16 posts tagged “moving”

We need to start unpacking boxes - desperately.

I find that we're in need of some of the stuff in boxes and because there was things we needed to begin with I always say, "Oh, we'll just go pick it up really quick" not even realizing that I could be buying something we already have.

Case in point: For some odd reason I've been having some kind of mini-obsession with instant film as of late. My 600 Polaroid never really satisfied my craving because the pictures were always over exposed and out of focus. I don't think I ever got one good picture in all the time I've had it (scratch that - I think I have one picture of Paul that I love). However, I've been wanting to take another try - with perhaps a different kind of instant camera. I don't want to go with a Polaroid brand because they're phasing out their instant camera division so I can go with Fujifilm and have found one I'm interested in - the Instax 200. I was also considering an Instax Mini 55i but the only ones I can find for sale are sold in these large bundled packages and I can't afford $200 on something that I'm not even sure I would persue yet - even if I do get the smaller format I'd like and tons of film. Anyhow, I've considered it enough to actually bid on one off of eBay. I'll probably be out bid - but if not then in 3 days and 17 hours I'll be the proud owner of a new instant film camera.

But that's just one thing. I wish we could take a day or two off and just go through the boxes but every weekend we've been really busy and this weekend will be no different. Saturday we've made an appointment to have a 3D/4D ultrasound and on Sunday Paul has to travel to help his parents again. Not only does he like to help - but we also need the money. Wish I could find time after work!

Anyhow, just wanted to record the fact that Ripley is a cute dog, she's smart, and we're working together to get this all where we need to be :)

Ripley's not adjusting as well as I'd hoped to the new house.

I was SO excited to get her a backyard - but she only wants to be in the house with us all the time. This wouldn't be so bad - but we have to work and she's a terror when she's loose in the house. She seems to forget where her pee pad is when she's free in the house, and will pee anywhere. She also chews on anything and everything she can get her little snout around. Hell, she's a puppy still and there's nothing we can do about that. It's only when she's cozily confined that she remembers about the pad and we can make sure that her area is clear of anything for her to chew on. We've been placing her in the bathroom at night and she seems to do wonderfully in there - trots in there happily at night and snuggles up in her bed with a little wag of her tail.

During the day, we tried to place her in the backyard while we had to leave the house. But she dug her way out already and Paul & I are both nervous that she'll do it again. So - until we could spend some much needed time in the backyard "Ripley proofing" it, we would just place her in the bathroom again - she did so well there at night. Well, the other day we left her in the bathroom for a few hours (while we were working at the apartment) and when we came home we found that she'd begun to paw and rip the carpet at the doorway!!! NEW CARPET IN A NEW HOUSE! I was so upset - and also really disappointed. I just want her to be happy and I can't seem to do that. No amount of toys or playing with her seems to keep her content when we just can't be there with her.

We had to go to Petco that night and get her a 20 ft cable to keep her in the backyard during the day when we can't be there. We tried it out on Saturday and found that she survived, though she did get tangled up on one of the patio posts and so wasn't as mobile as I'd hoped. We had her in the backyard for a few hours while my nephew was over yesterday, but when I peeked out there I saw her shaking and I don't know if its because of the weather which was cold (50° F) with a strong wind or because she was just feeling lonely. We tried to find her a dog house, but the local Petco didn't have anything other than vented carriers and they were too expensive considering it wasn't what we needed anyhow.

Today, because its cold again - we opted to put her in the bathroom with a baby gate between her and the door so that she's not as confined but she's out of the cold, and she can't get near the door where the carpet meets the wood. Tonight we're going to another pet store or maybe even Wal-Mart to get her a house. I went home on my lunch to let her out of the bathroom a bit, I just hope I didn't make her apparent separation anxiety worse by coming and going so quickly again.

Well. Today's Monday - the beginning of my 1st FULL week back at work. These are usually the longest, but I'm trying to stay optimistic. We have our 2nd Bradley class tomorrow night and then I have my 1st prenatal appointment with my new doctor on Thursday.

Saturday we turned in the keys to the apartment! I'm so excited to get out of there, especially because towards the end when we were moving it was just becoming this sore spot for everyone. We spent two days cleaning it (to the best of our abilities) but when we did the walk-through we were told we'd still be charged for a light cleaning - which is going to cost us about $60. What a crock. I hate that they're charging for everything - if they had such high expectations for clean, then they should just build their "light cleaning" into their cost of doing business and not charge each person moving out. When the person who did the walk-through saw the rips in the carpet, she said they'd just replaced all the carpet. I was shocked, because the living room, bedroom and guest room carpet was fine. If we get charged for replacing it all I'm going to go to war because we were told that it could be patched. But, I'm not going to worry about it now - nothing we can do about it really so why worry?

