Home Sweet Home!

I feel like I’ve been living inside a thunderstorm the last few months. Did you notice? I’m sorry if you did. If you’re wondering what the heck happened, well, I’ll tell you! In September, the company my husband worked for opened their ‘Voluntary Exit Program’ where they offer you a better benefit package if you chose to leave the company. When that ends they just start laying people off. We felt like we were just waiting for the inevitable boot to drop since we’d gone through round after round of layoffs all year. Jay opted to take the Voluntary Exit Program. Things happened very quickly and we found ourselves jobless and essentially stranded in Moses Lake (Central Washington). We had planned to move all our belonging along with me and the kids to Utah to live with my parents while Jay travelled across the country to look for work in New Hampshire. (Where all of Jay’s family is located.) We’d been mulling over the idea of moving there for the past few years and looking at the job market there vs. Moses Lake made it seem a reasonable plan. After hearing of our plan, Jay’s parents kindly offered to move us all out to New Hampshire together and offered us the use of their two spare bedrooms while Jay looked for work.

So we packed up and travelled across the country during the first week of October. To be honest, I was not thrilled about the arrangements. I didn’t want to leave my friends and family on the other side of the country, wasn’t real happy to be trading my own household for rooming with my in-laws, and was extremely worried about Jay finding work. I’ve always wanted to live in New England, but the circumstances in which I found myself were kind of horrifying.

Things went from partly cloudy to severe storm warning in only a month. And my mood has been dark as a thundercloud ever since. Well, until a few weeks ago. The clouds started to part. Jay finally got an interview! We were THRILLED! Then, a few days later they wanted a face-to-face interview with him. In Maine! The clouds lifted a little more. After a few loooooooong weeks of interviewing and waiting and testing and waiting, waiting, waiting we finally got the news. They offered him a great job at a facility on the coast of Maine. The clouds disappeared and for the first time in months I was excited. Excited to be here in New England, excited to move, excited for the new and interesting experiences on the horizon.

Today I am thrilled! We have moved our things into our new, FANTASTIC house! I love it! I can’t tell you how much I love this house! The kitchen is sort of an issue for me (it doesn’t yet have a dishwasher, but it soon will!) and I still adore it! Would you like a tour? (Did you say ‘no’? Well, tough beans! I’ve been besieged by requests for pictures, so you’ll have to tough it out!)

P.S. Some of the pictures are kinda blurry. Sorry! Was holding a squirming 10 month old! And brace yourself, the house is a disaster!!! Moving in with little kids running around is a pain in the butt! Especially since it was just the two of us doing the moving. Things just got stacked everywhere and I have barely had time to brush my teeth, let alone clean up a little! This week I intend to get the house under control!!!

This is the front corner of the house.

Back of the house.

Our pond!!! It’s a little bigger than a swimming pool and about 7 feet deep. Our landlord (who is awesome!) said we can stock it with fish if we want and the kids can go fishing in their own backyard!

Kitchen. Oooooh, what a mess!

Other side of kitchen, see the coffee shrine?

Sunroom! It gets warm enough, even now in the low 20s, that we can open the doors and heat up the kitchen! How cool (well, warm) is that?

Dining room.

Storage room.

This part of the storage room will be my pantry.

One side of the landing.

Our room. Huh. Is Lucy in every picture? Just noticed that!

The cool little loft in our room. The kids went absolutely NUTS over this! They love taking things up there to play!

The view from our bedroom door onto the landing.

Up those stairs to the kids’ playroom! YAY for a playroom!!!

Through a double sided closet into the girls’ room.

The other view of the girls’ room.

Reesie’s little room. That little door is to his ‘secret room’. It’s too small for a closet so we let him play there :)

Reese’s sad little bed on the floor! One of Jay’s first projects is a new bed for Reese. We left the old one in Moses Lake, it wasn’t worth moving after belonging to the one-boy demolition crew for 4 years!

Watch your head!

Stairwell into the living room.

The living room.

And from the other direction.

From the living room into the dining room.

Laundry.

 

Bathroom side of the room.

So there you go, that’s our new home! Hopefully it won’t take me long to get some ‘after’ pictures up! I’m still cooking out of boxes in the kitchen, we’ve hardly been here! Now that Christmas is over we can finally get settled in!