The New House

If you've been following my blog you'll know two things:  1.  I haven't posted in a long time!  It's difficult to blog without having the Internet and I haven't had consistent Internet since last June and it took six weeks to get the cable company to come out to the new house to hook it up.  Yes, it's been torture :)  2.  We have finally, finally, FINALLY settled into a house!  I was going to go crazy there for a bit... I'm definitely a "put down roots" kind of a gal - a real nester.  I have a whole new appreciation for military families.  To cut to the chase, this is my last year of moving in review:  Last October - Spokane, WA to Sandpoint, ID, June - Sandpoint, ID to Fayetteville, NC, August - Fayetteville, NC to Raleigh, NC.  We had to live temporarily at a family member's house with the bare minimum while everything else was crammed in a storage unit in Raleigh until we could find and close on a house.  This was our summer....

Yes, those are sheets for curtains...really they are.  A couple of toys, mattresses on the floor, living out of a few boxes, outdoor furniture in the living room, and no TV and some restless kids.  The most common phrase of the the summer was, "It's in the storage unit!"  Did I mention it was hot in North Carolina in July?  I was beginning to wonder if we made the right decision moving. 
Before we left Sandpoint, we made an offer on a short sale that we'd never even seen, but from the pictures it looked incredible.  We found out that we were outbid shortly after arriving in NC, so our search continued for the perfect house that we could comfortably fit our three noisy kids, my furniture/antiques hobby and all of my various collections, a man cave for the hubby so he'd have a place to hang his bear and deer head, a nice size yard for a future dog, some sort of privacy, a reasonable distance from work, all in an outstanding school district.  Yes, the list is long and I was picky, but darn it, I'm not moving again...this house need to be "the one".  60-70 houses later...we found it.  Of course, it was not without a bit of a headache.  It was a new construction and new ground for us in terms of dealing with builders, but we felt that we got a lot of house for the money and we were in a hurry.  We ended up closing only 5 days before the kids were due to start school!

We've only owned an older home that we renovated, so it felt fabulous just to move in and all I have to do is paint, decorate, some landscaping.  Plus, my husband and I learned from our previous house that if we want to stay married, no more DIY renovations!  Here are a few more quick photos I took before we moved in... 

The kids also love the fact that this is literally a one minute walk from our front door...

The house is pretty "builder-bland" right now as far as the paint color goes, but I've been working on that!  Needless to say, I feel very blessed to live here.  I really had to pinch myself quite a few times the first weeks in the house.  I kept sitting down on the couch and looking around and thinking that I can't believe we live here... we finally made it...and we are a bunch of happy clams now!

Kristen