Sunday was our 1st day of NOT moving and it was nice :) We slept in, made (and also burnt - gas vs. electric stovetops are certainly different...) some breakfast, drove to see my parents about their broken monitor and then came home and cleaned a bit before my sister & her family came over. I had to vacuum already - because the carpet is new and it's shedding a lot - but at least vacuuming made it look better unlike at the apartment. We grilled some burgers & hotdogs for lunch/dinner and it was a lot of fun and everything actually worked!

Moving sucked, but living somewhere new has revitalized me. I feel like cooking more, cleaning more, organizing more. Saturday night I baked a loaf of cranberry & orange bread :)

Merry Christmas Voxers! Did everyone have a good one? I hope so :)

Mine has been great! We've been on schedule with our moving - which has made me VERY happy - and Christmas Eve at my parents was a swimming success. I'll post more about both later - I just wanted to wish everyone Happy Holidays :)

Oh, and what's the picture of Junior for? Well he made it abundantly clear, as I sat on the floor packing our last *available* box, that I'd neglected him for too long. He's gently & purring-ly preventing me from moving anymore for awhile. I submitted. What can I say? I'm weak to his charming demands :P

Junior, not taking "no" for an answer.

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I don't want to be at work today. Its not that there's anything wrong with work - its just that I'm feeling really productive and ready to work and it's slow here what with the short week. Most people are taking off the next three days so its going to be quiet. I woke this morning with my alarm and didn't even feel like falling back to sleep like I usually do. Paul had to make a run to the store to get me food to eat during the day (fruits and stuff) so while he was gone I started a load of towels in the wash, put away the dishes (which caused me to have to rearrange some dishes in the pantry - Paul's not too keen on stacking), ate breakfast and cleaned up as much as I could.

If only I could have stayed and continued!

We didn't get any packing done on Saturday - but we did get some done on Sunday. We packed up basically our entire bedroom minus clothes (so our dresser is still full as is our closet). Its amazing how much stuff we had packed under our beside tables & bed - no one can say we don't utilize our space! That's basically our bedroom - so I'm marking that off as done though I know I'm probably missing more. Tonight we move onto our bathroom, the guest bathroom (though that'll be coupled with some cleaning as Ripley made a mess in there just this morning) and hopefully the bookcase in the living room.

I'm dreading having to pack up the guest bedroom as I know that's just a lot of mismatched items that don't have any place to be. Not sure where we're going to put most of that stuff in the new house. I don't want to automatically assume they'll go into the second bedroom closet again because A) The new closet is much smaller than our current second closet and B) That's going to have to hold a lot of stuff for Evy. I'm taking heart in knowing that we now have a garage - so a lot can go in there such as the boxes of keepsakes, our luggage (we have a surprising amount!), and rarely accessed doubled items. But at this rate the garage is going to fill up fast! We're already putting most everything from the hall closet, the patio closet & now the guest closet in there. Oh well, if it fit in the apartment I'm not going to feel bad about finding a place for it in the garage.

I'm also not sure how our kitchen is going to translate to the new house. In our apartment our pantries are very deep but not very wide (bad combination - I have to practically get IN the damn pantry in order to reach the back items) and its pretty much the opposite at the new house. Everything will be fine, I'm just curious to know how it's all going to work. We have yet to find a microwave or refrigerator though...

This has been a really long, boring post about moving but I feel like talking about it since it's pretty important to me right now. I'm actually going to go off and make a moving schedule :) I love scheduling!

In an effort to circumvent a repeat of our last utility move, I spent most of this morning getting our utilities transferred to the new house. I was only able to do one of the transfers online because while two of our utilities offered an online form the electric company's form didn't make sense. They asked for our service address I'd be transferring from and then told me it was the same as my current service. Well duh, that's because you filled in that section for me. I'm transferring FROM my current service. Anyhow - I had to call them but luckily the call was quick. Unfortunatley, they can't turn on the gas until the 26th of December due to the holidays - but that's okay because we don't have to be out of our apartment until the 3rd of January.

So gas & electric is out of the way.

