We're movin' in!

Finally the day to move into our new house has arrived!! Hopefully this will be the LAST time we will have to move for a long time. We had started moving some boxes out of our basement with our trucks to make the final move a bit easier and we were glad we did. It saved us a bunch of time and hassle.

We got up early and rented a U-Haul truck and started loading stuff in. it took us about 2 1/2 hours to get everything loaded in, then came we drive to the new house and started the fun unloading process. It would have been nice if wecould have just backed into the driveway really fast and hit the brakes to dump everything out, but I guess it's probably better that we didn't do it that way. ;-)

Unloading was a bit easier and faster than loading and we got done around 2:00 pm or so. Now... where do we put everything?

Unloading stuff at our new place

We didn't know we had so much stuff!

The new living room furniture

New TV and theatre system



Juli and her new Rottie

Painting the new house

Overall our new house didn't need much work at all... except for the painted wallpaper in the nook off the kitchen, and the "Old lady" metallic floral wallpaper in the dining room. Obviously that had to go! We spent a few weekends at Lowes going though the painting department looking at all the different colors to choose from and finally decided on "Lafonda Geranium Red". Just fyi... the darker the color, the harder it is to paint, kids.

The wallpaper came off very easy in the dining room, but the painted wallpaper in the nook was a whole different story. It came off in pieces and chunks, rather than long strips and took about a day just to get it all removed.

After prepping the walls and fixing a hole where a phone jack was, we were finally we were ready to paint. 2 coats of primer, and 2 coats of paint and we were done.

The next hard part was removing the painter's tape. Some parts came off well, but other places the paint stuck to the tape and peeled up along with the tape. $@#&!!!!!!!!!!!!

Soooo there's a few places that need touched up here and there, but overall it looks A LOT better than it did before. We are glad that we picked the color we did. it goes great with all the cherry wood throughout the house.

The nook with the wonderful painted wallpaper

"AHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!"

Patching the hole where the phone jack was

Tinted primer... Check!

2 coats of color... Check!

Almost done!

Woo Hoo!!!!! We're FINISHED!!

She's Here! She's Here!

On April 30th, Mom flew into the Akron-Canton airport on a little baby airplane. She said that she had a good flight and even found her way through the Chicago O'Hare airport. :-)

We had a great visit. Wish she could have stayed longer. Miss you!!

Here's some pictures.

Just after she arrived at the airport


Mom and Snickers


Inside the barn


Juli and Marty. Just before going back home



Silly

We bought a house!!!!

When Juli and I moved here to Ohio we told ourselves that we only wanted to rent for a year and then start looking for a house to buy. Well, soon after we moved here, we started looking online at houses and drove around some areas to see what was for sale. We can't believe how fast the time has flown by since we got here!

For probably the last few months we have gone with our friends, Tony and Nicky on some Saturdays to walk through and look at some houses. I work with Tony and they both have their Real Estate licenses so that helped us a lot. I think that in total we went to look at around 25 houses. Then last weekend we had 5 houses lined up to look at. The first one we went to though, was IT! As soon as we walked in the front door we immediately knew this was the house for us. It has everything that we want and nothing we don't. Plus it is only 10 years old. It is perfect!

We still went and looked a 3 of the other houses we had scheduled, but none of them compared to the first one. We decided to put in an offer so we met up with Tony later at his office and filled out and signed the official offer letter. He said that we should hear something back within a few days. Well, the very next day, he called back to say that they had countered our offer, but it was very reasonable so we accepted it! We can't believe it! We are actually going to be home owners now after all these years of renting!

We met up this morning at 9:00 am for the home inspection. We followed "Tom" around for about 2 1/2 hours and he went over the house with a fine tooth comb and after all his checking, the ONLY thing that he could find wrong that needed to be fixed was a small leak on the water connector on one of the toilets. That's it. He said that everything was very well constructed and the builder definitely didn't cut any corners when it was built. He found nothing but the best materials and electrical throughout the whole house. We were definitely glad to hear that.

We have our closing set for May 1st and should be able to take possession about 10 days later. Needless to say, we are both VERY excited about it. We still can't believe that it's really happening. ;-)

Here's a few pictures and also a video of a walkthrough of the house. If you would like to see all the pictures, click here to view them as a slideshow.

View from the street of the front of the house

The kitchen

The living room

Part of the basement. It's like a bowling alley down there!

View of part of the back of the house and deck

Maybe Spring is coming??

Ok, we are pretty much tired of all the cold and snow now. it was cool at first... but now we are ready for sunshine and temps above 30. heck, we'd even settle for mid 40's!!

We have noticed an increase in the wildlife we see out and about near our house. We sat in our living room last weekend and watched through our sliding window and saw all kinds of stuff. There were Squirrels, Deer, Cardinals, Blue Jays, Ravens, Chipmunks, and bears!!! OH MY!!! Ok, we didn't really see any bears, but we saw our neighbor's dog, Beethoven and he kinda looks like a bear. We hope that means that Spring is coming soon!!

Cute Lil' Chipmunk eating a peanut on our front porch

Blue jay??

Squirrel eating some peanuts on our back railing

This is either a Crow, or a Raven. We aren't sure. Let's say it's a raven

Here's a video we took yesterday of some deer walking through the trees behind our house. There were about 4 in total, but by the time I got the camera, there was only 1 left to film.

The ranch with the first good snow

Juli and I thought that we would brave the cold and snow and see how Snickers was doing up at the ranch. It's been snowing so there's a lot of it all over everywhere. The ranch is about 7 miles from us in the town of "Navarre" on 26 acres. They have 18 horses there now, but when Snickers first arrived, there were only about 10. In the fall there are plenty of deer and a lot of wild turkey (not the drink). The cold definitely limits what we can do once we get there, but the inside of the barn is pretty large so Juli can ride in there if it's too frozen outside. Snickers is outside during the day as long as it's not cold and raining and then inside his stall where it's warmer at night.

The road leading up the the ranch

Juli and Snickers

Some of the horses in the back pasture

Snickers after rolling in the snow

Snickers and "Big Delores"