..it's been a week now....

...since we spent our first night in our new home.

Tomorrow the vacation time is over and both Robin and I return to work at our places of employment.

After a long, busy week of organizing and unpacking we're pretty far along the path of being "settled in" to our new house.

The girls start school in just over a week, and our goal is to have most everything unpacked and ready for "day to day living" before then, so we're doing pretty well in that direction.

This entire 5-plus months of working toward this point in time has been exhausting at times, but nice overall and definitely worthy of the effort.

To everyone who helped us out in one way or another along the way, we want to say thank you very, very, much. We couldn't have gotten to where we are without your help.

We've pretty much reached the end of this chapter in our family's lives and are beginning on the next one.

Thanks to everyone who has been following along here as we moved through this process, I hope you enjoyed watching things unfold.

If you're ever in the area and would like to stop by and see what the photos try to do justice to, please feel free to give us a call.

Paul

Getting settled...

So the day of the Big Move has come and gone.... and we're working to get things unpacked and put away into their new places every day.

Sunday afternoon several friends came by to help us with the move.

Thanks for all your help Jamie, Aaron, Matt, Dean, Chad, and Robin's parents! We were pulling into the driveway of our new home at 5:10pm with the first load of stuff, just as the builder was finishing up taking his Parade displays down. We still have the house plans and the construction schedule hanging on the wall in the garage. We'll probably leave it up there for a little while yet anyway.

Robin's parents and Dean stayed until after 10pm Sunday night. Robin's dad had brought his trailer, and between the trailer and the uhaul truck we loaded three loads into each and dumped it all (mostly. Some thing got taken down to the basement right away) in the garage of the new house.

There was about a half of a uhaul load of boxes and some furniture in the storage unit we'd rented. I moved those over on Monday.

Every day since then has been Robin working inside the house getting things organized and put away, and me working in the garage carrying boxes, furniture, and other items into the appropriate rooms of the house and/or the basement.

(the entire garage was mostly full when everything was finally moved to the new house from the old one and the storage unit!)

Finally last night (Wednesday night) I was able to have enough in the garage cleaned out that Robin could park her car in there. Tonight I was able to get it so that we could park both cars and my motorcycle in there too!

Most things that don't belong there have been removed from the garage now, with the exception of a few larger pieces of furniture that Robin will need to help me move to the basement.

Inside the house, Robin has a ton of the kitchen cabinets filled with items. She's also spent alot of time putting things away in the laundry room, the living room, and our master bedroom.

Yesterday the girls' new beds and dresser (for Rachel) were delivered from WG&R. Today their new mattresses arrived. So tonight they get to sleep in their new beds for the first time. Lyndsey doesn't have a dresser in her room yet. She and Robin are going to refinish one of the older ones (we have 4 that are currently unused! lol) and that will be Lyndsey's dresser to use.

Robin and I spent Sunday and Monday nights sleeping on the couch as our bedroom was too cluttered to be able to put our bed together.

The girls have been working in their rooms to get items and clothing sorted and put away. They're not home this weekend, then next week is the final week before school starts up.

Due to our moving, Lyndsey will be attending Hortonville Middle school this year instead of Greenville Middle school, while Rachel will still be in Greenville Elementary school.

This morning had us watching a family of wild turkeys walking around our house;  this morning they were first spotting in the ditch out front, and then later this morning they were closer to the front of our house. 2 older ones and 3 younger ones.

Yesterday I had a visit from a hummingbird in the garage when he flew in to briefly check out what all the commotion was about.

We still have alot of boxes to unpack, and tomorrow Robin and the girls have to go back-to-school clothes shopping.

Also, there's a ton of furniture and boxes in the basement, some of which is destined for a garage sale either this fall or next spring when our Town holds its annual town-wide garage sales.

We're hoping to have most, if not all, of our unpacking done by the end of this weekend. Both of us have to go back to work next week.

Tuesday was also the date of closing on the sale of our previous home. Tuesday afternoon at 2pm that house became the property of someone else, and they appear to have begun to move in today.

Paul