Friday, July 12, 2013

Georgia! We have arrived!

After I got the following comment over on Everead I figured it was time for an update over here! 
Did you get there okay?
Is the house great?
Do you have a bed to sleep on?
1. Yes! We got here okay. We are very glad we took the 10 hour drive over 2 days. We didn't get off as early as we could have hoped, and road construction season slowed us down considerably. Add in our long bathroom breaks and we took about 8 hours to do 4 hours' worth of driving on the first day. Anyway, we made it eventually, and without accident or injury. We were very glad to not be driving our moving truck.

We did U-Pack with ABF and sent our stuff on its way the morning we left. It was supposed to take 3 business days to get to us, but it ended up taking 6. We were in our house for a looong time without our stuff. I was not very pleased the second time they called to push our delivery date back. <-- i="">understatement  
In hindsight, was it worth it to not have to drive my own moving truck? . . . Eh. . . Maybe. We had a much more positive (read: prompt) experience when we used them in 2008. However, we did not move the week of the 4th of July then, like we did this time. *shrug*
2. The house is great. I am still trying to figure it out -- where to put furniture, what furniture we need exactly,  how to make the place function. Right now the "laundry" function of home is hung up by the fact that we don't have enough dressers. We left two of them behind and haven't replaced them yet, so we don't quite know where to put clothes once they're clean. The beginning of the laundry cycle works great though! Oh man! Jacob and I now really appreciate just how bad our former washer and dryer were. Haha! The ones that came with this place are by no means brand-new or top-of-the-line, but they are amazingly better at doing laundry. It's so nice.

The most awesome unexpected perk of the place is the blueberry bushes! We are loving them! I don't actually know how many of them there are, but enough that I can pick blueberries every day. We have not been out of blueberries since the day we moved in. I feel like I'm living in paradise to be able to walk out my door and pick something off a tree (they're big bushes, rather) and just eat it. Plus: blueberry bushes do not have thorns! I had never picked blueberries until the day we moved in, but they're a dream to pick. I don't have to water them (it's been raining like crazy) I didn't have to plant them, I just showed up for the harvest.

Let me grab my journal and record some of the other perks I put in there... here it is. Additions in brackets.

July 3, 2013
Awesome things about our new house:
  • Don't have to fold laundry on our bed where kids will jump on it! [The laundry is in the unfinished basement, and there is a nice sized table down there, right next to the dryer.]
  • A bed! With no giant divot in the middle or spring poking through or torn edge that snags you when you walk.
  • A lock on our bedroom door, bow chicka wow wow! [yes, I wrote that in my journal! ha! I crack myself up.]
  • Washer and Dryer can be running and I can still hear myself thing/talk at the table!
  • Carport! Today was rainy and as I unloaded groceries I was so excited to not be getting wet.
  • Driveway! I was also excited to not have to walk down a long sidewalk or across squishy grass. Yay!
  • Lots of doors! So it was kind of wierd to me at frist that the hallways have doors on them. But now I really like it. Boys running around yelling in an empty house make lots of noise (oh, it is so, so echo-ey) but that noise is damped by doors. Nice.
  • Close to library! Like it is the closest thing to us other than people's houses. Totally a walkable distance. No sidewalk though, unfortunately. We got our cards today, yippee! [on July 3, that is] And checked out books and movies. I've been hungry for books since even before all of ours were packed away, and starving for reading since we've had no internet for 2 days. Jacob said "You looked so much happier nursing with a book to read." :) [except the smile is right side up in my journal] I devoured The Best Time to Do Everything. Fun little non-fiction book.
  • Convenient to shopping -- today I want to Walmart (just past the library) and Aldi (just up the road the other way). Benjamin and I walked in and I said out loud, "I love Aldi." [tiny heart].
  • Bathroom in my room! So nice. [This is a first for me and Jacob, and I must say it rocks. They call these en-suites in Canada, did you know that?]
So there you go! There are some things about the house! Also a sample of one of my recent journal entries. When I tell people I journal every day they sometimes ask for my secret and I say it's because I mix it up. Also I make myself laugh.

3. Yes we have a bed! (See above.) A nice guy in our ward, Jeff Wheatley, gave us a tip on a mattress sale he had heard about. Another nice guy in our ward with a truck, Donny Young, helped us get it from the store to our house. We would have had it delivered, except they couldn't do it until the next day, and we had just spent the previous night on a very flat air mattress. Seriously, I pumped it up 3 or 4 times. Ugh. So. We were super glad to have a real bed! Our old bed was so sunken in that my eyes seriously thought that our new bed was dome-shaped for the first couple of days. Ha!

Okay, so questions are helpful to me blogging. Thanks for asking Ashlee! What questions do y'all have for me next? (I get to say y'all now! Without fear of someone thinking I'm poking fun/being a poser. I'm so excited!)  

5 comments:

Annaliese said...

Love hearing about your new place! We had a mass producing blueberry bush in Washington growing up, and yes it is glorious! I promptly killed the little bush I planted in Louisiana. I'm jealous of you being able to walk to the library. That's the ideal walkable outing.

Alex T. Valencic said...

A couple of comments:

1) Are you going to add Jubilee's name to your blog description?

2) We love the dryer. It is noisy, but we can deal with it :)

3) Jeff Wheatley - not the same Jeff Wheatley married to Susan who used to live in Mahomet, right?

Alysa Stewart said...

1. Yes! Thank you for reminding me!
2. Oh good, because I was worried you hated it, actually.
3. The very same! We have moved into their ward!

Cami said...

"y'all" is a fabulous word - very handy.

Rachel and Todd said...

Y'all are so great! It's one of my favorite contractions. I loved reading this post. Bow chicka bow wow wow! That was in the valentine's day card I gave Todd this V-day. Hah!