Busy weekend

We had our niece Paige's 8th birthday party Friday night. It was a good time, as always. It was cute, Paige & her 2 neighbor friends were on the porch showing off their dance moves for the rest of us. Mia even joined in for a bit.Saturday was MU's homecoming, so that makes for a long, albeit super fun, day. We got to Columbia around 10:30 and went straight to Trops for our morning breakfast drink. Yum - that place is great - what other bar will give you a frozen fruity drink in a to-go cup?!? We then went tailgate-hopping, and then into the stadium to watch our Tigers kick some Texas Tech butt. Lots of fun!!

Today we went to the pumpkin patch with Steve & Kate. Sadly, there were not a lot of big pumpkins to choose from, but we were able to find some to purchase. (Notice the curious sets of eyes in the windows)

After we got home, I decided to get some more painting done. We now have a rust-colored accent wall in our kitchen. It looks great - I'm so glad to have it finished. Also got the yellow kitchen paint back out and touched it up. Phew, check those items off the to-do list!

Grass & Shutters

Sorry I've been slow to post - work is BUSY!

Anyway, they laid our sod on Thursday - it finally looks like a real home from the outside. The sod is a little stripey, but hopefully it will fill in nicely and will be pretty when Spring rolls around. Jason has been dutifully watering it daily, so we'll see!

Our new shutters also arrived yesterday - we will officially have brown shutters to match our brown door. Goodbye blue shutters. Jason hung the first set tonight on the porch, so now the neighbors probably really think we're nuts because we have 2 sets of blue and 1 set of brown. Ah well, they'll see the finished product in no time.

Jason is currently hooking up the second cable line to the box so we can have our full-fledged DVR back. Right now we can only record what we're watching. Looking forward to recording shows to watch later. How did we survive our whole lives without this technology??

Getting settled

Well, moving day has come and gone. It went off without a hitch - our friends are truly the best! We moved an entire POD in about 25 minutes Friday night and the other Saturday morning in about an hour. It was great. Thanks again to everyone who helped us!! We had no mishaps and nothing was broken (except for the crock pot that I broke - oops!).

We LOVE our house - we can't get over how much space we have. I recommend to every new homeowner to first live in a small, cramped place, and then your next modest-sized home will seem HUGE to you!

We have a lot of work to do still, but Jason was off today, so he got some shelves hung in the garage, hung a bunch of blinds (it was a little uncomfortable having NONE of the windows covered - at least now about 1/2 of them are, including our bedroom & living room) and bought our mailbox.

We're still waiting for our grass, but we're thinking it'll be tomorrow. Today they seeded & strawed our back yard, so that's a start. We are now on a mission for new couches & a kitchen table, among other things. Ah, the joys of home ownership!

Here are some pictures of the dining room:

Living room (temporary set-up, as I said, we're going to buy new couches):

Now, I feel like the living room pictures need a little explanation. For you football fans, Jason had Dallas in his survivor pool, and I happened to be taking pictures of the living room during the last few seconds of the game. The picture on the left is him celebrating the field goal (notice Willie cowering in the foreground), then the one on the right is after they said a timeout was called before the kick and they'd have to re-do it. Football season is certainly exciting around here!!

Countdown: 1 day

Well, we had our walkthrough yesterday, and it went really well. There are a few things on their list to fix or touch up, but it really wasn't that bad. There was a painter there who was super nice - he left some touch up paint & some brushes (the standard new home package) AND he was talking to us about buying "good" rollers, so he went out to his truck and got one for us. THEN we were asking where to buy the stain he used for his spindles so Mert can make us a matching baby gate (for our NIECE, don't get any ideas!), and he said he had made the concoction himself to match our floors, but would be happy to come back and make us more when we need him to. Wow! You just don't get that kind of service with the big corporate-types.

The walkthrough ended with Robyn (our walkthrough lady) asking me for a hug. Guess she thought it went well too.

My parents left town this morning, so tonight we're going to load up Big Blue with our boxes so she'll be raring to go tomorrow morning. Jason, Steve & Darrin are going to start on the big stuff while I go to work, then I think some people might come over Friday night to get the moving party started!

Countdown: 2 Days

So, we have our walkthrough this morning. We're looking forward to seeing it all cleaned up and pretty. We tried to go last night because I might need to leave before the walkthrough is over, but the cleaning lady was there and wouldn't let us in. That's OK, more to be excited about today.

However, the cleaning lady was taking a break when we got there, which meant she was sitting on the doorstep in our garage leading into the house SMOKING! We were ticked - our whole garage reeked of smoke. PLUS, she had the door leading to the laundry room open, so who knows what it smells like inside. We are not happy. That is the first thing we're going to say when we get there this morning - "smells like smoke, fix it." We had already made the "no smoking in the garage" rule for our friends the other night at our impromtu gathering - stinks that the cleaning lady was doing it!

Countdown: 4 days

We went out Friday night and "accidentally" had our first gathering at the new house. We painted the second coat on the last wall of the hall bath, and several (9, to be exact) of our friends "stopped by" and hung out with us in our driveway when we were finished....until about 1:00am. It was lots of fun, but apparently we got caught. We went Saturday to put the second coat on the bedroom walls, and the cleaning lady was there. Apparently her husband does security for Lucas Homes and saw all of our cars there - oops! Ah well, what can they do, tell us not to do it again? No problem because in just 4 short days we will own that pile of bricks!!

They put the carpet in Friday and re-hung most of the interior doors. As I mentioned, they were cleaning Saturday & I think yesterday too. We have our walkthrough Wednesday morning, so pretty much everything should be finished by then. Yay!

First driveway party:

Freshly carpeted living room: