New Digs!

Everyone's life is hectic. Mine is no exception. Last time I checked in I was anxiously awaiting the closing on our NEW home.

Our NEW home!

It happened! On March 14th we became the proud owners of our brand new home, never lived in by anyone but us! I think that is cool as crap!  Don't get me wrong, we aren't first time homeowners. This is actually the 3rd home we've owned. However it is our first new, NEW- still smells like NEW CAR smell- home. That is fracking exciting!

You can imagine that in the last month I have been crazily unpacking boxes. Our first shipment of things arrived the same day we closed on the house. No like seriously on the same day we closed. We'd barely were done with closing (actually we really weren't 100% finished) and the movers were at the house unloading the truck in the driveway because we hadn't been given the keys. It was 100 shades of crazy!

If you're new to the concept of PCSing, lemme 'es-plain' the procedures for you.  The military packs and moves everything for you- not bad huh? However, when you are coming from overseas you may or may not have had all your things with you overseas. We didn't. We had left many things in long-term storage in an effort to accommodate what we were told were going to be substantially smaller German homes. Not entirely true. German homes can be big, they just don't have closets which makes storing a bunch of extraneous crap difficult. But I digress.....the movers.

So the movers unpacked the 13 crates, yes I said 13 crates, of household goods that had arrived from Germany, via the slow boat from hell.  Thriteen crates, some 12,000 lbs, and 6 hrs later, and VOILA! We were in our new home! Can you say box heaven? More like box haven. It seemed our house was a sanctuary to every wayward box in Georgia. Thankfully hubby had taken a week of leave to get us settled.

Boxes, boxes and more boxes.

Talk about a rough week. It was up at 6:30. Unpack, unpack, unpack, eat, unpack, unpack. Fall into bed around 11:00pm, which still wasn't on the frame. Only to start again the next day. Wash. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. It went on this way for the entire week. Splatter in a new furniture delivery, and a smaller hold baggage shipment which contained about 10 more boxes. The house was in shambles, and  that was the first week in the new house. By the end of that first week, we had more empty boxes awaiting disposable than we had boxes to empty. We were machines!

Fast forward a bit, and another delivery comes. This one of the long-term storage items. Oh yeah, another 4,000+ lbs of things. Did I mention this was 4,000 lbs of stuff we hadn't laid eyes on in almost 3 years? Yea that. This unpacking was more akin to Christmas morning. Every box we opened was like getting reacquainted with items and things we had forgotten we even owned. It was great! (Not in the Disney World sense of the word great, but in the "it's great that this root canal is over and my tooth doesn't hurt anymore" kind of great. Get my drift?)

The house is almost put together. There are a few boxes that need emptying, but for the most part the house is at about 90% solution. Mind you that's the house.

The garage is a hot mess of garage sh*t, which includes boxes, that needs shelving and a permanent home, i.e.. my Christmas decor. We are slowly working on that. Did I mention the 18 boxes of professional items I have? We call it professional gear, but if you are a teacher, have ever lived with a teacher or have ever seen a veteran teacher's classroom- you know what I mean by professional gear. It's the years of accumulated books, handouts, papers, exemplars, folders, projects and just things that you just might need in the remote chance that some day in the next 100 years you might actually teach that obscure course you've never taught before. In which case it would take you 10 years to locate the materials you so judiciously stored, which by the way is now housed on 7 different teacher blogs and websites. Now you're tracking! So my mission for the summer is to go through those boxes and scan those papers, handouts, and oddities, and put them on an external drive which I can very easily tote around for the next 100 years or more like 2 before external hard drives become obsolete, if they aren't already. Are they?

On to the yard work.....

The yard-scaping was done almost immediately after getting there and it looks great if I do say so myself. Thank you very much! I have all sorts of beautiful perennials, shrubs, and flowers. It smells good and looks good! DIY websites have helped me get great ideas and implement them in my planting and landscaping.

Life and the house are coming along. It's a tedious road, but the payoffs are tremendous and I'm enjoying the process. I have already completed TWO major craft projects in the last few weeks. I will most definitely post about those. They are swweeeett!!

Anyways.... I hope to start posting more again as I get my myself back in a routine. I'm going to try to make more time for me, and this of course includes another attempt at shedding this fat suit I have been wearing for some time now. I swear it's not mine, but I'm clutching to it like an old lady clutches her purse at the bus stop.

Onwards and upwards. Read the post about the 60 day challenge. It will all make sense.


Until next time..... don't forget to click that brown Top Mommy Blog Banner. Not sure what it does, but I'm hoping someone gets shocked each time you do, so try it out. :)