(Virtual) Reality Star

Cameron called yesterday to say that the Virtual Tour of our house is posted online! They only posted the 'interesting' parts (family room, kitchen, foyer, loft and master bedroom) but it gives you a pretty good idea of what it looks like.

You can check it out here.

Whirlwind Weekend

Much like the entire last week, the weekend flew by and I feel like I got very little accomplished.

Friday night we had small group at Ray and Renee's house. This was our second week and we have really enjoyed getting to know some more people from church and the neighborhood. Everyone is just so friendly and warm, we really enjoy the few hours we spend there every other Friday night.

On Saturday Nate over-seeded and fertilized the lawn. The backyard is growing nicely in most spots and by Sunday morning we could tell a definite difference from his all his hard work.

I spent the morning running errand for the house and picking up a wedding gift. I think I unpacked maybe a box and a half the entire day. By 1:30 it was time to get ready for Greg and Jess' wedding.

The wedding was in Greenfield, IN about a 45 minute drive from Indy. The wedding was beautiful, the food was great and it was fun to hang out with Nate's coworkers.

Nate and Shawn practice their best Heisman poses while waiting for the newlyweds to come out of the church.


The restaurant wasn't quite ready for us when we arrived at the reception, so the boys amused themselves with a Frisbee that Curtis helpfully provided from his trunk.


Poor Gil got filthy fishing the Frisbee out of the bushes.


Nate with his Roche colleagues. This is one crazy group; it's a wonder they get any work done.


And finally, us at the wedding.


There are a few more pics of the wedding posted on Flickr.

On Sunday, we went to church and then I spent most of the afternoon cleaning the apartment and bringing over the odds and ends that were left over there. Then a little grocery shopping and by the time I got home it was nearly 8 o'clock!

Hopefully this week will be a little more productive on the home front. I am ready to have the moving part done and just be able to enjoy the house instead!

(A) Mission Accomplished

Today my boss let me finish up work at noon so that I could run some errands and get some things done around the house. I have been trying to take it easy at work all week without much success. My office is like a black hole that just sucks me in as soon as I sit down at my desk. Despite my best intentions, I haven't done a very good job of taking it easy on the work front this week.

Needless to say, I had big plans for this afternoon - several shopping errands for the house and then cleaning the apartment. We have a busy weekend and I wanted to knock a few things out early.

Thanks to the Office Depot delivery guy, I got nothing on my agenda accomplished. On Wednesday I ordered a printer stand for my monster work printer. It was scheduled for delivery between 8am and 5pm on Thursday. No problem because I'm home all day, right? Wrong. At noon yesterday I got an email from Office Depot Support saying the delivery guy is lost, can he please have a number at which to reach me. So I email back my cell number saying I can be reached at any time all day. Five o'clock rolls around and still no Office Depot delivery guy.

So this morning I give him a few hours to show up and finally email OD Support around 11:00am to say that I haven't heard anything from anyone regarding directions or my delivery. She emails back to say they attempted to delivery yesterday and no one was home. Excuse me?! How exactly did he manage to attempt delivery when he couldn't find the place? And I was home the entire day. The house is big, but there is no way my guard dogs would have let his delivery attempt pass me by.

I very politely inform her that I was home all day during the stated hours and the lost delivery man never called and never came, no where the heck is my stuff? Rest assured, it will be delivered today between noon and 5pm. Well, dang, those were my errand running hours. But I want my cart so I can finish arranging the office. So I wait...and wait...and wait. It is now 10:00pm and the guy never called and never showed. And my errands remain undone.

You better believe Office Depot will be getting an earful from me on Monday morning.

On the bright side, I did manage to use my five hours of free time wisely by arranging my closet. This is no small task by itself, but I also took the opportunity to get out my winter clothes, sort out consignment stuff and put away my summer clothes. It took nearly four hours but I am pretty satisfied with the end result. I still want to hang some more shelving in the closet but that is a project for WAY down the road.

