Tuesday - our new home

Per the request of a sibling here are photos (Taken with a phone my battery died) of our new house. Before you get to see them (unless you skip this part) I wanted to give a little back story on how we moved here. Back in August Chris came home from school earlier than usual and said lets go. We were eating dinner at a friends house (the Flints you will probably hear more about them since they will be our house neighbor in 2 weeks). I was like ok. we drove and he wanted to go somewhere and finally I figured out we were going to look at a new place to live. I was very adamant on not looking anywhere. Drake had be wonderful to us. The rent was great. The Drake people were awesome. We live in a branch with few people Chris was recently called as the YM president, I'm in RS. There was just no way I was going to move. Plus it was further away from school etc. Even after looking at them I still had no desire to move. We decided to put in our application (to make Chris happy) and wait and see what happened. Did I mention these are brand new town-homes? That there is no smoking anywhere in the community, no alcohol outside, and no partying after 11pm at night? We think they are trying to cater to the LDS students that head out here for med-school and law-school. We went to eat at the Flints house and they thought we should totally do it. I was still very unwilling to budge on my decision of no moving! fast forward 4 to 6 weeks Chris asks me to call and check on the application. I must admit I had not really thought about it since we put in our papers. I call and we only had 1 thing that needed to be done. I went and took care of it. Then we find out guess what out of over 200 applicants we are one of the lucky 90. Well I managed to irk Chris pretty good when I said I had not thought or prayed about it since we dropped off papers. Well after lots of thought etc we decided it was the right call to move. All the issues I had in my way earlier were gone. We planned to move in end of October. I went and told our Landlord that we would be leaving and he was so happy for us in getting a better place for our family., These mid-west people are really weird, they are more excited about the person than there bottom line. Then Chris went in later that day and asked if we could move in during fall break (about 2 weeks away) they said sure and even prorated our rent! I will never speak ill of Drake ever! So we boxed up. Thursday the 13th we loaded up the truck with the wonderful help of many people. And Friday morning we got our keys and moved in. We finished the cleaning Saturday afternoon at the old house. I have never been so happy to be done cleaning! Now were are doing well at being all done unpacking here thanks to Chris. He was amazing! He would not let me do very much due to my "condition" and never said a poor word against me. So thankful for him.

10 things I've learned about moving (again)

1. don't do it while pregnant. Your crazy whacked out anyway why add more stress and also why watch people move you in when you can't do it.

2. invite the missionaries over for dinner the night your packing the truck. It gives you at least 2 extra bodies and in our case 4! It was so nice to have extra help

3. Label all boxes with items and Date. needless to say we found a box of spices that we packed in Las Vegas and lost when we moved here. Now we have lots of the same thing.

4. Have a place for your kids to go so you can pack/clean/unpack move etc. We were so lucky for all of the wonderful help we received. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!

5. Don't sleep on the ground the night before you move. . . long story short air mattress with a hole. not a fun last night in our "old" house.

6. Have a wonderful husband! I honestly cannot say how much I am thankful for Chris and everything he has done the last few days and weeks etc. He had to tell me to stay away form the boxes multiple times. and even when I was out getting food he was still putting things away. Such a great man that I am so lucky to have.

7. Expect your kids to feel your stress and act out. anyone who says that kids can not tell we are stressed is wrong. I cannot tell you how chaotic our houses have been the last little while. I'm so glad that we are back to school etc and getting into normal patterns again.

8. Throw stuff away. we can actually say that we moved less this time than the last time. Plus we have tossed stuff since arriving here as well. Sometimes you just need to let junk go! (we are giving our church book collection back to my parents at Christmas time so if you want any you better come look now, yes Jill I figured you, rob and my parents could have a big fight over who gets what at Christmas time ;) )

9. Have something for the kids to do. I don't know how we managed this, but we had the kids toys taken to the playroom very quickly and then sent the kids off. It worked great!!

10. Have friends! They are the first ones to help you load the truck, they watch your kids, they feed you food, they come unload your truck the next day, they are excited for you, and they are sad you are moving further away. Friends are great and we are so lucky to have made as many as we have during our time here. THANKS AGAIN!!!! we couldn't have done it without you!

now what you've been waiting for. Let me remind you we moved from a 2 bedroom (living room with walls and a door makes 3) 1 bathroom house to what you will see below. Although I didn't get a house shot. It is yellow with stones around the 2 car garage! 

Here is the view inside the front door. Our family room then dining room.

Here is the kitchen. There is a dishwasher (who's name is not Chris) and you can kind of make out the large cupboard to the left of the photo.

Some how I managed to not take a photo of our room, but I got one of my closet. Funny. Our room is right off the hallway. that leads to the garage.

 Through the closet is our very own bathroom!!!! I'm so excited about this!

 Here is the hallway leading to the garage. the last door on the left is our 1/2 bath. the one before it is our heating unit etc. just to the left is our bedroom door to the right is our closet/pantry. and right behind me is the kitchen.

Here are the stairs leading up. this is just to the right as you enter the house.

at the top of the stairs is this! bathroom number 2.5!!!! I'm a little crazy I know.

this is our hallway to the laundry room. The first door on the right is the linen closet!!! the 2nd one is another electrical closet of some sort. and there is my new laundry room on the 2nd floor.

 Here is my massive laundry room. It would be awesome to find some cheap table to fold laundry here but really who am I kidding. I would never fold laundry without watching something on TV or netflix.

 a random view down the stairs

 This is the playroom/guestroom. I cannot tell you how nice it has been (the past 4 days) to say kids go up to the playroom and play. It is actually quite large and has a double closet. so great storage space

This is Annmarie and the new baby's room. It is the smallest in the house but all that goes in them are beds and dressers (which all fit in the closet!)

Then this monstrous thing is the boys room. There is no trouble getting all 3 beds in (1 set of bunks and 1 single) then to the right is . . . 

The most massive closet I've ever seen. It has shelves on 2 sides and easily fits there dressers in it with loads and loads of room to spare. This would make a great bedroom, if there was a window.

once again sorry for the photo quality. Maybe someday I'll remember to charge the battery.