The last crazy couple of weeks...

Where do I even start????

I had the upstairs of our old house boxed up and empty (yes, it was all sitting in the living room downstairs) by Wednesday, Sept 30, the day we closed, minus our bed and a few other bits in our bedroom. I had planned on working on cleaning the downstairs Wednesday but that obviously didn't happen, but I did get a little more cleaned up, until I heard from Jeremy that the key was ready to be picked up. I went into town to pick it up and pick up a bolt he needed for the green jeep, then went back home, picked up Hayde(I knew she'd want to check out the new place too), and we went over to the house to try the key. I took a few more pictures, called Jeremy to meet me after work and putzed around a bit and started some cleaning by the time he arrived. We grabbed some dinner, picked up a few things from the old house and went back to the new house and started painting the ceilings. Jeremy had hockey that night, so he left me with the blue living room ceiling. It took me the entire time he was at hockey to finish. It's a textured ceiling (only one in the house) so it took quite a bit of paint to cover, especially since it was blue too. By midnight we had conquered the three bedroom ceilings and the living room.

The next day, we got up and headed into town to pick up a few more supplies and the wall paint. It was noon by the time we finished up and headed back to the new house. We worked all afternoon on the bedroom walls and started on the living room walls. My parents arrived much sooner than expected, before dinner, and were able to help us finish up the walls. They ended up heading back to the old house around 12:30am and we worked about another hour and managed to finish the two extra bedrooms, the living room and the entry way. What a job!!!!! The entry way was by far the toughest with all the corners, and odd spaces.

Friday, we got up and started packing the Uhaul. Oh, by the way we had an issue with the Uhaul. I had ordered it about a month early to make sure we'd get the truck we wanted, the 26 footer again (like the one we drove here from WI), but they called Wednesday and said they had have our reserved 26 footer, but had to give it to someone else moving to NY, but would give us a 10 footer instead! WHOA! That's a bit of a difference, so we called another place, but would have to pay a LOT more so we decided we'd better take the 10 footer and would have to make lots of trips. They did take off the mileage at least. So, we loaded up the 10 footer and the truck and my parents van and headed to the new house. We dropped my mom off so she could start work on painting some of the trim while Jeremy, my dad and I unloaded and went back for a second trip. By the time we came back, it was lunch time so we grabbed some pizza and called Lee since he was home that afternoon from work so he pitched in and helped. I stayed here to help with the trim for the third and forth load. By this time it was dinner time and Kharren and Khartem stopped over. Lee, Kharren, Khartem, Jeremy and I then headed out to Kelsey's (practically the only sit-down restaurant in town) while my parents enjoyed a meal on their camp cooker at the new house and wanted to keep working on the trim. It was time for bed by the time we got back so we unpacked the bedding and went to bed.

Saturday, we spent cleaning up some of the paint mess quickly so we could start getting some of the furniture and necessary stuff in. We worked well and quickly so by the time my sister came, we were mostly relaxed and had the house "unpacked". We hung out the rest of the night catching up and playing with Jack. He's getting so big and is about to crawl. He's army crawling at least. Plus, he's learned to wave and loves to laugh and make all sorts of noises. He's about to start saying a few words. My sister hopes his first real word will be kitty. He's pretty close! Of course, Hayde loved him and wanted to keep licking him in the face and he loved watching Kitty and Stewart too. Hayde did pretty good with all the chaos in the house. She's really calmed down in the last year which is SO nice!

Sunday, we putzed around in the morning, then went for a walk thru the Petawawa Terrace Provincial Park which is practically around the corner from us now. Bob carried Jack in their new backpack carrier. Jack didn't seem to mind and drifted off to sleep for a bit. We came home and started getting dinner ready. Lee, Kharren and Khartem came over for dinner too before Jeremy and Lee headed off for hockey.

Monday, once we got up and got everyone dressed and fed, we headed into town. Earlier, my dad and Bob went out to try trimming the maple tree in the front left of the house. It's really big and bushy and was filling up a good chunk of the front side yard where we're debating about putting a garden. Jeremy thought about maybe trying to take it down, but it's such a nice tree it's hard to cut it down. We picked up a few supplies (Bob and Dina decided they'd give Jeremy a tree trimmer for a house warming gift as long as he promised not the cut the maple down!) and of course had to stop at the Bulk Barn! Before dinner, we headed off to my old running path along the Petawawa River for a stroll. They all hit the time just about right as we were about to hit our peak for fall colors. We hung out the rest of the evening at home.

