Settling In

It’s been a busy week, but we’ve been pacing ourselves well. With working all week and the various odds and ends that needed to be taken care of, we really didn’t do a lot of unpacking and moving in until this weekend. We got essentials out last weekend and had boxes easy to get for when we needed something. That’s how most of the kitchen items got unpacked.

Now, I'm starting to feel a little more settled in. We both had the entire weekend off, a rare luxury. We’ve put the time to got use. In addition to relaxing a bit, we’ve managed to get all of the stuff we have in our storage unit out. Now we just have the task of collecting the various objects our relatives from across the country have been kind enough to store for us. My husband has set up a little workshop up in the garage, which I have a feeling will be his new home. Plus, I now have an office to play in. My kitchen is completely together, except for a few miscellaneous odds and ends. I even had enough room for stuff that I haven't been able to keep handy in years.

I'm still have a lot of work to set up the office, but I'm just loving all this space.

I finally took a walk around the new neighborhood today. I really think we chose a nice community. I knew there were several parks in the neighborhood, but on my 40-minute stroll, I passed 4 parks, which include 3 playgrounds, a swimming pool (closed for the season despite it still regularly going into the 80s), a baseball field, two soccer fields, multiple tennis courts, 2 gazebos and several picnic benches. Plus, being in the suburbs there were sidewalks everywhere I wanted to go. I am a sidewalk person and it really drives me nuts when places don’t have them. So this was appreciated. In addition to seeing kids and families in the park there were many kids playing throughout the neighborhood and people seemed to be relatively friendly. I still haven't actually spoken to any of the neighbors. I may joke about knocking on doors and introducing myself, but that's just a little out of my comfort zone.

So now we begin another long workweek. We both have been pretty busy at work. I don’t think we will get a huge amount done with the house over the next few days, but we are hoping to get some work done with the yard next weekend. It desperately needs some TLC. It looks like the former owner never watered the lawn, because there is barely any grass. I’m not thrilled at the concept of creating a grass lawn, which seems just like a waste of water in this climate. I hope to come up with an attractive, environmentally friendly alternative. I double checked and I'm in Zone 8a and an average 0f 32 inches of rainfall a year. So if you have any suggestions, I'd love to hear them.