midland. Our tax dollars hard at work.

Michael (and my dad) have replaced 4 windows and a front door, we have 6 more windows to replace, one more to add, a patio door to install, and a couple of walls to frame. Then comes wall preparation (tape, mud, sand, mud, sand, paint, paint) and scraping and fixing the ceiling (Begone, popcorn finish!) and a few minor electrical endeavors. After all of that is done, hopefully it will be spring so we can start on the roof and siding projects!!

We are hoping to move in during the early part of the month of June...pant, pant...if we can do this and still retain sanity. So if anyone feels like checking out Midland, feel free to pack your work clothes and come on over.

Well we've done it--we are almost officially among the ranks of persons who have purchased houses. Last Wednesday we found out that a bid we'd placed on a HUD house was accepted; this means we will soon own our very own dump-with-potential. Now we wait for closing day...

HUD stands for "Housing & Urban Development" and it basically means the previous owner defaulted on a government loan and then the government tried to get a little money back and put it up for auction. We got one chance to bid and then they accepted the highest bid.

We won. And in this "winning" of our house Ebay style, we have won the chance to turn this dump into our first non-rental living space. We are planning to stay where we are until spring while we make the necessary changes; this will be a kalidescope of tasks which we are very much looking forward to!

On the list of replacement tasks: New roof, windows and kitchen, painting all surfaces and removing moth-eaten threadbare carpet; restructuring some inner walls, figuring out what to do about the weirdest fireplace known to man. We'll post pictures eventually.