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Internet. At home. Awwww!

Here are some things I know about the house after living in it for one week:

I am not scared to sleep here.

In fact, sleeping in my own bed is wonderful!

The person who lived here before may have been scared, though. There are double and triple locks on all doors, including the door between the basement and the upstairs. Even the double windows have double locks.

The mice seem to be gone!! No new droppings since before we closed on the house. Keep your fingers crossed.

An oven not cleaned for several years is beyond disgusting.

Heavy Duty Oven Cleaner (2 cans) + 6 SOS pads + 1 razor blade = mostly clean oven.

The supersized basement is awesome!

The supersized box fort in the supersized basement is super awesome, but enter at your own risk - it may cause clausterphobia in adult sized people...

The cool blue carpet that covers the entire upstairs is in really good shape and is extra cushy. Too bad it is the same blue color as the task bar at the top on my computer screen.

Living without a dishwasher is possible. I've never lived in a house without a dishwasher. Hannah and Sydney are muy excellente dish washers! It may help that until yesterday I was not willing to cook in the beyond gross oven.

Rocks are cool. The previous owner (the one and only previous owner of this house, actually) was apparently a renowned rock person. The kids have been finding evidence of this under the snow in the backyard. Lots of little (and bigger ) interesting rock bits.

If you keep snacks around, teenage boys from church are willing to help with all sorts of moving chores, like carrying boxes downstairs, carrying boxes upstairs, carrying boxes out to the other garage, setting up the tv/vcr/dvd/hd converter thingy/antanea, minor light fixture repair, etc. Bonus points if a cordless drill is involved!

The wheelchair ramp that takes up 5/6ths of the garage really needs to go. soon. and I mean it. I'm willing to live with the mostly clean oven for a while, but we need to be able to use the garage. Wouldn't it be nice to not have to scrape ice off your windows each morning?

The wheelchair ramp that takes up 5/6ths of the garage is great for riding your bike down. And probably it should stay in place until after we re-do floors and use the ramp to roll the extra heavy piano that is resting in the garage at it's peril until the new floors are done up into the house. But right after that, the ramp needs to go to a good home.

It is always wierd to fit everything from one certain house into a totally different house.

Uh, can't thing of anything else right now. Off to find photos...

Established 1980

Home Sweet Home

We closed on our first house on Wednesday. Hip Hip Hooray!

We shoveled snow and cleaned the house Wednesday afternoon, and on Thursday our household goods were delivered.

Since our new house is an awesome 1970's shag-carpet-popcorn-ceiling dream house, we have a little work to do. So we had the movers put most of our stuff in the basement. The basement is enormous. I wish I had pictures for you, but we won't have internet until Tuesday. Sorry! Like I was saying, the basement is huge. It is "finished" in that the walls are real walls with drywall and texture and the floor is tiled and the ceiling is popcorned, but it is a huge empty space the size of the house with no walls dividing it up. Or is was empty before we lined the walls with boxes and set up the couches and TV in the "family room".

Emily, John and Sydney set up a large box fort in the basement today. They also played soccer down there. If I could find the roller skates they could really have some fun! John is disappointed that there's not actually a bowling alley in the basement. We must have told him at some point that we "could have a bowling alley down there" and he thought we really meant it.... A plastic bowling set is on my shopping list.....

I'm slowly working my way through the boxes. All the kitchen things are out and put away. The bathrooms are set up. And the beds are made. But there's still a lot to do. And a lot that I'm not going to do for a while until we scrape the ceilings and redo the floors and move things in up stairs.

It is really fun to actually be in our house and not transitioning any more. We have been "moving" since the middle of December. It is the middle of February!!! And even though the house is a little quirky, it is kinda cool!

Anyone want to come clean out my oven?

The importance of warm socks

It is cold here.

We have had lots of snow and cold temperatures! Earlier this week we had a rare day with temperatures in the 40's and it almost felt warm. But not really. I washed my car that day at one of those drive in and spray down your car places and thought my fingers might fall off.

I wanted to drive through a car wash but I couldn't find one. Since then I have seen two, so I know where to go next time the temperatures get above freezing. There is something about driving on melted snowy roads that makes your car just filthy.

I have been trying to exercise daily and it is a challenge. Did I mention it's cold. Yesterday I wore 3 shirts and a coat with a fleece lining. My arms were not cold but my toes were.

I have been wearing two pairs of socks everyday. And everyday my toes just about freeze off while I am waiting for Emily and John to go into their classes.

I think I need to find some kind of heavy duty wool socks. Except wool makes me itchy.

Also, I am prone to blisters on my feet when jogging, so I have invested in a few pairs of super nice running socks that never give me blisters. Unfortunately they are all ankle socks. I don't want my ankles to freeze so I am running in my usual two pairs of tea length socks. I'm pretty sure that's not the official name for the length of my socks. They are not knee socks, they are not ankle socks, they are halfway in between - tea length!..

They keep my ankles warmer, but the seam has a tendancy to roll under my toes and irritate me. Grrrr. Frozen, irritated toes are not happy toes.

On a brighter note, there is a sweet little path through Rapid City that I just love. I used to jog on it occasionally when we last lived here. This time we are living even closer to the path, so I have been jogging or walking on it almost every day. The city keeps it nicely cleared, and it is just the place for a bit of exercise.

Yesterday morning we woke to a couple inches of snow. After I drove the kids to school, I decided to see if I could walk on the path and I was happy to find that someone had plowed it. It was in better shape than the roads! I saw several others out walking as well. One older gentleman was out feeding ducks. Fun!

8 minutes 14 seconds

I'm at the library again, and this time I'm using a computer with a 30 minute limit. I have only 7:44 left. eeek.

I was thinking last night about our move. Again. It's all I think about, really. And though I hate moving, there is one good thing about it:

When you are new somewhere, and bored, and have no friends or commitments or plans, you really get close to your family. It has been so sweet to see the kids growing closer together.

Last night the kids were all playing a game and laughing and talking together. It made me smile.

Sweet!

ps - not that they didn't like each other before...