We had several weeks between when we our offer on our house was accepted and when it was finished. During that time, we were still living in Baker City with my parents, but Kelson had fun stopping by almost every day after work to see how the progress was coming. We finally moved in on June 20th. It would have been even more exciting if our furniture arrived at the same time we did, but the soonest they could schedule a delivery from our storage unit in Virginia was July 21. Our deliveries have always arrived early before, so we figured we would maybe have to camp in our house for 3 weeks or so. Between things borrowed from my parents and some yard sale finds, we had mattresses, basic kitchen stuff, some toys, and a couple of chairs to sit on. It was interesting living in a mostly empty house.
We had plenty to do while we waited to move our belongings in. We started with a garden experiment. The night we moved in, we planted cucumbers, pumpkins, butternut squash, and a couple of other things in two different corners of our yard to see which place would be best for our garden. After a couple of months, we can see that the plants on one side of the yard are 4 times the size of the ones on the other side, so I think we have our answer.
One of the last things that the contractor did before our closing was hydroseed the back yard and lay sod in the front, so we were babysitting our yard carefully to make sure it had enough water. Our second night in the house, we realized that the sprinklers weren't working. The irrigation water was turned off. We were out watering our whole yard with a hose at midnight to try to keep it from dying.
We managed to save our yard, but the backyard seems to grow weeds much better than grass. The worst part is that is infested with goat heads. They are evil. We are still waging the war on weeds in the back yard.
Before we moved in, there was a huge, landscaped island that took up most of the back yard, and we had them level it. As we were pulling weeds, we discovered a sad little rose bush that had somehow escaped the destruction. We moved it to a better location, and it is thriving in its new home.
After we created a secret garden for my mom, we wanted to do something similar in our yard. We started with this fun arbor that we found on Craigslist.
Sarah was very helpful when Kelson was digging it into the ground. Mostly she was digging up my new grass. We haven't finished the secret garden yet, but we are excited to work on it.
Kelson and my dad built bookcases and a desk for the office, and we finally had our first pieces of permanent furniture. Sarah's instant reaction was that she needed to get her animals and blanket and sit on the shelf to read books. That is clearly what a book case is for.
Our estimate of 3 weeks to wait for our belongings was rather optimistic. After 4 weeks, we learned that, due to an error in paperwork, our shipment had never left the storage facility in Virginia. After a zillion phone calls and 3 more weeks, the moving truck finally appeared in front of our house. It was a joyous day.
My parents were kind enough to watch Sarah for a couple of days while we started unpacking. She was asleep when we brought her home and was thrilled to wake up and see her favorite pooh chair and her bookcase filled with books. It took us almost an hour to get her to come out of her room and see the rest of the house.
The night before, we had unpacked and staged all of her toys in the playroom, expecting an excited, better-than-Christmas reaction to all of her toys returning after 4 months in storage. No such luck. She walked up the stairs and said, "Oh look, princesses!". That was about the extent of it. She has definitely enjoyed having her things back, though.
Unpacking our house and getting everything organized was a big job, but we have finally unpacked the last box and hung up almost all of the pictures. I will take pictures of the house all set up and post a full tour soon!
No comments:
Post a Comment