Our NEW (permanent?) Window!

Well, to say that we have a LOT to catch up on since Easter is an understatement, I think. Since then there has been quite a bit of change going on with the VB family. We have spent the past couple of months hunting for a home to call OURS for the first time. After seeing about 40 or so places, we finally submitted an offer on one that we really liked - it had just about everything on our wish list. The excitement and whirlwind came during the next few weeks after the offer was accepted. To say that Dave was stressed in dealing with everything needed to close - financing complications, down payment, inspections, securing homeowners insurance, and many other details to figure out - is probably an understatement.

But on June 15, after all was said and done, we became official homeowners! Here is our new place, front and back:



The first couple of weeks were spent trying to both pack all of our (tons and tons of) stuff and complete some of the painting we wanted to do before moving in. I now vow to never ever put wallpaper up anywhere at anytime. Removing it is NOT fun - or easy. We painted most of the basement and then wanted to do Ella's room upstairs as well. Then new carpet was installed into all of these areas just before we moved in. Ella was a great little helper as you can tell!




Here she is painting and then showing off her family portrait artwork:



Here are a couple of pictures of how the rooms looked when most of the painting was done -

The basement main living area: the baseboards and trim still need to be put back up and carpet has since been installed. What a difference!


The basement bedroom AKA "the red carpet room" as named by my sister Annette. Sorry Annette, the red carpet is no longer. I'm sure you are sad. I'm not. :)


And finally, Ella's room: We were pretty thrilled when this carpet came up to see that there was some pretty nice hardwood floors underneath. That gives us a lot of options for what we might do in the future in some of the other areas of the house.



So after all of that work was done, it was time for our big move. HUGE thanks to a wonderful group of people from church, we had everything moved into our new home on Friday, June 26. It was a long and tiring day, but don't know how we could have done it without so many people giving their time and energy to help us.

So now we are slowly but surely getting all of the boxes unpacked and putting a few things into place. We have quite a ways to go yet until we are really settled in, but hopefully we'll get there soon. For now, we are enjoying our new windows and slowly but surely are feeling at "home." I'm still not sure if I can really believe that we actually might finally be settled somewhere. If I can remember and count correctly, I think we have lived in seven different homes in our 8 years of marriage. This is number eight. Ella has lived in three in her five years. This would be her fourth. So this is definitely a first for us. And I think I can admit that it feels pretty darned good. Everyone is invited to our box burning party. :)