*This post is long and purely for recording the events of moving to our new house.*
We arrived at our new home this past Monday afternoon. The drive down was uneventful, but as the scenery changed to the red rocks and sand, the girls got more and more excited...some even squealing a few times because they were so excited.
Thanks to my dad, Marty and Marty's boss (I tried helping as much as I could with 4 little kids under foot, and my sister Emily was also here helping with kids etc.), the U-Haul was unloaded in just over an hour. Granted it was all unloaded into the garage, and the garage is still full of boxes, but they were off the truck which was our goal. Nobody from the ward came to help - which made the 7 pizzas we ordered seem wasteful - but we figured it was a Monday night, people were probably busy with Family Home Evening and other things. A nice man did come by later saying he had just heard we might need help. So maybe word never really got out. We tried to send him with a pizza...he declined. We've had pizza coming out our ears, and STILL have more in the fridge.
The girls have quickly adjusted. They spend their days riding their bikes and scooters on the big driveway, digging in the dirt and climbing the tree to look at the neighbors chickens. They keep saying how much they love this house and love living here.
Speaking of our neighbor - Farmer Rodge as he calls himself - he is so incredibly nice. Yesterday he let Marty and the girls go over the wall into his yard and had them help feed his chickens. He then showed them his fruit trees and let them pick some cherries to sample. He told us to come back next week when even more cherries are on. He also gave us a dozen eggs, and then let the girls swing on his tire swing and pushed them nice and high. Molly started throwing a fit - tired, hungry, and upset she couldn't swing - so he said, "Here, let me." and picked her up. Wouldn't you know that the little stinker laid her head right down on his shoulder and stopped crying?? He has also been giving me the scoop on the neighbors, and the previous owners of the house. Brielle said, "I like living by him! He's awesome."
We have slowly been unpacking things. But with 4 kids and Marty at work all day, it's not going as fast as I would like. Add on top of that the fact that 90% of our stuff has been in storage for almost 2 years and a lot of it is just gross and needs to be tossed out, and the fact that I have some nasty cough/chest congestion thing that hit me...I think it will be a slow process.
Molly has surprised us all by sleeping through the night every night since we got here. You see, she has never slept through the night. Usually it's once or twice a night that she is up and needs a little soothing. But since being here, she's slept through every night. It's a St. George miracle!
I haven't really taken any pictures. The only one I have taken was on my cell phone of the living room, asking my sister's and mom for their opinions on the ottoman:
It's still a work in progress. I have curtains and pictures to hang. It is the one room where I stopped unpacking random stuff and put it somewhat together, because I needed to do something pretty for a minute. Still waiting to unpack the tools we'll need to actually hang anything on the walls though.
Since we've been here, we've had to buy a new washing machine (apparently it rusted out in storage and isn't holding water and leaks all over), had to replace the kitchen faucet after it started spraying us from where the faucet and sink meet, found our drip system to water trees has a leak at the beginning and was spraying all over the yard, creating a nice pool out back (which could be beneficial I suppose), broke the verticle blinds on the kitchen sliding door (which are ugly anyways, so they'll come down and curtains will go up). My dad fixed the garage door, because the previous owner apparently backed into it and made it bend a little, he also put covers on junction boxes in the attic, strapped the water heater to the wall and mowed the lawn.
Our "to do list" is quite large, and growing every day.
But really, we're just so happy to have a place of our own, that it's fine with us!
More pictures will eventually come as we finish putting rooms together.
