The Sweet Smell of Citra Avenue

Ready for a looooong post? Good. I know we've drawn this out but between busy work schedules and two new callings (Dana's back in YM with the Deacons and I'm the new Youth Camp Leader, um, Leader for Girl's camp) we've been busy. But here we go:

Saturday February 23rd we left Terrace Heights in our small rental truck (too small? Is three trips too many? Uh...yes!), loaded down with 7 years worth of memories and furniture. Dana's brother, Matt, and his fiancé, Kristin, were kind enough to come do the first two loads. Is it just me or is moving awful? Not just me then. No, really, it was fine. We had great weather for February. The hardest part was when Matt had to leave and I had to wait at the new house for the Internet guy so poor Dana did the last load at the house single handedly. Why didn't we have elders quorum help? Because we are dumb, prideful, 30-somethings who don't know our own limits and refuse to accept the mountains of help that were offered:) Next time elders quorum, you are on notice.

Dana hit his limit when he finally got to the house at 5PM after returning the truck. Whew. We put just the essentials together but basically lived in a land of boxes for a weekend before we just threw our hands up and shoved the unopened boxes into one bedroom and gleefully closed the door. Outta sight, outta mind, right?



Then we collapsed. Er, except not, because of this giant pile of laundry and the seven others like it:) So my wonderful Dana heaved his corpse off the couch, connected the washer and then plugged in the--wait a minute, is that four prong?! Yup. Three prong plug into a four prong outlet doesn't work. I took pity on my sad hubby and ran to Lowe's for an adapter (learning along that way that you don't just 'pop in' to town from Moxee. It's a serious time commitment. We live in the sticks people.)

Long story short: they do not make adapters. I found this out AFTER I got back home with the wrong thing:( We would have laughed, except our muscles hurt. One more looooong trip to Lowe's and a more helpful customer service guy and we were in business. Turns out you can just buy a new cord and rewire the dryer. Voila! Dry clothes! And Dana felt very handy. The day ended with Papa Murphy's pizza, salad, and soda delivered by an extremely nice Relief Society. How did they know we would need it so badly?

One other funny thing: our new house did not come with blinds so a few weeks ago we went to the house and measured and ordered these cute, white, honeycomb blinds. Only when we went to put in the order I couldn't tell if our bedroom measurements were 40 wide or 48 wide (big difference) so we panicked and decided to order those later. Dana put up the other blinds before we moved in, but it meant we spent the first four nights in our new abode sans bedroom blinds. I seriously did not sleep a wink:)

The next week was a welcome to homeownership for us as the disposal randomly stopped working (no cause for alarm, the house has a one year total warranty and it turned out we just needed to learn where the reset button was no so biggie:) On our first full Saturday, after a week of dragging the garage door up and down by hand, we did our first home improvement project and installed a garage door opener. The instructions only had 12 steps but it took us over five hours to get it up--plus or minus an hour to run into town and buy a ladder when we realized not even a seven foot tall giant could drill holes into the ceiling standing on a kitchen chair. Ahhh, funny husband.

Finally, it was up and humming. Dana did all the wiring himself and (when I discovered a happy little spider hanging from the wall) took over the final two steps so I could hurry inside and hide, um, make dinner.

Now we can get in and out of our garage with ease and it's made me appreciate all those little things I grew up with and never realized were blessings. It's also made me appreciate just how handy my smarty-pants hubby really is. He can do anything when he puts his mind to it. Even the dishes! Hint hint.

That's it. We've been here almost a month and already it feels more like a home than anywhere else we've ever lived. And we love it. Lots of room to grow and entertain, plush new carpet, clean, creamy walls, and the scent of new house whenever we walk through the door:) We have a beautiful garage where both our cars can bask in the warmth and coziness. Dana put a shelf up on the far wall last weekend and we have many many plans for improvement. Grass and a sprinkler system will be going in later this month, possibly followed by a fence later in the summer (not that we don't enjoy our back neighbor and her cotton candy pink bathrobe of course). We have a few photos up on the wall and more to come. A big thank you to all our new neighbors who have supplied advice, housewarming gifts, and the occasional cookie. We LOVE being homeowners.

From Moxee With Love!

So it's official...we are homeowners! What a crazy ride these last few weeks. The whole saga of buying the house is a bit lengthy (and frankly, now that it's over I'd kinda like to forget it...wire transfers, am I right people?) but for posterity, here goes:

At the beginning of January Dana starting looking at houses again on Zillow and that's usually my cue that we're going to start the "maybe it's time to buy a house" discussion again. This time, however, we got serious. We looked around at neighborhoods in Terrace Heights (a bit pricey), West Valley (pricier still and far away) and finally settled on the modestly priced Aho development in Moxee, WA (yes my children will grow up in Moxee!). Bad news: we had to move wards and lose our amazing callings and friends. Good news: our ward was split last year and the other half is in Moxee so we get old friends back.

