And yet more house stuff done

1. Toys organized (picture to come)

2. Mudroom organized (except the art supplies that will be going in the bottom shelves of the cabinet out there) and counter right inside the door to the kitchen cleaned off.

3. Lawn mowed by Nate with a reel mower for the first time. It looked like hard work. Thanks, honey.

4. Porch swing arrived via FedEx and hung up this evening. It's beautifully made and looks nice on our porch.

5. Dehumidifier bought and basement down to reasonable humidity, we think. The couch we bought from our friends was growing mold on it down there. Ewww. Is there any way to salvage it?

This morning the girls and I visited the library closer to our house while visiting our new friends' house just a little south of us. They have two girls too...an almost three-year-old and a three month old. We had a nice time getting to know each other and will have to have them here to visit sometime soon.

Tomorrow we go to the pool.

Hard Floors

We love the hardwood floors in our house, but they are...well, hard. We don't want carpet throughout, but would like to have some rugs in areas where we play on the floor with the girls, such as by the couch, by their toys in the living room, and in their bedroom.

Nate's parents gave us some leftover carpet from when they re-carpeted a room. We're using it as a rug in the living room and it's working well so far.

For the girls' room, I'm leaning towards Flor modular floor covering---probably buying 12 squares of Toy Poodle in four different colors and making a rug out of it. I like the company and I like the versatility of using a bunch of squares to make a rug. I may also get 6 more squares for in front of their toy area.

The other thing about hard floors we realized...how much dirt and crumbs and junk must have been sitting in our apartment carpet until we vacuumed it each time. We have to sweep here in the dining room and kitchen at least once a day.

Moving forward--more progress on getting settled

Sorry, no pictures on this post. I will take some tomorrow on the progress we've made. In the last two days:

--Nate rearranged his office because in the former arrangement when he tried to scoot his desk chair toward his desk he ended up sliding to the right--gotta love sloping floors in old houses. :)

--Nate installed a new cord on the dryer. We're also hanging lots on the line, but with our wonderful washer that spins at high speeds, clothes take very little time to dry in the dryer, so many go in there too.

--Nate set up my shelves next to the washer for the sorting laundry baskets and my laundry soap.

--I organized the living room. The toy area still needs to be done, but otherwise, it's looking good.

--Nate and I organized our closet. Nearly all our clothes and two suitcases fit in the closet. It looks nice and organized and I'm pleased with it. Our dress clothes for Sunday are in the girls' closet (they have a walk-in closet with an extra rod).

--Cleared stuff off the floor of our room. There's not much in there besides our bed, a set of drawers that doubles as a nightstand and holds our DVDs, a mirror, and our TV. It's in our room because I don't know where else to put it. We watch our movies on the Mac and we want to keep the TV out of the living room, so it's in our room.

--The linen closet and the bathroom are mostly done. The closet needs to have two more shelves installed in it. There are huge gaps between a couple of shelves. The bathroom is pretty much done, which isn't hard cause it's not that big. :)

--Nate and I cleared out the mudroom, putting everything in it's appropriate room. I still have to organize it out there, but it's much less cluttered and I can handle it in the next week or two.

--The girls and I went to Trader Joe's today for groceries. It takes about the same amount of time (20 min) as it did when we lived outside the city. Whole Foods is closer, though--about 10 minutes away. I think I'm going to get our food from TJ's, Whole Foods (for bulk items like oats and flour and dried beans), the farm (beef and chicken and eggs), and the Farmer's Market for produce. I'm hoping to only get out to the farm every 6-8 weeks and Whole Foods about once every 4-6 weeks. Once summer is done we'll probably do Farm Fresh Delivery again for our produce. I'd also like to get back up to pick blueberries and raspberries at the place I went to with Becca a few weeks ago. If anyone local wants to go, let me know and we can go together.

--We went to one of the two libraries close to us tonight. I picked up some cool children's books that I'll write about later. Nate got a library card. I couldn't get one yet because I haven't gotten any mail here yet.

Okay, that's it, I think. I'll post pictures later. Thanks for listening to me process all we've done. It makes me feel like we've been productive.

Tomorrow we get the security system hooked up and we're going to take it a little more easy. Maybe even make it to the pool where everyone from church goes in the afternoon.

Some pictures, as requested

Here is how the girls entertained themselves while our wonderful friends moved us in:

Water in a bucket is all you need for lots of fun on the front porch. Our friends' adorable daughter was playing with them and I have cute pics of her too, but didn't have time to ask them before posting this so you'll just have to miss out. :)

My main goal yesterday, besides watching our daughters, was to get the kitchen the rest of the way unpacked. It was at least 50 percent of the way done before yesterday, but there was still quite a bit to do.
Before, first view:

After, first view:

Before, second view:

After, second view:

Yay, no more boxes and organized countertops.

Dining room before:


No dining room after picture yet. I actually have it most of the way done, thanks to Nate's help. A few more boxes need to be taken off the ledge.

Living room before:


It's behind the couch that looks the worst actually. This picture doesn't look too bad. I should be getting down there soon since the girls are both sleeping right now.

That's all I've got so far in pictures. I'm off to post a quick picture post of Becca's first night in her new bed over at the girls' blog.

Thanks to all who helped us yesterday. It rained and then got so hot and humid. Everyone was so great, never complaining and fun to be around. We have such great friends.

One other fun thing. I met our mailman, Walt, yesterday. It's nice to actually know our mailman and to have him be so friendly. Oh, and we met our elderly neighbor Ms. Berry yesterday too. Becca and I went over to introduce ourselves when we saw her sitting outside. She was very nice too.

Yum

I'm not a raw foodist, but this site makes my mouth water. Her site has encouraged me to at least include many more raw foods in my family's meals and snacks.

I've made her Raw Chocolate Macaroons many times already. And I'd like to try the Raw Caesar Dressing, the Raw Cream of Wheat, the Sweet Corn Chowder, and the Raw Pad Thai to name a few.

The nice thing about raw in the summer is that there is no need to heat up the kitchen with the oven. In the cooler months, I like a nice warm soup or chili, but I like leaving my oven off and enjoying all the fresh produce while I can in the summer time.

New address and phone numbers

I just sent out an email to lots of people to update our address and phone numbers. If you didn't get the email, please let me know. I had to wade through lots of addresses to choose the ones I wanted to send them to. I really need to delete some of the 450+ that are in there.

Starting to feel like home

My parents came to visit and help us out from Thursday thru Saturday. We got a ton done, thanks to their tireless efforts and their encouragement to take just one more load.

My dad took their trailer down with them and we were able to get lots moved over there, including all our bookshelves. He also put together the bunk beds, which was fun for Becca. My mom cleaned the ENTIRE upstairs all by herself. The bathtub looks brand new after she worked for at least a half hour to get all the soap scum off the bottom of it. It looks amazingly better. It's so nice to have all that area up there thoroughly cleaned.

I was able to get all the kitchen boxes we had packed unloaded into cupboards. Nate was able to start putting books back on bookshelves and he did lots of loading and unloading. Our friend Mikey came over on Thursday to help unload some stuff. We had some yummy food from the Thai Cafe. The Pad Thai was so delicious.

I'm so glad that we also met some of our neighbors. Our neighbors on either side are both elderly couples, probably both in their early seventies. They have both lived in their respective houses for over thirty years. Both seemed friendly. On Saturday our neighbor two houses down, who takes care of his ailing mother, was having a garage sale and he came down to introduce himself. He offered to give us a metal cabinet that he was selling for free as a welcome gift. We accepted as it was in great shape and will work well holding gardening stuff, balls, and other things in our garage. My mom said she met another woman down the road who introduced herself and was friendly to her. I'm glad to have good interactions with neighbors so far.

We move this Saturday. I can't wait to get in there.

Bike trailer or play house?

I had been obsessively checking Craigslist daily (hourly) for the past three weeks for a Burley d'lite bike trailer to pull the girls in and was just days away from buying a brand new one for nearly $500 (with gift money) when one showed up for $275. I quickly emailed the person who posted it and it was still available. Yippee! It saved me money and I got to buy something used, which makes me happy.

Nate and I drove over on Saturday and picked it up. It's a 2004 model and in fantastic condition. It really looks almost new. We've tried it a couple of times already and it rides so nicely behind both our bikes. The girls both seem to like it. I took our bikes in today to get all checked out and now we're ready to do lots of biking. Our new house is just a couple blocks from a nice 10.5 paved trail and we are hoping to bike to the library, parks, and the store.

Becca has also been enjoying the Burley when it is not hooked on our bikes. She likes to play in it just like it's her little tent.

So, yay, God provides. I had to wait for it, but that made it much sweeter in the end. We didn't need it until now anyway.

Posts on the girls

If you haven't been over to our girls' blog in the past couple of weeks, head on over. I finally posted a big update with pictures for each of them.