Amy’s Garden

Moving

December 21 was the big day. Out with the old:

In with the new:

The first few days were rough. Luke didn’t like his new room the first night. We couldn’t find any of our stuff, let alone the light switches. We were, however, blessed with homemade pizza from our new neighbor our first evening in our new home.

On the evening of December 23, I braved the rain and the last-minute traffic to buy an LED prelit Christmas tree on clearance at Lowes. I also went to Bed Bath & Beyond to get some house stuff.

On Christmas Eve no one had trouble going to sleep. Even though we talked to Lydia about how Christmas morning was the next day and she would be getting presents, it didn’t really sink in. We had no decorations up at all. That night after she and Luke were sleeping, we put up the tree and wrapped some gifts.

The gifts were enjoyed by all:

Lydia received a Tinkerbell nightgown. I have mixed feelings about how Disney seems to dictate what our daughters love, but I’ll save that topic for another day. Or not. In any case, the nightgown was a huge hit (along with a more generic monkey nightgown), and she is now willing to wear long sleeves to bed again. Because, you know, before that, long sleeves hurt her arms. Gotta love that girl.

That week, Luke’s walking skillls improved daily. He went from about 50% crawling to 0% crawling in just a few days.

Christmas morning also brought snow and pretty cold temperatures. It was too cold to stay out long, but Lydia really wanted to go out and play, so we did. First she put on her snow bibs. They are not snow pants. Pants are for boys. Bibs are for girls. And woe the person who refers to her leggings as pants. By the way, Lydia is standing in front of a cubby, which is located in the laundry/mud room, which is on the way inside from the garage. I’m already not sure how we managed without this dropoff point for coats and bags.

On December 26, we had our first house guests come. My parents, grandma, and brother joined us and used our guest quarters upstairs. In our original plan, the upstairs of this house was to remain unfinished, but as the project went on, we decided we really wanted it now, and we are glad we did it.

Here is my grandma, Grandma Swan, with Lydia. My parents have many more pictures and posted from this visit here.

Uncle Dave got to stay a few extra days. (Thanks, Aunt Lindsay, for letting us keep him a while!) Dave will be a new daddy in April, and Lindsay was very eager for him to learn diaper changing, particularly with cloth diapers. He was a good sport. (It was poopy, too.)

New Year’s Eve brought a blue moon. On New Year’s morning, besides dealing with an unexpected power outage, we enjoyed this view of the setting moon from Luke’s window.

January 3 brought another snow, this one even more pretty than the first. The snow bibs made a reappearance.

January 4 is Keith’s birthday, and I’m afraid I didn’t really do it justice this year. He was happy with his two-dollar giant cupcake from Walmart. (There was also a shrimp dinner and chocolate ice cream involved, so I guess I didn’t do too badly.)

Later that week, we experienced very cold temperatures for our region. One day the high was in the single digits, and the windchills were several degrees below zero. Keith got his car stuck in a snow drift several feet from our house, and finally got it out the next day thanks to Poppy’s help. The evening the car got stuck, I was taking a shower and the water stopped running. I got my freezing cold (but not yet lathered up) self out of the shower and we tried to figure out what was happening. We realized a pipe for the well’s pressure tank in our garage was frozen. We put our new (awesome) Vornado space heater out there, which melted the pipe, but also somehow caused water to spew everywhere. It finally stopped and we got our water back. We kept the space heater out there until the temperture was back up into the 20s.

So here we are. We’re trying to get settled in. In many ways, life is about the same, now that the flurry of moving and the holidays is over.

I’ll be back soon with more everyday life posts from our new home.