Getting Moved in

We were getting tired of always hunting for something in a bag and not knowing which of the 15 bags it was hiding in so as soon as we closed on the house, we started moving our things there.  The kids and I even camped out in sleeping bags a few nights before our storage stuff arrived. 

However, we had a couple of rough days around the closing!  After our fabulous, fast trip to Atlanta on a Sunday, we stopped at Tiger Direct (a warehouse type electronics store) on the way home.  Ryan fell and hit his front teeth on the concrete floor-happened just outside the bathrooms-while I was in a stall!  Craziness!  I was calling to him but soon a lady walked into the bathroom and said there was a boy crying (massive understatement) outside but that his dad was with him.  His lip was cut and bleeding so we cleaned him up the best we could, finished shopping and drove back to Greenville.  Trip 1 to the dentist was on Monday, she said not too bad an injury but be careful and don't let him tear/bite food with his front teeth for a few weeks until the front teeth tighten back up again.

Then on Tuesday am, I took the kids with me to check on something out at the house before the closing.  It was raining and I was picking my way through our soggy backyard and found all 3 kids crying in the car.  Ashley was scared, Ryan was in pain, and Scott felt bad for having gotten mad at Ryan and elbow-ed him in the mouth in the extremely close quarters of the rental car's backseat!  This injury was even worse, so I called the dentist office right back and we drove straight there.

My sweet friend who was keeping the kids during the closing came to the dentist office to pick up Ashley and Scott and take them to her house.  Ryan and I stayed at the dentist office for a while waiting for anesthesia to kick in and then having the dentist "re-position" his front 2 teeth.

Everyone was waiting for us at the lawyer's office, though after we arrived and I signed everything I was supposed to we still had a hold up with some administrative money transfer delays, but Ryan survived, his teeth are back where they belong, and we did get to close on the house.

 The kitchen

 Below is the view of the kitchen standing in the empty family room

 Their playroom-everyone was unpacking the legos they had brought in their bags from Manila

 Another injury-Ashley hit the counter in the kitchen with her eye-thankful the refrigerator had been hooked up and we could get some ice.  Other than a nice "shiner" for a few days she was fine-no ER trip required, not even medical glue.

 The day the stuff from storage came!

 My piano!

 My Dad's gun safe is wrapped up in the garage

 They were opening/unloading the crates that our stuff had been in for the 3 years we had been gone

 These bookshelves were built by my grandfather, Pop-Walter Flowers and had been in Mom and Dad's den for as long as I could remember.

 More toys coming to the playroom

 Below is Ashley's room-a rocker that had been Greg's Great Grandmother Elliott's that all 3 of our children were rocked in as babies and her bed was one that my grandmother had given mom.

 We got a new washer/dryer

 Master bedroom-a sweet friend insisted on loaning me their camping air mattress-don't you think it looks good with nightstands????

 The movers are only allowed to empty boxes and sit things on flat surfaces which is why so much stuff just got piled in the floor!

 our closet

 The garage mess

 eating this way was an improvement-they started out sitting on the floor using a huge plastic bin as a table!

 Weekend fun-my Dad and I got these nerf blaster guns when I was in college from Mom one year for Christmas!  The boys absolutely love them and they were perfect for shooting in a mostly empty house!

 The bridge is a great place for a strategic defense!

 better seats at the table and our new sofas were delivered!

 exploring toys that you hadn't seen in 3 years

 Putting together legos Greg had brought them back from Denmark

 enjoying needing cold weather gear to play in outside!

 Working in the garage with Greg building his new workbench-we didn't remember until it didn't show up with the storage stuff that it was still at the rental house and our renters were using it!

 Ashley got legos from Denmark too!

 Cozy with the "pink and blue blankies with holes" made by my Great Aunt Todd for all the kids when they were born.  She lived next door with my grandmother the whole time I was growing up and LOVED to crochet, rake leaves, be outside, kept babies in our church nursery for 50 years, fed our dog anytime we went out of town, loved God, and is missed terribly-she passed away not long after we moved to Manila.  But we have many sweet Aunt Todd memories!

 I bought this fruitcake because they were the ONLY ones that my Dad would eat-me too!  I don't like the kind that people make from scratch and labor for hours over.  When it got close to Christmas my mom would buy Daddy one and hide it-not very well and they made a game of him finding it!

 Ryan's class at school had a silly sock day-don't you wear your Alaska wolf socks with your red Christmas tree socks?????  His were voted the craziest in his class!  I think that he deserved to win

 My mother and her daddy loved nature and this was one of those light up moving deer people put in their yards at Christmas.  The boys spent a whole Saturday morning figuring out how this one worked and putting it together-I was glad that I had saved this that GG had bought on sale at CVS on year after Christmas!

 The last box from storage-did I really send paper napkins to storage??????  Apparently so.  There was also a globe down in this big box along with swiffer duster refills and old raggy shirts and dust rags.  We were happy to have finally found the globe!

 We did find a ladybug house (Ashley had gotten this science set to grow them for her birthday)  that had a bunch of dead ladybugs inside-the packers had picked it up by mistake, wrapped it very nicely and put it in a box-even though I had told them not to!!!!