Move in and our first guest

To say this week was a whirlwind would be an understatement. Scott and I have been running a hundred miles and our to reach our move in date, and I'm happy to report that we survived and surpassed it! We officially turned in the keys to our apartment yesterday, 10/31, and spent last week moving everything to the house.

Now, the house is far from "move-in ready" without floors, but we are here and making it work!

Last week my friend Chris came to visit and help us move everything (including the animals) in, and we even put him to work removing the popcorn ceiling from the dining room.

Check out the city featured on our moving truck, shout out to my hometown!

Scott and I have been diligent about bringing items over slowly but surely, and we had most of our garage items here, yet still filled the uhaul twice and the truck multiple times. If that's not a sign we have too much stuff, I don't know what is!

One of the things I've stressed the most about is how the dog and cat would adjust to the move/disarray, but I'm happy to report both babies are settling in beautifully. Clover LOVES the lanai and waited a full 48 hours before capturing a lizard and bringing him into our bed. Luckily, he was still alive and I was NOT in the bed, so everyone survived.

Our floors arrived and are awaiting installation in our garage; we aren't too far away from that, but we'd like to get the walls painted prior to putting them in. Thank goodness Chris was here when the floors came, he and Scott had to move the pallet from the driveway into the garage. Each box contains six floor tiles and weighs 66.6lbs. Whew! They're gorgeous and I could hardly contain my excitement when they arrived (yes, there may have been happy-dancing in the driveway).

After all of the moving we had to show Chris at least one day on the water. We didn't catch anything crazy (Scott will tell you we caught 5 different species and NO catfish, but I'll point out that none of them were large enough to even consider keeping or photographing). We did get a great show from the dolphins, we saw two jump clear our of the water and one swam around on his back really fast. Hopefully the wildlife sightings helped make up for all the hard work we made Chris do!

Chris is quite the photographer and shared some of his Florida pics with me that I'll share with you for your viewing pleasure!

Chris left us Friday morning and I spent some time searching for curtains. We have a sliding glass door in our bedroom that looks out to the lanai, which is awesome, but allows ZERO privacy, so curtains were a must.

Saturday we started the prep on the walls in the living room, it's definitely harder to work when we have furniture to work around. Everything got a plastic coating and we aren't sure if Toby thinks it's great or if he's trying to show us that there IS a couch it's just under all the dust!

We had our first mishap/disappointment this week. I was so excited to run our first load of dishes through the dishwasher (thanks Momma and Padre for making us tacos!), only to discover that the dishwasher works for about 2 min then shuts off. It's getting really hot, and not getting much water. Some googling leads me to believe it's either the water inlet valve, the circuit board, or the motor. Regardless, it isn't working. We are going to get new appliances when we redo the kitchen in the (very near, hopefully) future, so right now it isn't getting replaced. So, hand-washing it is! The morning after discovering the dishwasher wasn't working I thought we also didn't have hot water and I had my first "what the heck are we doing??" moment. Luckily, it was a finicky mixing valve in the sink, easily fixed, and I'm no longer in panic mode!

One super positive to offset this situation is that we have a brand-new garbage disposal. We knew ours didn't work, but had no use for it until we started cooking here and having dishes so while I was packing the apartment with Chris one day my parents came over and installed a new garbage disposal and even fixed our screen door on the lanai. I have no idea how I got so lucky on the parent front (and on in-laws, while we are at it!).

We also got a reality-check when it comes to pool ownership. Our pool has an in-line chlorinator, so I just assumed there was chlorine. You know what they say about assuming. Well, when our water started looking gold-ish I took it over to a pool supply store and learned that we were out of chlorine, had an algae problem, and that having a pool is actually a lot of weekly work.

So, multiple gallons of chlorine, three bags of yellow-stop, and some intense scrubbing later, and we are hoping to wake up to clear water tomorrow! The more you know...

Sunday we continued prepping the front room for paint (sanded the ceiling and walls and filled any holes), and took care of three other high-priority items: hanging the TV on the wall on the lanai, adding a rod holder to the dock, and setting up the Big Green Egg.

My parents gave us the Big Green Egg about 3 years ago when they moved to Florida and it traveled with us a year and a half ago when we made our move. Since the move, it's been waiting in the garage for the day it could be used. Today was that day. In all of the craziness Scott made a PERFECT pork loin that was an awesome end to a productive, exhausting, and rewarding week.

Now that we have the TV outside, it's a lot easier to ignore that craziness in the house and actually unwind.

Week 3 is finally done, we are under one roof and not traveling between two places, and we are hopefully going to be able to slow down a bit, but not too much, I NEED FLOORS! :)