A House!

After 6 months of searching (and testimonials from our real estate agent *and* our lawyer, that they'd never seen anyone with worse luck).

We have a house.

Mostly.

The good news is, it is great for us, it's incredubly cute, with good space, and even better, it's on almost three acres of rural 'you could raise emus here and nobody would look at you funny - a fence and a big dog is nothing' land.

The bad news? We gotta rip up and replace nearly 100 years of nasty flooring and wallpaper before we can move in, much less start getting pets.

So, for now, the plan is work our butts off over the holidays (coincidentally, most of our family is out of town for the holidays this year, so we may well be painting over christmas) and move in sometime late January. At that point, find a vet and bring up 'our cat' from the barn cats at M's parents. Then start dog-shopping again.

A bit of the problem in that the backyard is both a) a mud pit from the rather slap-dash job they did replacing the septic tank (did I mention our bad luck?) and b) frozen solid. Which kinda precludes putting in a fence until spring. But, if past experience is any guide, it'll probably take us that long to find a match anyway.

See you in two months!