DING DING DING We have a winner!

On the family side of things, my son is apparently a HUGE flirt. I had to take him with me to the school today to turn in some forms, and on the way out there was a group of girls in a circle (probably 2nd or 3rd grade) who saw Micah. They immediately asked if he was Alexis’ brother (so apparently people know Alex already) and started to say how cute he was. My son then proceeded to walk up to the circle of females and give each one of them a kiss. They all instantly fell in love, and my son is going to be dangerous… lol.

On the administrative side of things, drum roll, please…

We have a place to live.

HOORAY!

I really couldn’t have asked for a better place. Here are the details:
- 20 minute walk to the office for Jason (and that’s a little farther because when he measured it, he went by his favorite coffee shop)
- 4th floor, so it has a view, but there’s an ELEVATOR!
- very, very, very safe (along with everything else, it’s next door to the Belgian embassy)
- on a quiet block that is close to everything but also quiet; a small park with playgrounds on each side of the block
- electric gate (I don’t have to get in and out to open the gate whenever I go anywhere) and an extra storage space, too
- huge kitchen with lots of counter space and (hopefully) a place for a small table
- place for washing laundry and hanging it up, attached to maid’s quarters (small room with bathroom)
- large living/dining area
- huge master bedroom with walk-in closet and full bath, also space for office in there (oh, and did I mention that both bathtubs are Jacuzzi tubs? that is apparently a big thing here)
- two smaller rooms for the kids (one doesn’t have a closet, but we’ll use it as a bedroom), and they're not actually small; they're bigger than the kids' roooms at home
- another full bath in hall (although with a hugely awkward toilet that you can barely sit on because the shower is two inches from the front)
- huge other room with walk-in closet and full bath – we’ll use as a play room, for the kids main bathroom, and as a guest room when needed (this currently has navy blue teddy bear wallpaper in the entire room, but we can strip that and paint it for about $100)
- carpet in all the bedrooms
- already has overhead lighting everywhere and neutral curtains (this is actually really important because that saves us money to spend on other things that we need, including a range hood, which is probably going to cost us about $300 – crazy, huh?)

Overall, this place is everything we could ask for, and we think we’re going to be really happy here and won’t feel cramped or like we’ll need to move after a year. It’s been a little bit of a difficult month living in transition, but we should begin our lease on Dec. 1, and we think that we might be able to start moving some things next Monday (and possibly as early as Saturday; we’ll see about that.) It’s a great price for the location, and we’re all very happy. We just went to take another look at it and take some measurements, and both of the kids seemed very happy about moving there.

So city won. Kind of. It’s like a little oasis in the middle of the city.

Things will start moving very quickly now. Because SP takes care of a lot of things, things are slightly more difficult. (This isn’t anything bad; it just means that buying things for the home will take a bit longer.) However, tomorrow morning we’re going to go look at furniture and probably place a very large order. We are most likely going to buy most things at a place that makes very cool, simple wooden furniture. I was there on Saturday and like all the stuff, so almost all of the furniture except the couch will probably come from there. Hopefully Jason will be able to go with us for that, but we’ll see. In the afternoon I’ll probably head into downtown La Paz to get some household things like basic kitchen supplies, possibly a few nightstand lights, etc. We’ll also need to buy a refrigerator and oven because those don’t come with rentals here. (And of course, the range hood. Sadness due to it being so much money.) However, we’re going to get a gas stove (hooray) and might actually be able to take the refrigerator that’s in the house we’re currently living in. (We already have a washing machine.) Things are going to start being a lot busier around here, but that’s great because it means that we’re actually going to be in a place of our own, which will be wonderful.