New Homeowners

Friday night we had access to our new house. We ate Taco Cabana on the back patio and marveled that we were sitting on OUR patio! We also went hunting for things left behind and things that needed to be done over the course of the weekend.

Our seller left a variety of things in the fridge including champagne and some really pretty glasses, some coffee and two coffee mugs with sugar in the cabinet and more, including an ironing board, TV tray, gold brick (random!), a quarter, plungers (ew), saran wrap and other handy kitchen items, a picture in the master bedroom (we later found a nice big hole behind that picture thank-you-very-much), a fan, a beware of dog sign (ready for our Doberman ;) ) and a trash can already taken to the curb (score!).

We assessed the interior damage done by the foundation work and thankfully no cracked floor tiles were found to be hidden under rugs. The only cracks we found were inside cabinets and everything else was pretty clean and move in ready! We met our neighbors over the course of Saturday and Sunday and there are two very cute kids next door that said "Didn't I meet you the other day?" - about 6 hours after meeting us - as well as a guy Lance that ride bikes (that should be easy to remember huh?).

We got some painting and other projects started as well, but that is for a later blog... Happy Monday!

One big box of surprises...

So closing day is tomorrow. We went by earlier this week and saw the foundation work complete, added some top soil, and watched some construction guy haul off all the yucky dirt and cement on our back driveway.

We also peeked in the windows and saw no major cracks or anything from the foundation work and our Realtor's walk through confirmed the same. The sellers movers have come, her maid has come, the yard guys have come for the last time (on her bill at least) and the house sits in wait for us.

Because we've purchased a few items from the seller those things remain in the house, but we were told on Saturday that there would be an additional "surprise" for us. Then, we got an email this week saying she left "more than one surprise". Some surprises we know we're getting are awesome, like the extra speakers for the surround sound in the livingroom.... others are questionable, like the 'disco pillow' we saw when we went to her garage sale last Saturday.

I guess for now all we can do is wait until tomorrow night when we go to our new home to evaluate whether or not which of these surprises are 'the good kind' - she has promised it's not her standard size Poodle Emmy or Tess the Schnauzer. Any and all surprises aside, we are SO very excited about our new home.

Natasha

The Move

We close on our house this Friday and the big move is upon us. Today they are supposed to finish the foundation work and we should be able to assess the success this evening. Yesterday was the first day that we packed together - as opposed to one of us packing odds and ends on our own - and though we got a lot accomplished there are still a lot of little things that need to be put in boxes. (Like, ahem, everything in our kitchen.)

It's pretty exciting as this is our first house and because it feels more like our first place together than our apartment did. Because I moved into the apartment first and lived there for about 6 months before we got married, it felt a lot like we moved Michael's stuff into a place that I was living ... I guess because that's exactly what we did. Now we'll get to pack our things and have a true merger of our stuff when we get to the new house.

The house is also different because we know that we'll stay there for a while and we can really get settled. Since my Junior year in college I've changed residences at least once a year. My senior year at A&M I moved in with Meredith, then my first year of grad school I lived with Marcus, then with cousin Stephen for a semester. Then I moved to San Antonio for about 11 months and lived with mom, then to Austin. In Austin I lived by myself in an apartment for about a year, moved out and ended up living with a lady from church for a few months (that's another story), then got an apartment again in Austin by myself. After living in that apartment for just under a year I moved to Dallas. Between the moves that Michael and I have helped eachother with and the moves of others, we have been part of a LOT of moves over the last 5 to 6 years and we are sure looking forward to settling down.

All of this is made more joyous by the seller who has turned out to be a really cool lady (aaaand she's had some great furniture that she wanted to unload that we have purchased!).