What we've done with the place...

So, I'm finally getting off my duff and giving you some "moved-in" pictures. Have I mentioned how much I love being moved-IN? As in, no-longer-in-a-state-of-moving? Aye, aye, yikes. I have such great husband and family, who so lovingly took care of me in my moments of emotional upheaval as we went through the process.

First detail worth blogging: we hired movers (because we had so much cash floating around from not going to the family reunion and not buying a house...not that I'm bitter). It was a little more expensive than we thought it was going to be but it was worth every. Dang. Penny. All I had to do was box it all up and be there to open the door at the old place and the new place and take care of the baby while they did it all. I had all of my attention to focus on the baby, it was awesome. And it went very smoothly. They were friendly, fast, efficient and they didn't break or steal any of our stuff. Grant didn't even take the day off work, he just left from one apartment and came home to another. Awesome.

Our bedroom isn't that different, it's just our stuff in a new room.


The bathroom we changed up a little. Since there are black accent tiles in the work, I decided to switch up the colors we used from brown/navy to black/turquoise. I love it!


The baby's room, well, she basically uses just a small corner. But it's hers and she'll only ever have to share it with a sibling (don't get jumpy, that's not an announcement) instead of stuff like the piano, the elliptical and the third computer.

She seems to dig it.

We really like the way we have our living room set up, though I need to take some time to sing my husband's praises. We spent Saturday arranging and rearranging furniture until we had everything in a spot we knew we liked. See all these bookcases? They're pretty much in the same spot as where the movers put them when they brought them up from the truck. However, Grant moved them in and out of the room at least 3 times as we decided what to do. And he didn't complain once. That Daddy, he's pretty great. :)


Which leads us to the dining room. Which for us, is the music/exercise/tarantula/scrapbooking/deep freeze room.


In the old apartment, Grant only rarely exercised or played the piano because those things were in the baby's room and she was often sleeping at the most convenient times for him to do those things. So now he'll have to come up with a new excuse when I suggest it... (And for the record, I don't keep the step out in the middle of the floor, I just haven't put it away since my work out.)

The kitchen doesn't look much different from the "before" pictures...


But have I mentioned the cabinet space? In the old apartment, we had two sets of 5 shelves to give us extra storage space (and we don't have that much, honest!) which I've been able to decoratively set out elsewhere, yeay! I'm pretty excited about that. Even Kendra has her very own small cabinet just with her stuff in it.

So, now that we're settled in, life is just groovy. We've pretty much figured out how everything works and we've got super friendly neighbors. Grant's back on the El and it's farther from our place than the last one, but it's a shorter train ride (if we can just figure out the schedule...) And the parking is awesome. Especially because of this:

That, my friends, is McKinley Park. And, it's right across the street from our apartment. And, it's ginormous and clean and safe (as there's a police station across the adjacent street) and amazing. So it also means that we share the parking with half the people. And though it does fill up, it does so in the evenings and on weekend mornings after I've already parked from running errands. No more walking a block and half carting a baby and bag's full of Sam's Club goods (which is a relief--have you seen the size of her lately?)! Yeay!

The neighborhood is predominately Hispanic, which means this Mamacita is going to have to brush up on her espanol if she's going to make any friends. I keep trying to practice stuff in my head that I remember from high school, but it all turns into a weird form of Spangarian that I can't figure out.

And we're on the top floor. Which means we haven't taught our baby to sleep in only to have the upstairs neighbors get us up at 7am on a Saturday with loud, pulsating techno. Seriously? And it's a small building, so we're only sharing the 2 washers and dryers with 7 other apartments instead of having 3 washers and dryers to share with over 30 apartments. And it's central air, so we don't have radiators clogging up a significant amount of space in every. Single. Room. Do you have any idea how much more space there is to put stuff when you don't have to arrange your furniture around radiators? A LOT. Yeay!

And by the way, if you ever want to come visit, we're pretty close to Midway (which is where you'll land if you fly Southwest, and you'll also get the cheapest ticket). We realized that when we drove past it on the way to Wal-mart (which was only five miles away itself). Basically, if you call me as soon as the plane lands, by the time you get off the plane, get your luggage and get to the curb, I can totally be there to pick you up. Or, you can take the Orange Line, which has a stop a half a mile/less than 10-minute walk away. Naaice. But, if you insist on coming into O'Hare, you only have to change trains once, which isn't too bad either.

So, we're pretty stoked about the new place. It's an adventure and one that we're doing together! I was strangely sad to leave the last place...we fell in love spending time together there. We started our family there and have been really happy...but, to all things there is a season and now is the season for something new. We'll watch Kendra take her first steps here and say her first words and who knows what other wonders are in store for us here...

Our new Home.