Nate has finally managed to score some space in the master bedroom closet. Here is his corner:


He also gets about half of the left hand wall. The jeans are where my clothes start. And yes, those shoes are all mine (but not all of my shoes!).


Nate's first comment when he saw it was, 'Wow! You've got some space left over.' That sounds an awful lot like permission to go clothes shopping!


After working from home for over a year, I have quite a collection of track suits, tank tops and hoodies for around the house. That's what you see piled on the shelves there.



So I might not have accomplished what I had planned for today, but I certainly have a feeling of accomplishment at having the closet done. One project down, nine hundred more to go.

Oliver and Lola's excellent house adventure

Oliver and Lola's first trip to the new house was Saturday afternoon. I brought them home from the groomers and turned them loose to explore. They ran from room to room checking each one out, then started all over again and ran around each piece of furniture in every room like they were checking to make sure it was all there.

Lola gets up every single time you leave the room to follow you wherever you are going. We have a lot of the upstairs doors closed so that they (mostly Lola) can't get into anything, so every time you open a new door she goes nuts checking it all out again.

They also love running up and down the stairs as many times as you will let them. I swear they will both lose weight these first few weeks, as much running as they are doing. And if they get going too fast on the way down, their feet go out from under them when they hit the foyer floor!

They are also a big hit in the neighborhood. Actually, a little bit too big of a hit! Twice now we have had kids ring the doorbell to see if Oliver and Lola can come out and play. And they are swarmed with kids whenever we walk them in the front yard. We actually had to sneak them out the back door a couple of times to make sure they actually did their business. They get so distracted by the kids, they forget to go!

Lola checks out a new room.


Oliver sticks close to his daddy where it's safe.


Lola found a new favorite spot to sleep. She is going to be very sad when the washer is hooked up and this pile of bedding disappears!


Moving is hard work.

Box by box by box by box

You want to know the least fun part about moving? Boxes. They are dirty and heavy and leave little bits of cardboard all over when you break them down. I sure will be glad when all these boxes are gone.

The move this weekend went better and faster than expected. Nate worked his butt off Friday night loading the rental truck with our mountain of boxes. Early Saturday morning he unloaded them at the house while I took the puppies to the groomer to keep them out of our way. Our wonderful friends, Buster, Weez and the McLovins came to help us load and unload the furniture during Round 2. With their help we had the majority of our stuff in the house by 2:00pm.

Nate and McLovin on the move.


Weez helps unload the truck.


Nate and Buster wrestle a mattress up the stairs.


I spent the rest of the day unpacking while Nate did this:


Just kidding, Nate worked very hard all weekend, unpacking boxes, putting together the beds and carrying all of my shoes upstairs to the closet (no small task!).

On Monday, we had professional movers come move some of the bigger items like the washer and dryer and our monster entertainment center. Then the DISH guy came out and set up our satellite TV. Hopefully we'll have some time this week to relax and actually use that beautiful new television!

For more pics of the house and moving weekend, check us out on Flickr.

Welcome to Grand Central Station

Whew! Here it is only noon on Friday and I am already exhausted. This does not bode well for the weekend ahead!

We are officially proud homeowners. The final walk through and closing went smoothly Wednesday afternoon and we immediately began moving a few things in - 'marking' our territory so to speak!

First item on the list to move was those silly blinds stacked up in my office. The vertical blinds come in three boxes, two of which are six feet long and one about eight feet long. As I am carrying all three of them out of the building, the eight foot one totally did not clear the door frame and instead got stuck on the EXIT sign above the door. So what do I do? Of course, I look up to get the stupid thing unstuck. At which point the entire sign falls off the wall and hits me in the forehead! In front of the neighbor who saw the whole thing. We're an hour into this moving thing and already I've almost killed myself!

We managed to load the rest of the stuff without further injury and head out to our new home. The grass was looking a little bit sad, so Nate wanted to set the sprinklers up as soon as we got there. He was like a boy with new toys, just could not wait to break those babies open! He spent the next hour playing with the sprinklers while I unloaded both cars. By the time he was done finding the exact perfect placement for each sprinkler, he was completely soaked and his shoes were a muddy mess. He ended up wearing his golf shoes home!

