bon voyage

Or more like bon petite voyage a few miles down the road to our new house.

So I think last week and this week might just be one of those precious capsules of time that we just sort of lure into a dark and damp enclosure, quickly lock up and chuck the key forever. And ever. Everyone moves...we aren't special. I just never ever want to do it again. Or I might be tempted into looking into these magical creatures I've heard so much about...professional movers.

 ... many, many boxes. And many things unboxed.

I'll let you guess how many seconds it took for helper Rhett to push that appliance dolly down the ramp-o-fun and conveniently onto Rad (who was fine, just angry)...

Fine, I'll tell you: one.

Also, this was fun.

All of our refrigerator condiments (sizes: mostly Costco)  spilled all over the floors, walls and a rogue splash on the ceiling. Smell: Strong.

Story: About an exact .3 seconds before we closed the proverbial and literal door to the old house, the very last box, full of those pesky refrigerator condiments, had it's bottom and all of it's contents crash to the floor. It might have been a poor tape job (Julia) or the two full gallons of milk stacked on top of it before it was carried out (Jake) but either way the soy sauce it the fan. Thank the Lysol creators and give them all the gold stars because thankfully clean up wasn't awful and the soy/BBQ/ranch/hot sauce smell didn't linger.

So professional movers...give us a call in about 10 years. (We did have a wonderful turn out of friends to help us load up and unload the truck and we totally realized how unworthy we are of our awesome amigos.)

We've been in the new house about two weeks and ever SO slowly, things are coming back together.
Luckily, Rhett had families best interest at heart and got to work unpacking all of our Christmas decorations immediately. So, we're on the festive ball bright and early this year.

The inside of the new house is painted alllllll sorts of delightful colors (bright purple, beige, beige, SO MUCH BEIGE) and all other finishes in the house are more brown-ish beige because for the love of beige with pops of more beige.

In a month or so we'll start putting together the numbers for some of the projects we need to do (flooring, trim, paint, counters, miscellaneous electrical) but we are really looking forward to taking a year off and doing nothing major to the house. The benefit of moving into a home with gross-ish carpet and old, touched up paint is that I just really don't care how many kids come charging through. We welcome all dirty finger prints...now's the time to get it out of your systems guys.

In case any inquiring minds want to know why we moved, let me fill in the details. Rad thinks we moved because our old house ran out of batteries. He also exclusively calls the new house the "hotel."
Bullet points seem appropriate.

- We had a lot a lot of equity in our home. We also have a sizable amount of student loans/medical and some credit card debt which our equity will pay basically completely off.

- We needed a little more space. Our old house didn't have a good play space for the boys. We were using a bedroom but now we have a HUGE loft space. It's literally house hunters heaven.

- The street we lived on was...not a place where we wanted to long term raise the boys. Let's leave it at that.

We had the smallest area of where we would really even consider moving and it was anywhere within a block or two of our best family friends, the Berner's. And we got it! It's one reason we fought so hard for this house when we decided to go ahead and purchase it after our first offer fell through. So much paper work, so many hoops, SO MUCH STRESS. I lost 10 pounds, cringe. But now that we're here, the feeling of community and having the kids play all the time is so absolutely worth it. We really have felt like this home completes our family and we know we used a lot of our miracles up getting it. Also, our old house closes in a few days (!!!) so woot woots all around.

I'll do a full house tour soon-ish. Until then thanks for your patience and I hope you've enjoyed the breather & break from Julia & Co.

platonic X and one-armed O.