We've Moved!

We're finally in our new house!!! We closed on it July 31, and immediately after the closing, J and his dad started working on sanding and refinishing all the hardwood floors--basically the entire upstairs of the house (it's a ranch, but there's a full basement, which is *awesome*). On Saturday they took off moulding and prepped the house for the sanding; on Sunday they worked like fiends sanding and cleaning the floors with mineral spirits and put one coat of finish on. On Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, after the in-laws left to go back home, J single-handedly sanded down more spots throughout the floors where the finish from the first coat was a little lumpy and put two more coats of polyurethane on the floors. He was pretty wiped out, and I just felt bad that I couldn't help at all.

Then we left the house alone so that we could give the floors time to dry. The in-laws came back down the following weekend and J and his dad rented a truck from Budget and moved all of our boxes while his mom and I hung out with R and got some last-minute packing, organizing, etc. done.

On Sunday J and his dad cut new moulding strips and J spent Monday nailing them back in place so that we wouldn't have to worry about it after our furniture got put in. We had movers come on Tuesday to move all our big furniture. Then Wednesday and Thursday J and I got every last thing out of the house (it took 7 or 8 trips in our Camry-- that car fills up fast!) and cleaned the old place from top to bottom. It really wasn't until just Friday that we were able to start really thinking about the new house and how we wanted to arrange things.

We're getting a new dishwasher installed on Wednesday. The one that came with the house was at least 30 years old and at first we thought we'd just make do with it until it REALLY broke. But the first two or three times we pulled out the top rack to put dishes in it it collapsed on the bottom rack. And then I noticed all this brown melted crud on part of the bottom rack and I was just like, "Let's get a new dishwasher! Today!" So we went to five different places looking at dishwashers and ended up getting ours from Sears-- a Maytag that was discounted more than 50%. I'm pretty psyched.

We also have most of the furniture arranged how we want it. The trouble is just figuring out where to keep a lot of stuff. There's not QUITE as much kitchen storage in this place as there was in the other house (it's close, but the other house had more drawers, so we're struggling to figure out where to keep some of the things we USED to have in kitchen drawers) and we gave R a dresser that we used to keep in our dining room to store linens, napkins, and other items like that, so now we have to figure out another spot for those things.

I seriously love this new house. I never thought I would be all about a ranch style home but I really like one-floor living for the most part, especially because we have such a great basement for our "family room" type stuff.

The house is not without its quirks, though:

--There's no bathtub, so we're getting used to giving R showers instead of baths. It's still a little weird, and she doesn't love the shower yet. One of us usually has to take a shower with her in order to get her in. We'll see how that goes after awhile.

--Several of the doors don't latch shut. This is an easy fix, I know. But I'm not sure how quickly we'll get to it, so for now we're living with it.

--I hate the faucets in both the main bathroom and the half bathroom. We'll get that sorted eventually.

--The basement has some really old (and really in-need of replacement or something) linoleum, as well as one room that is carpeted in 2" thick dark and light green shag carpeting that makes me want to mow it down with the lawn mower. It'll be awhile before we get to changing that, either though.

But seriously, this place is great. I can't wait for folks to come see it-- any of you are welcome anytime you're in Delaware!

Last Vestiges of Texas...

For those who have not yet experienced the joy that is Texas-shaped tortilla chips. We've polished off most of this bag in the last few days.

Licensing

J and I are officially Delaware residents today. We registered to vote, agreed to become organ donors, got new licenses, and a new license plate. Yes, that's singular. Delaware only uses one license plate, on the back of the car. You can put whatever you want on the other side, so now I want to get one of these for the front!

They also don't let you take your license picture with your glasses on. Or at least the dude working there today didn't let us wear our glasses. So now I have a photograph of me on my license without my glasses on. Weirdest license photo ever.

Finally, here's a photo of R eating dinner tonight in her new space-age high chair.

New Day Care and Co-op

J and I continue to make slow but steady progress on the house. I unpacked boxes in the office this morning while J and R visited R's new day care. It's about a 15 minute walk from our house, YAY! He reported that he liked the set up and the people working there seemed really great. We've got a bunch of forms to fill out and have to get R a physical exam (or perhaps simply some documentation from our pediatrician in Texas regarding her 1-year check up which was just 6 weeks ago).

I got more administrative stuff taken care of at work and then in the late afternoon J and I went to the local natural foods co-op. For reference, for those from Wisconsin, this new co-op is like a smaller version of the Willy St. Co-op (which we miss dearly), but it is a HUGE HUGE HUGE improvement over the natural foods store where we used to live, which was a little smaller than the Mifflin St. Co-op and didn't have much variety. I'm so excited to live somewhere where we'll really be happy again.

No Pictures, Yet (Sorry!)

