Our first guests!

I had Nana AND Mom come and visit the new house in Kirkland.  Let me interrupt with a quick PSA: any and all of you are welcome to come and visit for as long as you like.  We are slowly improving the accommodations here, but I estimate we can easily sleep 5 spare adults, and quickly make room for more at our friends homes, so come visit. 

But the family was here!  It was great!  We were mostly looking at various retirement communities for Nana to consider.  We went to FIVE.  If you are unfamiliar with this process, this is a HUGE number.  Nana was a trooper, critical enough to insist on getting ALL the information she wanted, open minded enough to give everyone a fair shake.  We'll see how the final results of this shake out- there are certainly more communities in this area that we didn't see, but I would go so far as to say we did see some places that Nana would be really happy at. (and at least one we all ruled out on actually visiting) That's a big relief to me, really.  I mean, I don't want Nana living in a crappy home where no one cares about her and there is nothing fun to do.  I like the idea of her moving over here 1) so she'll be close to me (selfish?  yes) and 2) so she can spend more time focusing on what she wants to do with her time these days, which is less cooking and house cleaning, and more volunteering, reading, studying, praying and spending time with me.  Or at least, that's what I believe she is looking forward to.  Clearly, this is only worth it if she feels comfortable at a place, and while I am optimistic that even some of the places can provide that, this is a big decision for Nana to make and would certainly merit some cogitation and sharing of ideas with family members.  So everyone call Nana and tell her you love her. 

Between the constant going to homes, we also made time to go to the Christian Science Church in Bothell where everyone was SO nice to Nana, and I would feel really happy if she wanted to be friends with those people who were very supportive, and helpful and just so darn nice.  We also grabbed a couple of nice dinners out, but mostly we spent about 2.5 hours with every location, working on a very in depth spread sheet and generally acting like sponges.  It's exhausting stuff.  With luck, though, this means there will be more visits to our house from Nana, and possible other people, which we are really happy about.