Grandma Pam spent the day with us in the new house today. She was a godsend, bringing us some delicious food, helping to unpack boxes in the kitchen, and spending hours rehabilitating our mangy couch.
This might not look like much, but the back of the couch previously featured a large original art piece by Oliver (“Untitled,” Sharpie on Upholstery).
Ok, it’s a work-in-progress, but you can walk to the door now. (You can slide the slider back and forth between yesterday’s picture and today’s.)We’re spending more time than expected on the front porch; it’s lovely in the morning and evening. (Alas, the green couch in the background doesn’t fit where we were hoping it would go.)Ice cream brings the smiles.The water table wasn’t a one-time thing. Piper generally hops up into it anytime I play ball with her and she gets hot.
Maggie is getting rather clever. Conversation this evening, starting with my question:
“Should we go exploring after dinner?” “No!” “We can walk down the sidewalk and see where it goes. There are some trails in the park up there.” “That sounds long.” “Not too long!” “What about ticks?” “The ticks won’t get us.” “Hmm. But don’t you think mama would want to be with us for our very first hike at the new house? I think we should wait until she gets back on Friday.”
Our first full day in the new house was focused on our movers. They unloaded our 13 crates of stuff and hauled away a moldy piano left by the previous owner. Our spacious, spartan new home has become a cardboard labyrinth. It’s a bit overwhelming.
In the midst of the moving chaos, I found many moments of joy today playing with Piper and the kids in the back yard.
Sunrise over the house. Enjoying the piles emerging from the truck. The garage begins to overflow.Piper doesn’t know what to make of everything. Somehow we will find a place for everything. Grandma Pam’s stupendous pasties for dinner. We began decorating while Sarah is out of town. 😋After some awesome sprinting, Piper decided to curl up in the water table, happy as can be.
As posted previously, we received the keys and moved into the new house this morning. In short order, Sarah headed up north for her new job. She’ll be back on Friday, returning with Griffin. Until then, Oliver, Maggie, Piper, and I will hold down the fort.
Despite the many tasks we needed to tackle today, we had a lot of fun in the new place. My favorite part was throwing the ball with Piper in the back yard. She loved that she could sprint!
Maggie and Oliver, I suspect, had their best time when our friends came over and they played some epic games of hide-and-seek.
We’re all a bit ragged, but thrilled to be in the new house. Now we begin the epic task of unpacking, and, more importantly, finding all the things we need in the interim.
What was originally to be our closing day yesterday became the movers day. We were up until the wee hours of the night Wednesday night (as the timestamp on my last post attests). We awoke at about 5 AM to continue packing. And, we were still packing while the movers were here. (Despite purchasing 40 more boxes in the past 24 hours, we eventually ran out and had to stop.)
Fortunately, I think, for us, the movers underestimated how much stuff we had. They did a virtual walk-through with Sarah last week and determined that we would likely require eight “vaults.†Each vault is a crate on their truck. The truck holds five vaults which can then be offloaded into a storage facility until they can deliver them to the new house.
After a long, sweaty day, the moving team ended up filling 13 vaults. (I like to think that one vault was dedicated solely to my collection of roleplaying games.) We still have piles of junk to sort through, but it feels pretty good to have made it over this hurdle. We’ve got a few days to sort, clean, haul stuff to the dump, and get ready to hand over the keys on Monday. Until then, we’re sleeping on the floor. I’m writing this while sitting on the steps, since we have no chairs.
I’ll post a few pictures below.
The last of the moving trucks.
The leftovers (including the banner from Griffin and Maggie’s last day of school).
More leftovers.
Celebratory dinner on the patio at a neighborhood restaurant.
We stopped by the new house after dinner to pick up a few packages. The kids ran around to the back garden (not pictured) and exclaimed, “I’ve never seen anything more beautiful!â€
Oliver convinced Sarah to pitch her tent for him to sleep in.
Addendum: We went to bed early and slept long and hard. (My Fitbit says that I got almost nine hours, which is unheard of.) Feeling good today!
Closing will happen on Monday the 21st. We learned late this afternoon, however, that our movers couldn’t change their date. So they will be here at 8:30 tomorrow (actually, later this morning—I’m tapping this out at 1:00 AM). This was our original plan, but we lost many hours of packing time making urgent phone calls to keep the sale and purchase on track. So many things to sign!
The long and short of it is that we’re not ready for the movers, but hopefully we haven’t missed anything big. We’ll be counting on our friends to load up a lot of the remaining stuff on Sunday so we can clear out on Monday morning.
We never would have made it if Sarah’s mom didn’t join us for the last 36 hour push. Thank you, Pam!
Last night in a bed until next week. Too bad it’s only for a few hours. Clock is ticking!
The newest member of our family is a robot vacuum cleaner. Piper has kept her distance until this morning when she realized that she might be able to play with the interloper.
I would be remiss not to mention how infatuated we are with the new cleaner—known as “Robo 3000” in our house. (The number changes depending who is saying it.) It is actually a “eufy” RoboVac 11S by Anker. It was one of the cheapest we could find but it has been a household revolution.
Finally got some of the kids’ artwork hung in our basement work space. The kids are calling it the Hallway Museum Many of these pieces were done with @createveryday the past couple of years. They really make the space bright and cheerful
Like so many others, I have spent far more time at home over the past six months than usual. Our house wasn’t organized with a workspace for me. We live so close to my school that I normally do almost all of my work there. If I need to take care of a few things at home, I can use my laptop on the couch or at the dining room table. That’s fine for occasional use, but doesn’t cut it if I need to be teaching classes and attending meetings on-line for many hours a day.
Last spring I spent a bit of time improving the small desk in the basement. I put in a keyboard tray, and bought a wireless split keyboard and mouse. This improved the ergonomics enormously. The room, however, was cramped because it doubles as our guest bedroom and we had a pretty enormous bed taking up most of the space. Moreover, the walls were dinged up pretty badly and the existing shade of green made me look a bit ghoulish on video. In August, therefore, we got rid of the bed, picked up an Ikea convertible sofa, and repainted the whole room to be a calm shade of bluish gray.
We recently replaced the medicine cabinet in our bathroom (while cursing manufacturers of cheap fiberboard accessories that begin disintegrating after your first shower). The kids decided to hang some artwork in the wall cavity behind the new cabinet, hoping that someone will find them in “three hundred years.”
The secret cavity
Close-ups. One each by Griffin, Maggie, and Oliver.Â
The cabinet installed
Who could know that behind these mirrors lies a cache of secret art?
Many of these pieces were done with 
