The "New House"

I will spare you all of the details (some of you are unfortunate enough to know them!) but with a lot of drama, stress, and worry--we finally got to close on both houses Friday, July 23. After our closing on the new house, the stress did not end. At the urging of our Realtor, we went to the "new house" after closing to retrieve the only key to the house that anyone knew existed. When we walked in, we discovered the house was almost 90 degrees inside and the A/C unit was a solid block of ice. It would be until the following Wednesday before it was fixed in less than 5 minutes. Thankfully, we have a home warranty on this house and the A/C is back on.

On Saturday, July 24, we had a branch fall on the front windshield of our car--shattering it. So we were down to one car until Monday afternoon with a long "to-do" list. Then on Sunday, our computer crashed. While neither of these things were emergencies , they were inconveniences we could have lived without.

We spent the week cleaning and painting the new house, then moved in on Friday, August 30--thankfully without any glitches! So, here are several pictures from moving day and the new house.

Eli and Micah got to spend moving day at G'ma and G'pa Cheney's house. Before they left, they had a great time running around in the back of the truck and even took turns "driving" it!

First order of business after getting all of the furniture in our new house was to set up the boys' bedroom. There were no window coverings in this room, so a beach towel does the trick for now. I can't believe how hard it is to find curtains for a boys' room! The boys love their new room--especially the fan with multi-colored blades they chose for their new room.

After the boys went to bed, Paul and I got on to the next order of business--getting all of our pets' essentials taken care of. Buddy has been (and still is a little) nervous in this house. He will get better once we get back into a strict routine. The cats have adjusted and have figured our their new cat doors to the garage. The fish all survived the move! They are doing well and the Betas are now often a topic of conversation at our dinner table!

Eli and Micah have done better than we expected with the move. They still call this the "new house" and are figuring out where all the rooms are. (The first few days, they would look very confused and slowly turn in a circle saying, "that way?" when asked to go to their room or their bathroom.) They have also loved helping unpack and pull tape off the painted rooms.

The boys now have a playroom of their very own! There are no longer toys in every room in the house. They are all here!

Some things never change...Micah and Eli quickly found some of their favorite books and sat down to read.

Here is part of our new backyard. The boys are disappointed that there are no trees in it. They had to settle for coloring on the fence with chalk. (At the old house, they would color the bark of every tree in the back yard.)

Even though we still have boxes in every room except the kitchen, boys' bedroom and playroom, Eli and Micah don't seem to mind. They still laugh and play as much as ever!

My big helpers love that the washing machine is now inside the house (instead of the garage). They put this whole load in the machine, closed the door, then watched the "bubbles" for 5 minutes!
All in all, we are definitely getting settled into our new house. I think it will be a while before every window has a curtain, every room has a light fixture and every box has been sorted and put away, but at least there is plenty of room to play while we work!