Today has already been a productive day. We had the blinds installed, the bedroom furniture and refrigerator delivered and the internet hooked. I am still waiting for the new TV (yeah!) to be delivered any minute. Sadly, the furniture guys were not very careful and the ceiling is a little worse for wear but I am trying to be okay with that. The house is going to be lived in so I just need to get over these little dents and dings.

We are picking up the rental truck tonight at 5:00 and then the real moving begins. Wish us luck!

Somebody tie me down; I'm about to float away

In case you didn't already know, we are BUYING A HOUSE TODAY!!

I am so freaking excited I could seriously jump out of my skin. I am supposed to be working until 12:30 but I have been totally worthless all morning. I have barely slept the last two nights. Nate seemed to be having a little bit of trouble falling asleep last night too. We would lay there for a few minutes, then one of us would say "Are you awake? I was just thinking about ______ (fill in the blank with a random house concern)". Then a few more minutes of vain attempts to calm the mind and the cycle would begin again.

Wish us luck for this afternoon and the next time I post, we will be HOMEOWNERS!!!

Blind-ed by progress

Yesterday afternoon Lowe's called me to say that our blinds were in a day early and we could pick them up any time this week. Since we were headed out to the house anyway to conduct our own little 'pre-walk through' walk through, I suggested that we pick them up on the way home. Nate expressed a little concern at fitting 25 sets of blinds in the car but I assured him that we could make it work.

So the customer service person wheels out a cart stacked high with boxed blinds and we proceed to slide, stack and squeeze all 25 sets into the back of the Altima. At which point Nate pipes up and says, 'Why exactly did we pick these up today? Why not wait until next week when we could have taken them straight to the house?'.

HELLO?! Why didn't you say that 30 minutes ago when we rolled up in the parking lot?!

Seriously, though, the thought never occurred to me. They called and said they were ready and in my eagerness to mark one more thing off the To Do List, I went running to pick them up without a second thought.

We spent 30 minutes carting them from the car into the apartment, where we stacked them in the only available floor space in the entire apartment. This happens to be in my office, where I can stare at them for the next week and look forward to the day when we slide, stack and squeeze all 25 boxes back into the car, only to spend another 30 minutes carrying them two at a time into a different office!

On the house front, we had our pre-closing walk through on the house this morning with Park. We ended up with a short list of items to be fixed before our closing next Wednesday. Most are relatively minor cosmetic issues. There is one kind of major issue with some spots on the laminate wood flooring (it's like a little trail of drips all across the floor) that we are most concerned with, but both Park and Cameron don't seem to think it's a big deal and that the cleaning people will be able to fix it when they do our final cleaning next Tuesday. We plan to go out on Tuesday night to check and see if they are able to clean it up so that we will be prepared for our final walk through on Wednesday afternoon. We are keeping our fingers crossed and hoping it's as easy as Park seems to think it will be.

We also got a tutorial on basic home ownership and how all the gadgets in the house work. I had no idea how cool our kitchen appliances are! The flat top stove heats up instantly and the oven has all kinds of cool settings. There is a slim chance that they just might entice me to cook a little bit more. (Or maybe I'll just warm myself by the stove top on really cold days).

I came away with a short list of things we need to buy that we didn't know about before (like a dehumidifier for the basement and HVAC filters). I was ready to run right out and buy them tonight so I could check them off the To Do List. Nathan, ever the voice of reason, pointed out that:

1. We do not need these things RIGHT THIS SECOND.
2. We will only have to move it from the apartment to the house so why not wait a few extra days?
3. Where will we put this new stuff? Next to the blinds?

Apparently I am a very slow learner.

Bring back naptime!

Whew! It has been a long and exhausting 10 days since my last post. I was ready for a nap by 10am this morning and it's only Monday!! Man, I miss those college days when 2:00pm meant an hour-long nap before dinner.

