All moved in!

When we found out that there was a potential that we'd get the job in New Hampshire I started doing my research and fell in absolute love with this dreamland. Now that we're here...I'm even more in love with it! Just driving through the streets you see so much green (you know that song "Oh what do you do in the summertime, when all the world is green?" They must have been talking about New Hampshire!). In fact, this is what is right next to the parking lot at our complex.


And to get to the leasing office and club house, we just have to walk across this quaint little bridge:


The day after we arrived we met a wonderful family who had us over for dinner. He gave us directions to his house, and we were amazed by the beauty as we drove in. We knew that the highways had all sorts of forest surrounding them, but the streets that people live on do too! I can only liken it to driving through canyons or up mountains, where there is forest, but it's much greener, and far more dense, and every so often you see a break in the trees where a house is built. I've only seen green lawns, and pretty much have only seen green!

Also, as we were driving into New Hampshire we saw a sign that said "Drive courteously, it's the New Hampshire way!" This made me happy, especially after driving in Tucson for so long! But was it believable? Yes! Even in stressful situations people are courteous drivers! It's an amazing change and we love it! Sometimes we get worried that someone is going to speed up instead of letting us merge, but then we realize that we aren't in Tucson anymore and merge right in because the other person *gasp* slows down to let us in!

We drove into town on Saturday, May 22, but our stuff didn't arrive until Wednesday, May 27. The family we met on Sunday lent us a card table, some chairs, some camping chairs, and a futon mattress so that Kathleen wasn't on the floor since we didn't have a couch or bed yet. They were a lifesaver for my pregnant back!


On Monday we went and played in Boston with Jason, Kristine, and Julia (we'll post more than just squirrel pictures later). On Tuesday we did some shopping around to try and find the furniture we'd need, we bought a bed, had lasagna dinner with our friends Janny and Brian. We only had paper/plastic wear, so dishing up a hot lasagna was quite the adventure!


On Wednesday we were so excited for all of our stuff to come! Jason, Kristine, Julia, Janny, and two guys from the Elders Quorum (plus one guy's wife and son) came to help us move. After seeing only beautiful weather, it was raining ALL day! Luckily it lightened up by the afternoon when people were coming over, and when one of the guys in our complex saw that we were moving, he lent us one of those convertable dollies that you can stack everything up on. Matthias put me in charge of ordering pizza, and I ordered it about 10 minutes into the move. The move was done in 30 minutes though! When the pizza hadn't come yet, they offered to help us unpack, so we were even partially unpacked by the time the pizza came, including most of the kitchen appliances! It was great to have so much help and that the move was able to happen so quickly and easily! While some of the boxes got a little bit soggy, the only damage we thought we had from the rain was when we couldn't move the adjustable shelves on our entertainment center. All we had to do was let it dry out over night and now it's all back to normal. Matthias, Kathleen, and I spent the next few days unpacking and unpacking, and by Saturday night we had our house ready for the Sabbath. We still didn't have a table and chairs, a dresser, shelves, or a few other pieces of furniture, but our place felt like home again.

Do you want a tour?

First the kitchen:

Notice the beautiful counter space, lots of cupboards, gas range, and what you can't see is the dishwasher. We still need to get some sort of cabinet to put our food in so that we can restock our food storage, but we love our new kitchen! The door to the left of the photo is the laundry room (equipped with washer and dryer). The door to your right is where you enter our apartment from the hallway (which is a little annoying now, but we will be so grateful for it come slushy season! All the slush will be cleaned up by management, not us.) We also picked up a couple of bar stools, which have really come in handy now that being on my feet is starting to hurt sooner and sooner.

Next to the dining room (yes, it is separate from the kitchen!):

We got that table with 6 chairs, and a fold-in leaf for $100 off of craigslist, plus we paid the guy to deliver it for us so we didn't have to spend time and money renting a truck. It was by far the best deal we have seen on there, and we love it! It's still got a little bit of an odor from the previous owner, but it's going away as we continue to wash and polish it. The doors to your right are our coat closet, which will also house my craft supplies and a few other miscellaneous items.

Next to the living room:


You'll notice it's a lot like our old living room, only a lot more spacious, we fit in the computer desk, and we got some new book shelves from Lowe's (on clearance). The lamp in the living room was one of our first purchases because otherwise those first few days would have had a lot of darkness. Little did we realize that the sun doesn't go down all the way until about 8:30. You can also see in this picture the door to our small deck. We are hoping to start a planter with some herbs, flowers, or even berries (we can dream, right?).

Now onto the Master Bedroom:

This is our brand new bed we got for graduation. It's absolutely amazing for my pregnant back! We still need a dust ruffle, but at least we've got sheets to fit it. If you ever came to our old apartment, we had our bed up on cinder blocks for additional storage space. Now, all we plan on having under the bed are the DDR pads!

This is our new dresser. We bought it on craigslist for $30, and were able to pick it up with the same truck rental we needed for the shelves. The DI shelves we have there were ok in Tucson, but they are definitely more wobbly after the move. The wall outside the window is for our deck. It's a small deck, but handy.

Onto the Master Bathroom:


It's HUGE! We love it! We have a linen closet (hooray for not storing towels under the swamp cooler vents anymore!), cupboard space, and the mirror is big enough that we can both use it at the same time. It's amazing! We saved our little above the toilet shelf, although Matthias had to scrub it down and spraypaint it because it was getting rusty and we figured the problem would just be worse here. It sure was nice to have a deck to spraypaint on!

Next the guest bathroom:


The plunger in the corner came with the apartment. It has an extra roll of toilet paper, and is wrapped in purple plastic. Matthias helped me pick out the shower curtain. It's really pretty. We still need to get coordinating towels and such, but those are expenses that we can wait on, so Kathleen is just using my old college towels.

And finally, the nursery/guestroom/unfinished room:
This is the air mattress that Kathleen sleeps on now. That box has our baby bouncer and swing in it.
This is the crib we bought at the town dump. No joke...it's like DI, but at the Transfer Station where people bring their garbage and recyclables. This nice man named Gus comes in a few days a week and people donate their unwanted items, and he sells them at his Second Chance shop, right by the transfer station (aka dump). Don't worry, I double checked the measurements to make sure that it's up to safety standards, even though he assured us it would be. We cleaned it up really nicely, and now just have to get a mattress so that the bedding can be put together. We got it for $100. Looking back, we probably could have bartered it down a little, but it was so much less than anything we were able to find in stores that we jumped on it.

We got this dresser for $20 on craigslist. Aside from the random white knob, it's in great condition. It's got a slight musky odor (I've also got a super sensative pregnant nose), but cleaning it out helped a lot, and now we're letting it air out before washing the baby clothes and putting them in there. You can also tell that we're on our way to our Classic Pooh nursery...

...but we've still got some work to do! Kathleen and I will have to work on finishing things up before she's gone.

We love our new home! It's still got some rearranging/organizing to do, but it feels nice and homey. I wish the walls weren't all white, but it gives me room to dream for when we can paint our own walls. I had been so stressed out about how much it was going to cost us to move from a furnished to an unfurnished apartment, but we've had so much luck with finding good deals on craigslist, and a great graduation gift of a bed from Matthias's parents, that it's not so stressful anymore. I love walking through the furniture section of a store and seeing how much we didn't have to spend to have good, functional furniture. Yay for having a home!