Happy Birthday Gabby

Yesterday, August 26th, was Gabby's fourth birthday. Our beautiful niece was born the same year as Mike and I were married so it's sort of easy to remember how old she is. We bought her her yearly winter jacket again, a cute Patagonia Down Sweater. We called and said happy birthday but I think she was more interested in putting on the nail polish and lipstick that we also sent her.

Home

We finally feel like it's home. Well, at least I do. When I get home, I don't see a list of projects still left to complete but I see my house. I can relax and chill now that everything is done. It's great to take bike rides straight from the house and to just hang out there.

Sorry to everyone that missed the party, we know how Saturdays and summers can be. No worries, we have full faith that all of you will be there there sometime soon. We had a good time, lots of food, lots of dogs running around.

Now that life has seemed to settle down, at least for a couple of weeks, we are ramping up our plans for the fall. We are heading to Moab over Labor day so we can absolutely fry ourselves. But it'll be fun as always, anyone else wanna come? Then it's off to LOTOJA (that's Logan to Jackson, a 200+ mile road bike race for those of you who don't know) on September 6th for Mike. I'm his support vehicle while he rides. Then a friend's wedding, search and rescue training at the City of Rocks in Idaho, and mom and dad visiting at some point. We love chaos don't we! Soon it'll be full blown fall and then the snow falls!

We'll keep you updated on our adventures!

Finally, pictures!

It's been a long time coming, but we've finally finished setting up the house! All the pictures are hung and the boxes unpacked. It's really starting to feel like home. London is being such a great dog, very adaptable to the new space. Last night he was just laying on the floor like he always does without great concern. He never had any problems during the move, in fact, he is better behaved and seems to genuinely be happy. He hasn't lashed out, chewed anything up, had accidents in the house, or other typical dog stress responses. Maybe he is more tired from following us around every day and night as we finish getting everything set up. If we walk anywhere, so does he. And we've been walking a lot. So, without further ado, here is the house! Though you can't truly appreciate it unless you are actually there (hint, hint, come visit!)

This is the front of the house. Kinda plain right now, but I think we will put some skis on top of the garage.

Living room. It's so nice and open that I can't take a picture of the whole thing. But anyway, to the far right is another couch and you can see on the side of the picture, there is a fireplace.

This is the view from the living room into the kitchen. It's basically one big room, which we love.

Here is a picture from the kitchen back into the living room.

Master Bedroom, can't see through the windows in this picture but there are mountains right outside!

Master closet. If you can see, it's freaking huge. The bathroom is off to the right, which is also freaking huge.

Guest Bedroom. Also known as April's room. But anyone else can stay there too.

Office. Nothing special here, a bunch of books and a desk. You can see the big rock retaining wall out the windows.

Settling In, Having a Party

We are getting pretty well settled in now, all there is left to do is hang pictures and get decorations up, and clean the house. We are loving the house a ton and I'm having a great time organizing, as you all know how much I love to do that. We are having a little sump pump problem but we should have that resolved soon. Eventually we will need to get some paint on the very white walls but we will get to that whenever we get to it.
Having a party next Saturday, August 16th, as a housewarming. I hate the term housewarming because it implies that we need gifts (which we really don't) so we'll call it the "Check out our new digs". Details are: bring a side dish, dessert, or drink to share and bring your own meat. I will provide buns and burger toppings (tomatoes, onions, lettuce, etc). Starting around 6pm. We'll have some yard games and feel free to bring kids. Hope to see you there!

Reflections

As hard as it is, I'd like to step back for a moment and reevaluate the last couple of weeks now that we are in our new house. First of all, we love it. I personally love it more than I thought that I would. It is quiet and dark and in a great neighborhood and the house is huge! We haven't found the location to be very inconvenient at all. A quick 10 minute drive to almost anywhere, as found out by the many runs to home depot already. But, I'd like to share with you some of my thoughts about our situation and how things went.

I got a little frustrated about the whole house buying experience due to the lack in communication by all of the many parties involved. But you know what? As my dad always says, "It always works out". Though stressful, we got out in time for our renters to move in and we had just enough help to make it work. It worked out. And really, there are far many people in far worse situations than buying a really big house in a great location. And that leads me to my second thought: Boy, do I have it good! I was starting to feel kinda bad because I was being a big whiner about the delay and timing when I started to unload my many many belongings into my very very nice and big house. Shouldn't I be using my fortunes for better things than for myself? Yes, and that leads to my third thought: Come to our house! We want to have our house open to anyone and everyone. Need a place to stay? Wanna hang out for a bit? Need to host a party? Visiting for a bit? Having a meeting? Come to our house. We are very adamant about making sure that everyone knows that our door is always open to everyone. When I was growing up, my mom and dad had that same theory, and people would really just walk in the door anytime. Forget the door bell, just walk right in!

Though I feel bad about the amount of things I own and have that so many other people don't have in this world, I will justify and redeem myself by giving back to the community and using my fortune for other things. And learn that I should stop whining about the little things...

Again, I'll post pics when I find the power cord, which I hope to unpack tonight. Come visit, our house is always open!

We're In!

Yesterday, Thursday, we signed our closing papers at 11am and finished moving everything into the new house at 11pm (and worked in between that time too). I'd show you pictures but I can't find the cord for the camera so you'll have to wait until I unpack that particular box. Still need a little help moving individual boxes from the garage to the appropriate rooms and a little bit of furniture but at least everything is at the new place!

Thursday

I think that we are actually closing on Thursday! Yes, tomorrow. Still waiting for them to give the actual go ahead but that's more for us because things have changed so much, we don't believe anything the first time it's said. But I'm going to be the glass half full person today and say, yes, we are closing on Thursday! We still have to rush to have everything out of the house by Thursday evening in order to let our renters move in on Friday, but I think we can do it with a little help from our friends. (Can anyone say "Wonder Years"). Anyway, we are pretty much camping in our own house right now and after tonight we'll have nothing in the house at all, but a little in the garage. Thursday morning the carpet cleaners come and after we sign paperwork, we will run over to our old house and move the trailers and a couple of trucks with our remaining stuff over to the new house. We will be unpacking when we can, but just need the "camping" supplies for the first few nights in the new house. By the weekend we'll be unpacked and returning the trailers to our friends that so graciously lent them to us.