our house

we closed on the house yesterday. i guess i should say "our house" but it all seems quite surreal right now. everything seemed to go smoothly from what "property virgins" would know about purchasing a house.

we got some lunch after closing and took it to our house. of course there was nothing to sit on but the floor but we made do. js had the foresight to call all of the utility companies and change those into our name, so we had power, water, gas, etc.

we did some cleaning and painted some squares on the walls to see what colors the walls will be. it's funny to me that the paint swatches that come from the hardware store are quite different from what they look like on the wall. i know that i will pick something eventually but i'm quite torn between two colors right now for our bedroom.

pbs' bedroom was easy. the color is called rain cloud and is kind of a blue-gray. but the best part will be the wall with half painted in magnetic and chalkboard paints. i think he will have a lot of fun with that! if he doesn't, i know i will!

so we have a house now and are realizing that there is so much to do. we slept in our apartment last night and found it odd that we own a house and we're not staying there. with every other move we've made, we rented the space and were in it on the same day but we didn't have the option of making changes and improvements. now we have a place of our own and won't be staying there until mother's day but we are making changes and improvements.

our house is a very, very, very fine house...

moving memories

as i posted the other day, everything is happening all at once. how do people do this all the time? in the almost ten years js and i have been married, we have moved five times, not including this upcoming move to a house. that's almost once every two years! three of those have been cross country moves.

we're not military. we're not government employees that have to move with the job. i guess it comes with going to school and getting jobs in different parts of the country. why do i feel as if we've moved more than the "normal" american family? is it because both of us grew up in pretty much one house from the time we were born? i know that my parents moved when i was six months old to the house where i grew up, but otherwise there was no moving around.

this will be the third home for pbs. he's only two! i'm sure he doesn't remember our west coast home and may not remember our current home but we will. we have many pictures and videos of both of those places. he'll probably remember the pictures more than the physical home itself. although he still talks about a trip we took to florida a few months ago with my parents. maybe he will remember more than i think he will.

we will make this new house our home and create new memories. eventually, we might decide to move again but hopefully not in the near future. although i'm hesitant about this move, i am excited to start a new chapter in our lives. so now we just have to move the memories that we already have and make room for new ones.

so fast but so slow

everything seems to be happening so fast but also at a snail's pace. js has just about packed everything in our apartment. i'm a little concerned about this since we don't actually move for another three weeks. he's packed the crock pot, most of our dishes, some pots and pans. we're trying to eat everything that's in the fridge, pantry and freezer so that we don't have to move it. i know this is the way things happen in a move but it just seems to be happening so fast.

on the other hand, we seem to be wishing away our time and it's crawling at the same speed that paint dries. we have so many things that we need to and want to do in the new house. i am pretty overwhelmed with everything that is going on.

eventually we will be settled in the new house and many of the needs and wants will be taken care of pretty quickly. there will always be something that needs to be done or that we want to make better. in time we will be able to do those things. for now, we just need to keep plugging away at what needs to be done in the present and then we can focus on other things. if only time wouldn't seem to speed up when we get so busy and slow down when we want it to go faster. if only time would keep a steady pace...

getting ready

i feel like we're always getting ready for something. it could be as routine as getting ready for work, church, outings, dinner. or it could be as complex as getting ready for a wedding, marriage, a new baby, a big move. how we handle all of the complex getting ready kind of reflects how we deal with the routine getting ready.

i am pretty laid back in my approach to getting ready on a daily basis. that's not to say that i don't have a routine. i do have a routine that i don't like to stray too far from but i do like to take my time and enjoy the mundane qualities of my routine. so in the more complex getting ready scenarios, i tend to take my time in doing research and gathering any supplies that i might need.

an example of this would be our upcoming move. i know i have already stated that i have a severe aversion to packing, but i seem to love planning. i think i picked this trait up from my father. he is a retired computer scheduler for the railroad. his scheduling spilled over into every part of his life. growing up, i remember getting itineraries when we would go on family vacations that had things lined up for every second of every day. i like to know what's going to happen and when. but as far as our upcoming move, i seem to not have any idea what's going on.

js has a list and has been sticking to it. he has been bringing home boxes from work, packing, calling all the important people/places, changing addresses, etc. for every other move we've made, i brought home lots of boxes from work. but since i'm home with pbs, i'm at a loss. my contribution this time is picking paint colors, keeping pbs out of everything, cleaning and some packing. i don't feel like it's enough. i guess i'm having a hard time getting ready for our move this time.

box city here we come

we've been packing some lately. when we moved from the east coast to the west coast and then back again we joked that we had box city in our living room. it's happening again. slowly but surely we are starting to have box city in our living room. the picture below only shows some of the boxes. there are three bookshelves with boxes on them as well.

some of the boxes that we, i mean js, has packed.
diaper boxes work very well for books.

i have a severe aversion to packing and would rather find anything else to do. take yesterday as an example. pbs asked to pack a box in the morning. so we packed up some dvds. js has packed all of our books and now our shelves are bare, except for the boxes. i decided to make marshmallows in the shape of easter bunnies and carrots. now tell me how is that helping with the packing?

we do have several boxes that are still packed from the cross-country move two years ago. that helps. i just get completely overwhelmed and end up not knowing where to start, where to turn, what to do next, etc. 

this move is different because it is a local move. i don't remember the last local move we made. i must have blocked it out because i know there was one in between our first move to the east coast and then to the west coast. i didn't even realize how very soon we will actually be moving until just the other day. we're moving into our house over mother's day weekend. (that's a joke between js and me that i will save for another post.) i really don't mind moving on mother's day. i just like to tease js about it. :)

so we have packing, cleaning, cleaning, painting, unpacking and whatever else comes our way to do over the next few weeks. i think we're going to be pretty busy and very tired. i also think we're going to be very excited and nervous to be in a house. all in all, i think we will finally feel like we are home.