We'll get some soon, I promise. But for now, we're still getting all kinds of things taken care of. Today J and I made it to work (mine is about a 5 minute walk from our house, and J's is only about 2 or 3 minutes further away, and in the same direction. I'm totally stoked.) We each got various forms and paperwork squared away. More to do, of course, and I've got to go back in tomorrow for more things. But we're making progress.

The house is slowly but surely coming together. We haven't taken any real pictures yet-- I'm waiting until we have more boxes out of the way so it doesn't look so hideous in here! We've gotten most of the boxes opened and at least figured out-- are we opening them, leaving them packed, putting them in the basement, etc.

I can't tell you how excited I am to have a house with more than one floor again. This house has four floors, actually--basement, first, second, and attic. It rocks. Our office is up in the attic, which is holding all of my work books (as one of our movers put it, "a lot of knowledge in those boxes") as well as J's game and craft supplies and his work related materials. Our poor movers had to carry those boxes of books up to the top floor... plus four desks and various bookshelves. Thank goodness for the attic because otherwise we would have too much stuff for our living and dining areas. We even have enough space for a spare bedroom, which is kind of a cat room right now.

R's room isn't quite fully assembled yet-- we haven't unpacked all of her boxes yet-- but it's getting there. Her rug is down as well as all of her major pieces of furniture.

We've explored a little bit of our new town. It's very cute. And oh, it feels like home. It felt like home when we arrived. I hadn't realized just how different life in Texas really was until we left. I feel much more at ease here. We can walk all kinds of places. I love that work is so close. We're still feeling out restaurants and coffeeshops etc. but wow, it's like a 1,000% improvement over our previous location.

Still getting settled

We're in our new house! Pictures will come soon. Our movers arrived on Friday and since then, we've been spending a lot of time unpacking boxes, arranging furniture, buying little things for the house, etc., etc., etc.

We've gotten most of our furniture where it's going to go and Grammie unpacked and put away all of our kitchen stuff, and Grampie has been doing all kinds of odd jobs around the house--making and fixing shelves, fastening bookshelves to the wall so they won't tip over, lifting heavy items. Without their help-- especially in keeping an eye on R-- we would not be nearly as settled as we are today

There's still a very long list of things to do, and tomorrow both J and I have to make it to campus to sign paperwork, pick up the other keys to our house, and run a number of errands. Hopefully we can do it all before Grammie and Grampie have to leave in the afternoon. We're sad to see them go, but they may make it back down for us all to try to hit the beach for one day before J and I have to be at work every day.

More soon--including pictures.

Three+ more days in Texas

R and I have only three more days (plus, if you count Saturday) in Texas. We don't know when (if) we'll ever come back, so I've been thinking about what Texas means to us.

When I think about Texas, I think about people saying a 2-hour drive to Austin or Houston is "just up (or down) the road."

I think about oil pumps in seemingly random places. (We drive by more than a few just going about town).

One of my absolute favorite Texas things is the sea of wildflowers you see in the spring, especially bluebonnets. These flowers are gorgeous. When you take a drive--like when we drive to visit my brother and sister-in-law, you drive past fields and fields filled with red and orange and yellow and blue and purple wildflowers. I love it.

When I think of Texas, I think of bugs the size of your hand.

And I think of heat. Oh, the heat. When we first moved here we started nearly every conversation with "can you believe how hot it is?" and now we're almost sensitized to it that I can't remember the last time we really brought it up.

I think of prickly grass and J's allergies. Poor J has really suffered with his allergies down here--suppposedly, because there are so many different varieties of plants, and there are multiple growing seasons, there's always some allergen or another floating about.

Some Texas-isms we've picked up or heard a lot: "yes, ma'am/sir," "how're all y'all doing today," "Y'all havin' a good time, now?" "I'm fixin' to _____."

Some Aggie things: "Howdy" isn't just a greeting. Students refer to themselves (regularly, and generally without irony) as "The Proudest Member of the Fighting Texas Aggie Class of XX." Classes are never cancelled for Labor Day, but Good Friday is always a "Reading Day" and no classes are held, even if it falls a month before finals.

Progress

We continue to make progress on all things move-related. There's really only the stuff we're kind of still using left to pack. It's wild to think that we're really leaving Texas for good in just a little more than a week.

R continues to enjoy running around the living room. Her new thing is carrying something wherever she goes. She got very attached to her sippy cup this afternoon and carried it while doing laps around the living room. And I've discovered that not only can I tell her to "turn her music on", I can also tell her to pick something up and put it inside something else. Now... what else can I command this child to do?

Check out CraftyQueen's blog for some adventures in toddler photography. This is the best description I've seen yet of what it is like trying to take toddler pictures!