Tuesday, Bob, Dina and Jack had to leave as they wanted to spend a few days in NY at their camp. It was so nice that they were able to make it here with Jack and were at least able to see the house and I'm sure they'll be able to better picture all the changes we've got mulling in our brains. It's nice it's about a 5 hr drive from here to their camp so hopefully we'll be able to make more trips here or there. I hung out with my parents the rest of the day. We made a quick trip to the nursery down the road and stopped in town for a few things (curtain rod for the living room). I really wanted to get the old blinds down and curtains up.

Wednesday, my parents and I took Hayde to the Forest Lea trails for a walk. It was a really nice walk thru the woods. We met the guy in charge of the cross country ski group and it sounds like they've got some really nicely groomed trails. Hopefully we can check that out this winter since we never did get out on our skis last winter.

Thursday my parents left to head back to WI. I had hoped they'd stay thru the weekend, but they're having visitors of their own and wanted to get some other work done before hand. So, once they've left, Jeremy and I have been trying to work on cleaning up some of the mess we have in the house, getting ourselves organized a bit and figuring out where we want things and thinking up projects we'd like to tackle.

1. Mstr bedroom. We'd like to open up the closet space since there's an 4th closet in the computer room that backs up to the mstr bedroom closet. Also, we'd like to paint and we need to do something with the trim since a chunk is missing. And, replace the hunter green fan on the ceiling. (we've replaced the other two fans with light fixtures in the extra bedrooms already since on fan was missing the blades and the other was missing something else).

2. Computer room. We'd like to customize the three closets to something that will suit us better, making them into bookshelves or something, but we're still trying to figure out exactly what we'd like to do. We have TONS of books. We couldn't even unpack half of them in the other house!

3. Extra bedroom. Work on the closet again. It's really deep, and has one shelf in it, but not very useful space for us so we'll have to see about putting in better organizers. Jeremy's thinking this might be a good place to lock up his guns.

4. Kitchen. ?!?!?!?!? Want more counter space!

5. And of course TONS of small/large other things I can't even begin to list.

But, over the weekend, we did manage to squeeze Jeremy's boat into the back shed part of the garage. He was able to back it in with the green Jeep to a point where the back of the boat met the doors and we were able to push it the rest of the way in - with an inch to spare between the boat and the opened garage door. Whew! Good to know it can be done - plus, you'll all be happy to hear without taking the nice cedar down in the back. We also had a mouse in the house Saturday morning! Jeremy and I were in the living room and we heard some noise coming from the kitchen only to hear Kitty jump down from the counter! Big trouble! Turns out she came into the living room with the mouse dangling in her mouth. Of course she let it go and proceeded to chase it around the living room and kitchen. Hayde got involved too and wanted to see what was going on. In the end, I managed to catch it in Kitty and Stewart's food bowls, one on the bottom with the mouse, the other as a lid. Hayde and I then took it to the park /woods and let it go. It was still alive.

Jeremy also worked on the green jeep. The battery kept dying so he took the battery out of the red jeep and put it in the green one. He also put some hooks on the front and back bumpers of both jeeps to tie the canoe down. We've been having trouble with the blower fan in the red jeep so he took that out and I ordered a new one (reminds me I need to pick that up this afternoon!). He also put the plastic back on the the back hatch of the green jeep and cleaned it up a bit. So, the green jeep is now in running order and the red jeep is out of commission. I picked up a new battery so hopefully this weekend, he'll have a chance to put the new blower in and the new battery in the red jeep and then, maybe all three vehicles will be working!

We went out "hunting" Sunday. We took the canoe to a spot he had eyed and hoped to canoe down a stream back to a small pond looking for ducks. We made it about 10-15 min out and had no where to paddle. It was even tricky to get that far. We had to get over a beaver dam, and thru some pretty thin spots. Poor Hayde didn't get much out of the trip.

I just finished getting all my plants in the ground that I wanted to. Got the last few in today as an odd snow flake was coming down. I'll probably have to move some around next spring, but I didn't want to wait any longer as winter's quickly approaching. Otherwise, we've been putzing around the house working on making it our own. The garage is a HUGE mess, so I hope to get a bit of that cleaned up tonight or tomorrow.

I do finally get to start work on Friday! So, we'll see how things go. Jeremy's headed off to Toronto for meetings Sunday morning (he hopes to hit up the Bass Pro Shop Sunday) thru Wednesday night so it'll be a tough few first days for me. At least it's orientation so it should be too much demanding stuff at work. I think that's about it. Sorry so long - just so much going on in the last couple of weeks. Hopefully I'll be able to keep up once I start work full time but we'll see. Hopefully also, we won't have so many things to figure out/explore this year either.