Up and running!

THE HOUSE IS OFFICIALLY ON THE MARKET!! Ugh, after months of packing and cleaning and fixing and replacing and painting and rearranging and storing, it's finally where I've worked so hard for it to be. Dawn (my sister-in-law) listed it last night (MLS #06838897, if anyone's interested) and now we'll just wait. For some reason, my family seems to think that Paul and I expect to sell this in 2 weeks. I'm not sure where they got that CRAZAZY idea, but no, we will consider ourselves VERY lucky to sell it in 6 months. We won't be surprised if it takes more than a year (of course, we won't be happy about this!). Make no mistake--we're under no illusion that this will be a quick sell.

For those who haven't heard the news, Paul's sister, MariaElena, has now been diagnosed with TWO cancers, breast and Hodgkin's disease. In a bizarre twist, what turned out to be (what everyone thought) was one, has been found to be 2, now making things more interesting (not in a good way). The doctors, while doing the normal scans, found things lit up in her lymph nodes that seemed unusual. After a thymus gland-ectomy last week, the Hodgkin's was discovered. Those of you that know of my friend, Michelle...it's the same cancer as hers (which, BTW, she still has after almost 6 years). Thankfully, despite the double diagnoses, they seem to have caught everything very early, especially the Hodgkin's (this isn't normally found until something else [tumor, etc] develops, but in ME's case, it was found long before that). Her outlook on all of this is good, though everyone is a bit scared--it's not common to have 2 cancers so there's not much information out there about it. Each cancer responds differently to different treatments. No one's really sure what the next step will be (hopefully, the doctors know!!). If you'd like to follow along with what she's going through, her site is here.

Between the house, MariaElena, and the IVF, life in the Iacopetti house is quite active. I'm trying to find moments of peace, which aren't really hard to come by, now that I'm not teaching in the mornings. Paul is having a tougher time though. He's trying to be the strong one for everyone else, but still crumbles underneath it all. I wish we had put off the IVF, but he insisted on going through with it. I guess it really doesn't help anyone to put aside anything. Life just has to go on as normally as possible.

Many have asked how Kate is doing. She just passed her 12 week mark and things look good! The kids have accepted this so easily--they have no problem asking questions, and Kate and Rob are good at explaining and making sure they understand. It's easier with them than with the adults since the kids won't judge her. They just accept it. A very simple concept, really. Anyway, aside from some meat-related repulsion, she's doing pretty well!

If you know anyone interested in buying a house in St. Charles, send 'em my way! :)