Week 1

Last Saturday was the Big Move.  With the great preparations we had made, we thought it would be a piece of cake and we'd be relaxing in our house by sundown.  As they say, though, the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry, and awry our plans did go.  All seemed to be going smoothly until it came time to haul our enormous sectional down into our basement family room.  Apparently in 1948, not only were people much shorter with smaller feet and less storage needs, they also didn't need as wide of doors as we have today.  After trying both the stairway from inside and outside, it was obvious our couch wasn't making it to its intended home without some extreme measures.  Following hours of trips up and down the stairs and lugging all sorts of boxes and furniture, we all were tired, frustrated and starting to feel a bit hopeless.  Luckily, our friend, Paul, was able to pull us back from the brink by expertly popping off the door and frame, which gave us just enough space to shove the couch down the stairs.  The individual pieces were violently thrust down the narrow stairwell, leaving gouges along the walls, but in the end they all made their way downstairs.  Thanks to the assistance and forward thinking of Jessellee, our bed had been assembled and made, and at the end of the night looked like a sweet cloud from heaven and I don't think either of us had ever felt so happy to lie down.  While it might have been a crazy hectic day, it made us realize how lucky we are to have such amazing friends who all went way, way above and beyond to help us, even when they were just as tired and sore, if not more so.  So, we say thanks to Keith, Mike, Paul and Jessellee, and Terry.  We literally couldn't have done it with out them and we're so grateful we could spend our first day in the house with such special people.

In the days since, our lives have revolved solely around boxes.  Whether it be unpacking them, moving them around, tearing them open in a desperate search for something we know must be somewhere, or tripping over them, only to crash into another box.  Moving around the house makes me feel like we're contestants on "Most Extreme Elimination Challenge: Home Edition", but thankfully, minus the giant pools of mud.  I think when we're not watching, the boxes are going off and reproducing because I swear even though we've unpacked quite a few, there are more appearing in their place.  Around the boxes, we're slowly managing to arrange our rooms and if you squint really, really hard, you can almost see at some point, it might actually look like a home.


Don't...get...eliminated!!

By yesterday, John and I were pretty exhausted and overcome with ennui from unpacking, and it was obvious we both needed a day off and a big ol' dose of a well-known, traditional Swedish cure of all that ails you: a trip to IKEA.  Nothing invigorates the body, mind, and soul better than the smell of particle board in the morning.  We picked up a new bed frame (a platform to allow Dexter to hop on and off easily... don't judge us... our lives revolve around The Boys and we know it), a taller dresser to better fit in our small master, a new TV stand to complete our built-in look for the living room, and a shadow box picture frame to memorialize the Big Move by framing a few chunks of our house that fell during the Great Sectional Escapade.  We left IKEA with a cart full of flat boxes, frozen yogurt cones in our hands, and a renewed hope in our hearts.


IKEA loves our home.

What a week.  Who knew buying a house would be so much work?  Here we are, already a full week into our adventures in homeownership.  Closing feels like both just yesterday and forever ago.  The past week has been exhausting and exciting and full of ups and downs.  Even though we're both spotted with bruises, sore in all sorts of places, and a little worried someone might find us crushed underneath an avalanche of boxes... it's a labor of love and so far, we still love our little house.