We've got a lot of ground to cover to recap the last week, so hold on to your hats - here we go:

Last Saturday we headed to my grandparents' in Tampa for a four day vacation with the family. It's been awhile since the whole family has been together and over 6 years since we've been down to Tampa. The trip was a (very) late celebration of my dad's 50th birthday. Dad is a life-long Red Sox fan, so we bought celebrated with tickets to the Red Sox v. Rays game on Monday night. When we bought the tickets six months ago, we had no idea this series would be the deciding games of the season. And what a game it was! The Red Sox killed the Rays, 13-5. Thirteen runs, ELEVEN homers. (We won't mention the rest of the series, though. Let's just say, we picked the right game!)

We may have been a little over-eager to get there. We had to stand outside for quite awhile!


Emily, Katie and Daddy enjoy batting practice.


Big Papi steps up to bat.


Enjoying the game with Emily Claire.


It was so nice to spend time with the family and especially to see my grandparents. I have the world's best grandparents, for sure. They were so great about letting us descend on their house and had all our favorite drinks and breakfast foods stocked up. I was lucky enough to get a whole extra day with them to myself on Tuesday. I genuinely like hanging out with them (you guys are pretty cool!). Love you!




Then on Wednesday it was off to Portland, ME for a work conference. The conference is always fun, we eat good food and I enjoy the people there, but all I really wanted was to go home! The weather was freezing (literally, it was 30 degrees on Thursday night) and I missed my hubby and my puppies. I was glad when Friday came and it was time to head home.

Friday night we checked out our new landscaping at the house. We ended up opting not to sod the backyard this fall. We let them go ahead and just hydroseed. If that doesn't take before the winter, we'll look into sodding in the Spring. It's just one less ball to juggle right now. The front yard looks great though. The grass looks really green and healthy and we got a great tree! The bushes are looking a little sad but they can always be replaced in the spring.



The weekend was spent with friends, football and lots of packing. The apartment is half-packed; there are boxes everywhere. As excited as I am to be in the house, I am not looking forward to the moving part!

Cleaning House

Nate and I have been busily cleaning and packing things up in the apartment and the new house got a thorough professional cleaning yesterday, too. I seriously don't know how we still have so much stuff even after two moves in the last year. I look around and wonder how the heck we're going to make this move on our own. That is going to be one L-O-N-G weekend!

While the apartment looks like a hurricane blew through, the house is looking awesome! I got to go out twice yesterday, once in the afternoon to have the windows measured for blinds and then again in the evening with Nate. The front door and the garage doors have been painted, the house number was put up and the mail box is at the end of the driveway. The outside is so close to being done; just a little grading and sodding left.


Nate talked to the sod guy yesterday and I think we've decided just to pay them to sod the backyard for us. We were planning to do it ourselves but it ended up costing less than we expected for them to do it. We've got enough on our plates and it's one more thing to mark off our 'To Do' list.

The appliances were delivered on Tuesday and they look great. The dishwasher still has to be anchored down and pushed a little further back but other than that they all look great.



We've started looking at things pretty carefully and critically in order to prepare for the pre-closing walk through on the 24th. There are a few little things we've noticed that we want to make sure they address before we close. They have done such a great job so far, they will probably catch a lot of them before we even get to the walk-through but we are taking notes just in case.

We finally got to meet Jill's husband, Will. He seems like a really nice guy and gave us a couple of hints on moving ourselves and movers we might want to try for the big stuff. Jill came out to say hey and tell us how excited she and Renee are for us to finally be there. It's so nice to know that our neighbors are already looking forward to having us!! She stayed outside talking with us for a full ten minutes before she realized she'd left poor Zack sitting in his highchair waiting on his dinner!!

Check out more pics of the house on Flickr.

Countdown

4 days until I get to see my family in Florida!!

6 days until we watch the Red Sox spank the Devil Rays.

21 days until we are officially home owners.

55 days until the election! (Don't forget to Rock the Vote)

76 days until Kerry and Cheryl come to visit.

78 days until the most fabulous shopping day of the year.

95 days until my first live COLTS game at The Luke.

