In Sum

(Photo taken after upacking kitchen boxes.  Taken with my cell phone camera because the regular camera had yet to be located.)

So the kitchen looks lots better now, but I'm going to wait until the blinds are up before I take some real "after" shots.  And the blind installer guy comes tomorrow, hallelujah!

But we've been busy over at Casa de Hallstrom, that's for darn sure.  In the last week and a couple of days we've:

-Painted the garage and put a nice speckly epoxy on the garage floor
-Painted Elise's room and my office
-Moved in
-Moved out (I don't know if I've been as bone tired in a while as I was last Wednesday night at midnight when I finally decided it was time to stop cleaning and packing up the apartment and get some sleep).
-Installed a sprinkling system (Forrest did this all by himself, trenching and everything).
-Selected and planted bushes and shrubs
-Selected a new washer and dryer (hooray!), waited around for the delivery people, then installed the gas line (okay, yeah, Forrest is doing a lot of this).
-Waited around for the cable guy.  Had the phone go out the next day so waited for him again.  Then the day after that, had a nice discussion with the shovel-wielding cable burying guy who'd cut the main sprinkler line Forrest had installed the day before.
-Waited around for the door installer guy.  LOVE the front doors.  The originally-installed doors were incorrect, and I'm so much happier w/ the new ones.  Pics to come soon.
-Waited around for the tub installer guys.  Our old tub was also incorrect.  New tub arrived two days ago and--surprise surprise--it has a "chromatherapy" feature, which basically means that there are a series of LED lights in the bottom of the tub that turn the water a delightful array of calmness-inducing colors.  It's hilarious.  And also cool.
-Waited around for the sod installer guys.  At least the sod came with the house!  And they had this really cool sod-rolling machine that laid the sod down on the dirt like toilet paper off a roll.  I left to go to the grocery store and they were almost done by the time I came home.
-Bought a bunch of stuff: hooks for the mudroom, bathroom shelves, mats, desks for the kids' loft, rug for the kitchen, bar stools, wireless router, wireless router receiver, laundry sorter for upstairs laundry room, etc. etc. Even when you don't have to buy a lot of furniture or anything, moving into a new house is so terribly expensive.
-Hooked up a bunch of stuff: TVs, computers, printers.  Cords, cords, cords.  Oh, the masses of cords.
-Hung up a bunch of stuff: pictures, temporary blinds, clothes in closets, decorative items, shelves.
-Hauled a bunch of stuff up and down stairs, from the garage to the basement, from the bedroom to the office.
-Opened, unpacked, then broke down about a bazillion boxes, and stuffed mass quantities of packing paper into the garbage.  Having other people pack your stuff is nice in so many ways, but man, they use more boxes and more paper than they need to.
-Made about a bazillion tiny decisions: where should I put the cutting board? (Lazy Susan.)  What should I do when there's nowhere handy to hang a dish towel by the sink? (Buy one of those 3M removable hooks and stick it on the cabinet by the sink--but then I bought a silver hook and I think it clashes.) Should I throw away this vanilla scented lotion that I haven't used since 2003? (yes.)

On top of all that, four of the six of us gave talks in church on Sunday--only Jonas and Wyatt were exempt.   Then there was the regular stuff: homework, swimming lessons, Ethan being shuttled back and forth from the school as he helps out on stage crew for the upcoming musical.  Parent teacher conferences. Laundry.  Food preparation.  Sleeping.

Forrest keeps saying with a real wistfulness in his voice that we need to go to a movie.  I so agree.

So as soon as I get things in picture-taking shape, I'll take some pictures.  But all is well here.  Busy, exhausting, but good.  And getting better.