The original plan was to build and move in May. We even reserved a lot and then through a series of fortunate events the house Aho was using as a showroom (which happened to be the one we wanted to build) went up for sale. It's pretty funny because we'd walked through it the week before and pretty much picked out the exact same flooring, paint, cabinets, etc. They added a few upgrades we wouldn't have gotten--jetted tub, tile entryway--and a few I would have liked--carpet padding, people! But after praying about it we felt good so we put in an offer and then played the game to haggle them down a bit until we agreed on a price.

We used Dana's Dad as our real estate agent and he was fantastic and we loved our lady at Solarity. What we didn't love was when we got to sign the papers and my wire from UCCU didn't go out because the couldn't verify my old Chicago phone number. It all got sorted out and we finally got our hands on those keys Tuesday February 19th! Post on the move and some funny happenings as first time homebuyers are coming. I know you can't wait! Too bad you'll have to--muwahaha!

Down off the Mountain

We left Mountainview Avenue forever about a week ago but I wanted to put down some memories of our 70s retro apartment before i forgot them forever. Feel free to skip if you don't want a trip down nostalgia lane.
-we had the best view of the fireworks ever. We'd lay in bed upstairs and open the windows and listen to the explosions from the fairgrounds. The only downside was the random people who would show up on our lawn below and sometimes not leave for hours!
-we won't miss hearing our neighbors through the walls but for the most part we had great neighbors. Janeen was on the left and was the most amazing gardener I've ever met. Her daughter Camry (yes, how fun is that) would always stalk us at night and wave from her bedroom window when we got home from work. On the right we had a few but our favs were Carly and Seth Bagley in our ward. They were awesome fun!

-our tiny kitchen sometimes left me frustrated especially since it lacked a dishwasher but now I can hold that over my children as my one 'trial' in life (like walking uphill in snow both ways...nice try Dad but you lived in Florida!) and how many people can say they cooked a full on Thanksgiving dinner in a kitchen that small?
-when Sarah and Taylor visited us the second summer we had to lock baby Miles in his pack n 'play in the closet downstairs like Harry Potter.
-the ceilings were a bit low--at least if you are Dana practicing your golf swing.

-one thing I will miss is the whole house fan upstairs. One flip of the switch and a tornado like wind would rip through the house pulling the hot air up...up...and away! Loud but effective.
-our landlords, Doug and Carol, were beyond fabulous. I learned a lot about what not to put down a disposal from them.
-I will never forget the sound of our loud air conditioner or the odd popping sound of the heat coming on from those strange units on the floor. Sometimes I wondered if the house might just explode one night.
-the window in our bedroom was a sliding glass door and sun would come in at 4:30AM in the summer so instead of paying an arm and a leg for blackout drapes I jerry-rigged a black bathtub curtain up that did the job nicely. To date it is the invention I am most proud of:)
-I loved the fact that our backdoor looked like the front and vice versa. Can't tell you how many times we'd hear confused, stuttering knocks on the sliding glass door and open it up to find the missionaries or members of the ward awkwardly standing beside our square foot garden trying to read the letter 'C' on the yellow moon tacked to the siding. I think Bro. Fournier summed it up best when his family showed up with Christmas goodies: "Front doors don't slide". Yep. They don't.
-not an in the house one per se, but I'd hate to forget walks up and down the canal road above our house. There's nothing quite like being that high above the city in the summer, walking along as Dana recites legal outlines for the bar exam.
-being right up the street from the library and just minutes away from the Church was a blessing
-popcorn ceilings...what else can I say?

We had a great run, Mountainview Avenue. A lot of awesome stuff happened while we called you home and we hope a really nice family moves in to take care of you.

Nice Neighbors

We made it to Moxee and that post is coming real soon, I promise but I had a funny experience I wanted to post before I forgot it. So, for the last three years I've gone to a monthly book group with ladies from Church and it's usually down at Kristen Maxwell's home in Moxee but this month she got the flu so Ashley volunteered to host at her house. I drove down like normal last Thursday and though I knew which house was Ashley's (because last summer it was being built and Dana and I would walk around inside it just like we did in the Farmers. Yep, sorry guys, we stalked your houses for fun). Turns out, homes look different once they are built:)

So long story short, I knocked on her neighbors house, heard a voice yell "come in!" and I did. Walked right in the door and was halfway down the hallway when I realized I didn't recognize the man playing wii on his couch. The only intelligible thing I could think to do was blurt, "is this the book group?" Nope. Not so much crazy lady. He was nice enough about it as I let myself out horrified. Next time an address would be nice. At least my book group ladies got a kick. And hey, since Ashley lives around the block the stranger is pretty much my neighbor now too!