New Digs

We moved to a new (to us) house two weeks ago today. It came together pretty quickly. I am not sure I was quite ready, to be honest. But I am VERY thankful to be here and SO grateful for the extra space. :o)

I really have to applaud my husband. He worked hard to make things happen sooner rather than later, and that is good ... for many reasons. We now qualify for a tax credit that is supposedly a great thing. YAY! Also, we were able to rent out our condo to a colleague of his. For anyone who knows what the condo market in ATL is like right now, you know that is a very big deal.

Anyway, we bought a house. It's not too far from where we lived, so that's good. (We really liked our previous location--it was just lacking in space.)

We learned a lot during the house-hunting process. One thing I learned is that I don't really like it much. It's exhausting. I also would rather see an empty house rather than one filled with other people's stuff. But that's just me.

Another thing ... We're not necessarily "house" people. When I thought about it, I realized I have never lived in a house in all of my adult life. After moving out of my parents' home, it's been dorms, apartments or condos. Interesting, huh? The DH and I would have been fine living in another condo or townhouse, actually--it just needed to be bigger. And move-in ready. (We are NOT fixer-upper people.) Oh, and I wanted a place where I didn't have to walk far or ride an elevator to get to the door. Tanna wanted a garage; I wanted a laundry room. Add to that a nice location and good schools, and we were good to go. We're not that hard to please. At least I don't think so. LOL!

We looked at a lot of houses. And we found a couple that we really liked. We made an offer on this one. Went back and forth a few times (not fun, IMO). I would like to note that our first offer was a palindromic number (my idea). I thought it was a nice touch--kind of quirky, like us. We did draw the line at adding some cents to the figure. We wanted to be taken seriously, after all. (I asked our real estate agent if anyone had ever done a palindrome for an offer OR added cents to an offer, and he hadn't experienced that in his seasoned career. Just FYI.)

As we got closer to closing, I got more anxious. I think I was feeling like the old stereotype for a longtime bachelor before his wedding. It's a big commitment. A lot of responsibility. I am not skilled at being a homemaker, at decorating, at setting up house, etc. It can be a little overwhelming. (For the record, I have no problem with commitment when it comes to relationships and people. I guess it's just with addresses. LOL! I DID move three times in one year (2001), after all.)

But that's OK.

We are here. Our stuff is here. It's far from being in its proper place, but it's here. We have sheets on windows. Nowhere to sit. We can't find half our stuff.

But we are here, and we are together.

Kate is loving all the space. We're still learning our way around the neighborhood, when the mail runs, the days for garbage pickup, etc. (That is one thing I will for sure miss about living in a building--24-hour access to garbage disposal. All we had to do was walk a few steps down the hall to the garbage chute and--poof!--garbage is gone! LOL! Or if we were getting rid of something big, then we could take it downstairs, and our awesome building staff would take care of it. So nice.)

Anyway ... we are thankful for this new place to call home. We purchased some furniture last night, and today we bought a sign with Joshua 24:15 on it:

"As for me and my house, we will serve the LORD."

The new furniture should arrive sometime next week, and things will start to slowly come together. Maybe by summer, we might even have some window treatments up. We'll see ...


Here we are at closing.


We started moving things that night. Kate went to spend the night at Halmoni and Halabaji's house.


Tanna with the truck


Housewarming "gift" left in the garage by previous owners


Some of our awesome helpers


More awesome helpers


Halmoni and Kate


Kate's first nap in her new room (on moving day)