106 days until Christmas.

...just in case you wanted to know.

It's a small world after all....

A few months ago I posted about this great recycling website called FreeCycle. Over the last two weeks I have been using FreeCycle to collect boxes for our upcoming move. On Wednesday there was an offer of 30+ boxes available in Noblesville off of 191st, which just happens to be the same street our new neighborhood is on. Being that 191st is not a super developed street, I thought, 'Wouldn't it be funny if these people lived in our new neighborhood?'.

Turns out the world is even smaller than I thought - the people actually live on our street! Kriste and Matt are five houses up from us on the right and they just moved in a month ago. We had to make two trips to get all 30+ boxes so we got to chat with them quite a bit yesterday. They seem really nice and their little boy Jack is really cute.

It's exciting to think we might finally get to make friends with our neighbors. We had such great neighbors in Knoxville but not so much in Boston or Indy. Working from home has a lot of perks, but it severely limits my opportunities to make friends. Sadly, the baristas at Starbucks are about the closest friends I've made in nearly 10 months here!

It's all in the details

That is what we are down to in the house - just the details. This week's progress is minor because there's just not that much left to do!

The fireplace people came back and unpacked the fireplace and 'set' the logs.

The shower heads, towel racks and toilet paper holders are installed in all the bathrooms.

The air conditioning was on for the first time which for some odd reason Nate finds very exciting. He's been waiting for them to turn on the air for weeks now.

They have installed all of the door knobs (which we upgraded) and also the sliding closet doors in the upstairs hallway.


The shower stall in the master bathroom was installed. We upgraded this too by getting the textured walls rather than the clear walls. The idea of being able to see straight through the shower just weirded me out.


And in big kitchen news, the island counter top is back! We found out from Cameron that the original piece that we saw in the living room weeks ago was cut backwards from the way it needed to be, so they sent it back and had it re-cut. Seeing it for the first time yesterday, I was completely shocked to see that it actually has a breakfast bar that hangs off about a foot and half from the edge of the island! I had no idea it was going to be like that and I have to admit I was mildly horrified by it at first. Okay, that might be putting it a little strongly but let's just say I wasn't really digging it.


After a few minutes of looking at it from different angles, I've made peace with it. I think with some bar stools or chairs it will be less obvious and I'll be okay with it. We are going to need some bar stools ASAP or it's really going to bug me.

The dry-wallers are out there today making a few last minute touch ups and the painters are following behind them doing the last coat of paint. Parke called today and said the cleaners will be out on Wednesday to give the house a thorough cleaning which basically means the house is done except for the final inspections. I can't wait to see it clean and sparkling and completely painted.

No Shoes Allowed

In between marathon shopping sessions yesterday, we managed to get out to the house for the first time since last Monday. Normally we would have visited mid-week but we knew not much was going on so we held ourselves back until the weekend.

The driveway and front steps were poured some time during the week. It has really helped to 'finish' the look of the house and we can't wait to see the yard sodded too. We are very pleased with our lot choice and the way the whole outside turned out.

You can't really tell in the pictures but the gutters were added this week too.


The garage doors still need to be painted but the facade is mostly done. It will be power-washed some time in the next few weeks.


The carpenters were just finishing up as we arrived. Ray (the next door neighbor) said they'd been there late into Friday night and back at it early Saturday morning. Now that all the flooring is done, everyone who comes in has to leave their shoes at the door so they don't scratch the floor or muddy the carpet. Needless to say, our feet were filthy by the time we left.

We are thrilled with how well everything matches. It is so hard to tell from those crazy little squares at the design center. We thought we'd done a good job, but we just weren't sure how it would turn out.

The living room/dining room area.


The laminate floors are all uncovered now, so we got to see the full effect for the first time. Love it! We also measured all 25 windows and the sliding glass door so that we can order the blinds soon.


The flooring in the bathrooms is also uncovered and we have running water.


Master bedroom just waiting for that nice new furniture!! All of the shelving has been installed in the closets too. Nate is finally going to have his own space in the master closet (at least for now!).


