What We Do in Our Spare Time

Canon loves it when we "chase" him, but he hasn't quite gotten the hang of chasing us.  It's so fun to watch him grow.  We're having a great time hanging out with Daddy before he starts working next week.  Canon and I are not looking forward to giving up Mark to work 40 hours each week, but Mark is looking forward to having something to do everyday... not to mention receiving a paycheck!


Our transition into this new area is still in the process, but we're enjoying it.  It feels like home.  I'm loving being in a real house all to ourselves.  Canon is at an age where taking him to playgroup on a regular basis is not as difficult as before.  He's not quite playing with other kids, but he does like the interaction with new people... which I love too.  I was never really able to make it to many playgroups in Boston because of Canon's nap times, but I'm determined to make it work out here.  There are so many nice ladies out here that get together, and I really want to get to know them better.  


After living here for 3 whole weeks, DirectTV is FINALLY coming to install the service today.  I'm getting excited because we'll actually be able to get the Mountain, a TV station from Utah that plays all the college sports from the area... which means.... BYU FOOTBALL PARTIES!!  We're also getting a DVR, so finally we'll be able to record and watch later the shows that we miss on TV.  Ok, ok...I'm lame, I know... but I'm still glad it's coming today!

We've Moved!!

I've been pretty busy over the past 3 weeks getting packed, and then trying to unpack and get everything settled into the new house. It's been really fun to have Mark home all day long to just help out with the house, get decorations up, and just to hang out. He starts his Judicial Fellowship the beginning of September, so the move to Springfield has come and gone, but not without any hitches. Let me describe some of the events of this recent move.

• Mark kind of got lost on the way home from the rental place.We had three guys help us load the truck, and one girl come to play with Canon while we worked...which was all very helpful. However, it took over 3 hours to get fully loaded... and Mark forgot that they hid his bike behind a bush and didn't get it loaded into the truck. So now we have to wait for a friend to bring it out here for us.
• We couldn't get our Comcast Internet hooked up right away because the previous tenants never cancelled their account... so we had to fax Comcast a copy of our lease to prove that we lived at the residence. However, we still hadn't gotten a copy from the Realtor yet... and it took 3 phone calls to get them to drop off a copy. After 5 days we were finally able to get Internet hooked up.
• Within a couple days I noticed that a small diamond from my wedding ring was missing. Don't really know when it was lost, but with everything we'd done over the past few days, there was no finding such a small stone. So we took it to a jeweler to get fixed.
• My kitchen took FOREVER to figure out where to put things because I had only 1 drawer. Count them... it... ONE!! We made several trips to Walmart, Target, and Lowes for things we needed around the house. We settled on stacking two end tables we got from Target with baskets to allow for more drawer space for kitchen stuff (even though we put them in the dining room). Once we got those put together, the kitchen went a lot more smoothly.
• Our bed's box-spring wouldn't fit up the stairs to get it to the bedroom. So we slept with the mattress on the floor for a few days until we could figure out what to do about the bed. Mark decided to buy 2x10's and place the boards across the bed frame. Honestly, we found these strong boards to be much more comfortable than the box spring was. Oh, the irony!
• Canon's room was the only room in the house that didn't have any window coverings, so he'd wake up to the sunlight and not want to go back to sleep, and I DID NOT like to be woken up at 5:30am and then fight the kid to go back to sleep. It also had a green-house effect in the afternoons and got really hot in there. We went to buy a shade at Target and found a cute curtain that cost only a couple bucks more than the shade. When we got it home we discovered it was only ONE curtain. So we had to buy a second curtain, which turned out to be more expensive than we anticipated at first. But, once we bought curtains, and the land-lady installed window shades, it has been much nicer. Canon sleeps much better now.
• I've been wanting to repaint Canon's dresser because the drawers have been sticking and the paint was peeling. The professional at the hardware store told me that I need to strip it before painting it. That ended up being a disaster (mainly because I didn't really do it right). We would have to go buy some more stripper, then an electric sander because it was just too much for me to do by hand, and then the paint/stain...not to mention the time it would take to do all that. I was waiting to finish his room because I needed a place to put his clothes, so we just gave up and bought a new cheap dresser from Walmart.
• We still don't have TV hooked up because the earliest install date for DirectTV is August 25th. Hopefully they'll have a cancellation in our area soon because we'd like to be able to watch something on TV. We missed the finale of So You Think You Can Dance though! BUMMER!
• We're responsible for watering the lawn, but the previous tenants seemed to never do it. In fact, much of the grass looks dead... and we figured out why. When Mark tried to water for the first time, he found that the water to the outside faucets was turned OFF. He had to figure out how to turn it back on... and then he went onto Craigslist to find a cheap lawnmower because the house didn't come with one.

All in all, we know that there are always interesting things to deal with when you move, but it's really been a fun change for us. I absolutely love being in a house, and I'm looking forward to getting to know some people. We had the sister missionaries over for dinner on Thursday, but that just made us realize how much we miss entertaining. We want to have people over, but we just don't know anyone around here yet. Mark and I miss having friends. :)

If you're interested, here are some videos that tour the house so you can see it, but keep in mind that not everything is in its place just yet. We're still trying to get some things organized. I tried to get it all into one movie, but Blogger was having troubles uploading it, so here it is broken up.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Bathroom:

Part 3:

Canon's Room:

Part 4: