Passin' Through

Merry Christmas! I was passing through the neighborhood, and I decided to drop in and leave a quick message here. My sincere apologies for the prolongued absence in blogging here. Really, I have all sort of brilliantly scintillating things to say...well, okay, mildly entertaining perhaps, or at least moderately interesting. It's just a matter of getting the time to sit down and write it out in a way that makes sense (which is, of course, far more work than most non-writers know!).

We had a pleasant and relaxed Christmas here, which is sometimes exactly what a fellow needs. We're off tomorrow to go visit my mom for a few days, along with the rest of my siblings -- Christmas is usually the only time all year when we're all in the same place at the same time, since we scattered to the four winds, following the Lord's leading in our individual lives. This year, when we return, most of the siblings will be coming down here to Burgaw with us for a visit. We're really looking forward to having them around. My brothers will do a little teaching/preaching for me (and one is preaching for our cousin's church's watch-night service on Monday), and the sisters will do some musical things for the church, and it will be nice to visit with them some, too.

We had planned to have everyone stay at our new house. But at this point, we're still in mortgage-lending-company limbo. I've become pretty annoyed by the ineptitude of someone -- the problem is, it's just about impossible for me to tell whose. We get lots of excuses about the company being behind, it being the end of the month, and so on -- but this is the end of the SECOND month in what should be about a 48-hour process (and it's not like the real estate market has exactly been booming lately to push them behind). We didn't even get a second batch of stipulations until an entire month after we submitted everything they asked for (and pleaded with them for the entire month to let us know if there were possibly anything else they might conceivably want from them). Anyhow, as it turns out, the lawyer we signed with has been on vacation for the better part of a week, and won't be back until next week, either. So we're stuck filing extensions with HUD and living out of boxes. Ah, well. It's honestly not something I'm stressing over, and my wife is taking it as well as can be expected (given that she's the one who has to spend most of her time in the house with the boxes heaped everywhere). There's no reason why the deal should fall through, it's still an excellent deal, and we can wait for a good thing.