We're In

We're in our new house! Well we've been in. We closed on the house a few weeks ago. However, since then we've been working our tails off getting the house ready to move into. All of this effort comes at expense of blogging about the kids. Feat not because I've taken notes and I'll fill in the blanks when I can.

The day we closed on the house we already started on a project; painting Alyce's room. For the longest time we've been building up the new house to Alyce by telling her she got to pick the color of her room. Almost since leaving our old house Alyce has asked for a dark purple room. Not "pinky purple" like her old room. She wanted "dark purple". Of course Mom and I aren't going to give Alyce unfettered access to the paint chips at Lowe's but mom picked a color Alyce was happy with.

The first time Alyce saw her painted room it was only half finished. Specifically it was only cut in. Alyce said to me later that I missed a lot of places with the paint in her room; everyone's a critic. A few days later when finished Alyce gasped when she walked into her room and then danced in circles around her room.

After closing we grabbed the kids and went out to the new house. We wanted to give them a chance to decompress in their new house. Both Alyce and Luke quickly took to the new house. They ran around in circles, jumped, and rolled on the floor. Seeing their excitement made living in the apartment worth it.

Under Construction

I've commented in the past about our new house being under construction.  Luckily things are progressing faster than we anticipated and we are closing on our new house January 17th.  At present the exterior of the house is finished, the interior walls are finished, and the cabinetry is being installed.  There is lots of work to be done but the excitement is building.

One downfall of the house being mostly done is that it is now under lock and key.  Once the garage door is installed and interior materials delivered the builder has the doors locked to prevent those items from walking away.  The builder's hours are from 6:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. so if we want to take a look at the progress we have to do it between those hours.  Instead of stopping by the house twice a week we now only go once a week during lunch.

Each week we bring the kids with us so they can take a look at what their new rooms are going to be like.  Alyce gets a lot out of this and Luke likes to come along for the ride.  Each time we are on the property we are supposed to wear hard hats and I can only remember one time that we've actually done it.  The hard hats are in the building office and more often than not we looked at the house after business hours thus no hats.  The one time we got hard hats we managed to get a picture of Luke and Alyce wearing them and it was so cute!  Luke looked especially happy to be wearing his.

We're Moving

Our family has big big news!  We're moving!  The story leading up to this point is a long one.  I haven't commented on any aspect of it up to this point because we weren't sure it was going to happen.

All of this started last February.  Mom and I decided that it was time to look for a bigger house.  We were fitting into the one we had well enough but there were certain aspects of our current house that we wanted to change.  So we put in a contract to build a house, however there was one problem we hadn't sold our house.  So we quickly got our house on the market with the hopes of it selling quickly.  We had showings, and showings, and showings, and showings but no contracts.  Then in early September we finally got a contract and so began the process of moving out of our house.  Last weekend we moved out.

While the new house is being built we need a place to live.  For the next five months the family is living in a 2+ bedroom apartment on the 3rd floor without a fenced in yard.  By 2+ the kids have bedrooms but Mom and I are living in the loft of the apartment.  Being on the 3rd floor without a fenced in yard at the moment is annoying but taking the dog out at 7:00 a.m. mid January will be brutal.

Today we cleared the final contingency and gave our deposit to the builder.  Ground will be broken sometime this week and our new home will be completed hopefully by the end of January.