Stressed...but hopeful

John and I are tired, stressed, whooped, and the list continues. We have been living in a hotel now for the past 6 weeks since our newly purchased condo got flooded. The lady's toilet above us decided to overflow at 4:00 in the morning the day we returned from our nice vacation in Vancouver. Since it continued for an hour and a half, our entire condo got destroyed, ruining half the ceilings and walls, the entire floor throughout the condo, and a fair amount of our belongings. John has so diligently worked at fixing up the place along with the contractor we hired. Considering the fact that we already had decided to update the bathrooms at some point while living there, we went ahead and seized the opportunity to fix everything up all at the same time. John has scraped the popcorn ceilings, tiled a beautiful pattern into the master bathroom floor, remodeled the fireplace, built new cabinets for the master bath, and done a variety of other things. We are hoping to move back in within the next week, as long as we have one working bathroom and light fixtures in place. It will probably be another month before everything is completed. Hopefully in enough time for us to leave for our month long trip to China so my brother can still house sit.
In other stressful news, our wedding photos turned out so horribly that we have to pay another photographer to retake the pictures of John and I and edit those we do have. We met with a professional today who was absolutely stunned at the lack of professional work our photographer did. So much so that even with all the new edits that can be done these days, few will come out well. It is so sad! I'm about to cry another river of tears. So much for paying several thousand dollars to someone we thought would work out. The worst thing is that we can't get our special day back, and he screwed it up. He gave us some of our money back, but not all. We are reporting him to the Better Business Bureau.
Fortunately we have exciting news too! We leave for China 4 weeks from today! We will be there for almost a month just visiting old friends in the city I used to live in. It is a dream come true to return to the place I loved so much! I can't wait to bring my husband to a country where I have some of my best memories. And I can't wait to walk him down memory lane as we stay in the city and take a few trips out to the countryside I enjoyed so much.
No pics today. Maybe next post. See y'all later.