Only 30 more days until we are officially home owners!

Let the official countdown begin

We had our mid-construction walk through with Cameron and Parke at the house today. Just like our pre-construction walk through, this one was a few weeks late and therefore much less interesting than it probably would have been. The driveway will be poured some time this week, as long as the weather stays nice. They also have some stripping to do around the brick and then the gutter installation. They have completed the first dry wall touch up and the painters will be coming back this week to roll the whole house again. After that is done, the carpet guys will come in over the weekend to lay the carpet. Then next week will just be finishing touches, shelving and doorknobs and little things like that. The whole house will basically be done by the end of next week!! Then there will be about three weeks of inspections on everything again - another drywall inspection (and painting, if necessary), HVAC and plumbing, doors and cabinets, etc.

Our pre-closing inspection is scheduled for Wednesday, September 24 and then the closing on Wednesday, October 1. We are so close!! It's hard to believe we will be in our first house in less than six weeks!!

I told you so

Don't you just love being right? On the way out to the house last night, I mentioned that I hoped the house wouldn't be locked when we got there. With all the fixtures going in, we knew they would start locking it up soon. Nate was certain that we would have no problem, because the house down the street is two weeks ahead of us and it wasn't locked last week (we might have snuck in one night to take a look around!). So what happens when we roll up and try the front door? Totally LOCKED!!! Nate thought I was just messing around, but sure enough, the front door was locked. Told you so.

As much as I love being right, I'm not really sure why they locked the door since we just pulled up the garage door and walked right in. Once again, there were a ton of changes in just a few days time.

The outside of the house itself is basically done. The siding, shutters and carriage lights all went on this week. It turned out even better than we expected! It looks awesome when you turn the corner and see it sitting at the end of the cul-de-sac. I can't wait to see it with a driveway and lawn.


I think we made a good choice on the musket shutters with this brick. The door will eventually be musket brown too.


I am not a big fan of these gold carriage lights. We will be replacing these as soon as I found better ones!


The doorbell is installed and working. Nate hates when I make him take pictures like this. Just one more reason to take pictures like this! LOL


We were pleasantly surprised to discover that we now have power!! You can actually flip a light switch and have the lights turn on now. This is a very good thing since the days are getting shorter and we seem to be getting out there later and later each week.

The can lights, chandeliers and other light fixtures are installed all through the house. Nate went through every room with can lights and admired his lights.


A few other highlights from our visit: the powder bathroom fixtures were installed, the laundry room sink and kitchen sink were installed and the trim has been primed for painting. There are more pics of our visit posted on flickr.

Trimmed out

We hadn't planned to visit the house again until after church on Sunday, but Friday night came and we just couldn't wait anymore. It had only been two days but were eager to see the progress they'd made on Thursday and Friday.

They have almost finished trimming out the whole house. The baseboards, door frames, doors and crown molding are up in every room except the loft (which is about half done). They still have to putty all of the little nail holes which I'm sure is a full day's work in itself; there is a LOT of trim in this house!

The trim in the foyer includes a chair rail and decorative panels.


The living room and dining room door cases are done, too.


This is from the foyer looking up at the crown molding in the loft.


All of the hardwood floor is down. I made Nate pull up a little corner of the paper so we could take a peek.


The cabinets and counter tops in the kitchen are done. The cabinet space in here is amazing; I don't think I have enough kitchen gadgets to fill it (yet!). We aren't sure what happened to the island counter top. It was sitting in the family room on Wednesday but it wasn't installed on our Friday visit and it wasn't in the family room either.


The master bathroom also had a little face lift this week. The faux marble around the tub and in the shower has been put in.



Once again our insane work schedules have prevented us from having a scheduled walk through with Cameron and Park. I have a work trip (yuck) to Texas (double yuck) the beginning of this week and Nate has a big meeting the last half of the week, so we had to delay our mid-construction walk through for another week. I am super bummed about this because we are supposed to find out exactly when the house will be done. I was waiting on pins and needles all week to finally know, and now I have to wait another whole week!