Our New House

So, it's been a little while. I forgot to warn you that we were moving and I might not be able to post for a few days. We decided not to keep our cable hookup for internet, so we use only the internet access at the school. Kind of inconvenient, but it saves us a hundred bucks a month.

Here are some random thoughts about my new house:

It's really nice! About 40 years old, but fairly well taken care of. I think the decor in the kitchen is original, but now that it's forty years later, it looks retro, and I think it's pretty cool.

We have a fire place and a big living room. The house is not THAT big by most standards (about 1400 sq. ft), but it's so much bigger than the 1,000 sq ft we were living in before. It feels like there is elbow room and space to move around.

There's a fenced back yard and a patio. Six girls (all Biola students) lived in the house, and planted about 10 rose bushes--and they are all in full bloom--beautiful!! I am so excited to have the beautiful landscaping, without the work! Of course, I will try to maintain with watering and weeding, but the hard part is already done.

We have a washer and dryer--whoopee!! No more trotting up and down the stairs to the laundry room. And if I want to start a load before going to bed and finish it in the morning, so be it. No more scrambling for the washer and washing at odd times in order to get one.

Such a huge blessing too: the girls who lived there before us left us a LOT of stuff: the washer and dryer--gave it to us!! An old set, but works great. And, I think they'd gone to SAM's or Costco, b/c when I walked into the laundry room there was: a big box 3/4 full of Tide, a full bottle of Downy, 2 industrial size boxes of Glad cling wrap, 3 boxes of Ziploc freezer bags, 1 box of regular Ziploc sandwich bags, a gallon bottle of Palmolive, and various other half-used cleaning supplies: 409, CLR, etc. I am so excited!! We walked into the bathroom and there was a card welcoming us, and they included pertinent info about trash and street-sweeping days, AND they organized all the house keys and left them for us. To top it off, they left us a vase filled with roses from the back yard--how sweet is that?! We knew 3 of them from church, and they were all nice. And most importantly, the place was pretty spotless--what you'd expect, but always nice to walk into. And from talking to the girls, we found out that they stayed up til the day before we moved in, so I know they were busy.

We had to move in the middle of the week, as that's when the first of the month hit. So amid moving boxes, I had to get ready for work on Thursday, and let someone else do all the actual moving. Thankfully, Frank got 3 of his friends from class to help move the big stuff and we were in the new house by Thursday nite--amid a HUGE mess. Ugh. Then I still had to go work on Friday--but Biola goes to half Fridays during the summer, so I got to come home early. God Bless my husband. While I was at work on Friday and then on Saturday I had to go to an out of town wedding; he singlehandedly unpacked and/or organized every box in our new place! So when I got home at 5 on Saturday, it looked like a house!!! Yahoo! and I didn't have to do that much. What's bad, is then I conked on the couch for about an hour out of exhaustion. Poor Frank, like the Energizer Bunny--just kept going and going...

The only sad thing is, we only get the house for a year...and rent is so expensive that we are looking to sublet the 3rd bedroom to 2 philosophy majors--so that we can afford to live there, and Frank can have some "philosophical interaction". So far we've had interest from 3 guys--so hopefully we can get renters quick, as rent is: (*drumroll please), a whopping $2050/month!! Aghhh!! I guess it's a good thing we finish in a year...just hope I don't get too attached to the new house. I already know that I'll miss it terribly. Oh well, I'll enjoy it while I'm here--makes our stay here much more pleasant.

But, our house looks wonderful! And I walked to work this morning!--about 3/4 of a mile; got there in 15 minutes--what I normally would've spent driving. I will post pics as soon as I get them loaded to the computer.

So that was my week...how 'bout yours?

:o)