Moved In

Just a quick update: We moved, we love our new place and it’s starting to feel like home as we’re getting unpacked.  We have done quite a bit of unpacking, cleaning, and organizing so far, but we still have the living room and dining room piled with boxes, not to mention the garage and our bedroom.  But the “play room” (the downstairs bedroom) is clean and we’re getting all the toys organized as we continue to unpack them – it’s fun to see how excited the boys get as they rediscover their toys that they haven’t seen in about a year (because even before we moved from our house in New York I packed up most everything in an effort to de-clutter when we staged our house, so it’s been a while).  I found a cute, bright yellow shower curtain for the boys’ bathroom and happened to find matching towels, so I guess we can say the bathrooms are unpacked.  And we’ve gotten the boys’ bedrooms unpacked and organized – all we need is one more dresser and we’re all set for the kids’ furniture.  There is one average sized bedroom where Kolby and Lijah share a set of bunk beds, and the other larger kids’ bedroom has two bunk beds that we got for a good deal – and I think they turned out really cute.  And eventually we’ll get around to painting the bedrooms too, just so Kolby and Lijah don’t have to have a pink bedroom forever.

Thanks, Matthew, for helping Michael and me to assemble the bunk beds late the night before we moved everything into the house.  And a big thank you to Dad, Matthew, Aaron, and our friends from church who helped us move all the boxes from our storage unit and my parents’ house, and to Mom who watched the boys for us all day while we were moving things, and then came over and helped me do a deep clean of the kitchen at the new house!

On the down side, we were excited to find a full sized fridge on craigslist to use in our garage, until we bought it, brought it back here, spent a long time thoroughly cleaning it out, turned it on, and filled it with food, before we realized that it was actually a freezer and not a fridge.  Pretty frustrating, but fortunately the guy who sold it to use did take it back and refunded us our money so we can put that toward another attempt at a garage fridge.  On the up side, we got a couple of dog doors and had them installed on Friday, with the idea that now Brax can go outside when he needs to, although we’re still working on training him with the dog doors – Brax seems to think that he needs permission to go through the dog doors, so sometimes we find him sitting in the garage in front of the door waiting to come inside.  But he’ll get used to it, I’m sure.  The other thing I’ve had to adjust to is that fact that we have dark floors in this house.  I always wanted dark wood floors, and this house happens to also have dark brown carpet upstairs, which will be great for not showing up every little spot from the kids, but not so great with a yellow lab that sheds light-colored fur.  So, we made the decision that Brax doesn’t go upstairs in this house so we can spare the carpet.  And every piece of fur shows up on the dark wood floors, but I was able to fix our vacuum and I picked up a couple of things like swiffer sweepers, except they are Rubbermaid brand and they have a reusable cleaning pad that can be washed so you don’t have to throw away the cleaning pad every time.  I assigned the two oldest boys to use those sweepers on the entire downstairs each once a day as their chores (which they think is fun, at least for now), and has really helped with the dog fur in the house.  Fortunately for Brax we’re pretty attached to him, so we’ll just have to put up with the shedding.  

It’s been fun unpacking – finding places for things and getting organized.  Although we’re realizing it’s a lot harder to move during the school year than in the summer time, just because we still have so much stuff to do every day with getting the kids to and from school and activities that I’ve got less time to unpack than I’d like.  So it may take a little longer before all the boxes are gone, but we’re making progress.  And I think we’re starting to feel settled.  And the boys are really loving being able to walk to and from school, play with friends in the neighborhood, play in the back yard, go to the neighborhood pools and parks, and enjoy their toys and games in the play room.  And it’s been fun to be near family too.  Like last night after Aaron had his Eagle Scout Court of Honor, we went over to my parents’ house for dinner and I decided to take Brax and run over there from our house to meet up with everyone (Brax and I both needed the exercise).  It’s nice to be close enough to do that.  And we had Jennie and Dalin over last week for some swimming and pizza.  (We told Taelin that once we unpack and find the rest of the sheets, the extra bunk bed in Camden's, Isaac's, and Courtland's room can be for him to sleep over).  :)  So much fun!

Well, I’d better go get a few more boxes unpacked before dinner time.  More to come later – and some pictures too – maybe once we get some more of these boxes out of the way.