We've decided to forgo continuing with our landline phone service because we hardly ever use it anyhow. We were forced to get it hooked up in the first place because our apartment complex refused (for security purposes) to let us connect our gate access to anything other than a landline. If we need something like that in the future, I think we're going to try T-Mobile's at-home service before using Vonage again. Vonage was fine - it's just that T-Mobile's service is cheaper and we've been told it would boost our mobile phone signal too!

So phone is out of the way.

We were planning on sticking with our current cable company because we'd just gotten our rates lowered again and we were happy enough with the service. Sure the internet wasn't as fast as Verizon FiOS, but we didn't need it that fast. Sure the TV cut out sometimes and we didn't get any special sports channels but it never caused too much hassle because we're not terribly big TV people. Plus the price was right for us. However, we've discovered they don't offer service in our new area so we have to call up the new cable provider. I was considering - despite what I just said about not needing Verizon's FiOS - trying them out but their prices are just too high. We don't need phone so their bundle packages don't apply to us and without the bundle we're spending $100 a month on TV & internet. If we can avoid that we're going to.

So, cable's been turned off at the apartment - but not quite sure about turned on at the house.

I called our soon-to-be-property-management-firm earlier this week and set up to meet someone at our soon-to-be-house to take measurements for the refrigerator. I've never bought a fridge before and I realized that I didn't know how wide the space was that it would be fitting so I thought, "Before we buy one - let's get the width." So we meet and I take the width and we head out again.

Well, armed with my width, this morning I went looking for fridges. Low and behold they actually refer to the size of refrigerators not by width but by cubic feet. Well I didn't take any other measurements when I was there so I can't calculate what the cubic feet of that space is. So, unless I want to have egg on my face and request a 2nd visit, I will not feel comfortable buying a fridge until after we're in the house.

So, now what do I do? How many disposable coolers do you think I'll need?

Truth be told though, we wont have any place to store the fridge or transport said fridge until or after the 24th anyhow so this is all really a moot point. Just thought I'd point out that I've never bought a refrigerator and I show it clearly :P

That's right - our leasing application was approved!

It's all working out so well too! For some kind of tax purposes, the owners of the house need someone in there before the end of the year - so they've asked us to move in on December 24th. Normally, we wouldn't be able to do that because of the cost - however in exchange they're deducting the eight days that we're moving in early from our January rent! So not only do we get in sooner but we also get in for a more manageable price!

I know some of you guys are thinking, "Oh my gosh - why would anyone be excited for moving on Christmas Eve?", and to that I say - I'm not just anyone.

• To me moving is a wonderful Christmas present and I've been wanting to do it for quite some time.
• We don't have any plans that are going to interfere with us moving other than visiting my parents on Christmas Eve night because we have small families and we're not big holiday people.
• Awhile ago I took off Dec 24th to extend my holiday weekend so I have from December 24th until December 29th off from work so I don't have to take off any additional time from work to get this going.
• We can't vacate our current apartment until January 3rd so we have from December 24th until January 3rd to move between the two locations so we'll be able to have the apartment empty when we have the carpets cleaned.
• Paul is being forced to take a vacation from December 24th until January 5th - due to budgeting at his office. At first this was terrible for us, but now its just working perfectly into the plan! He has those two weeks to basically do most of the moving (since I'm pregnant) and because we're writing our rent check early - his stunted paycheck for those missed days wont effect us nearly as much.

Moving onto more recent events!

I've posted a few times about wanting to move from our current apartment - hopefully into a small house that has a backyard for Ripley. Well, at last I believe we've found a place. I really don't want to jinx it by posting about it but at the same time I'm so excited and anxious about it that I just can't keep it in! In fact, I had a hard time going to sleep last night and then woke up around 1am and could not fall asleep as I just kept thinking about it.

I had Friday (the day after Thanksgiving) off and we drove to this housing complex that is one freeway exit north of our current freeway exit. This is one exit closer to my work - which sucks because if we needed to get closer to anyone's work it would better to be Paul's - and the complex is about a mile and a half away from the freeway. The area if full of homes built in the late eighties, but the neighborhood is well kept and seems to be full of working families which is a big plus in my book. I got the tip from a co-worker who lives near by and remembers that there were a lot of house that were both for sale and for rent in the area. Driving through we found three homes and called on all three. The first was already taken - but the lease wasn't signed just yet. The second I left a message but haven't heard back and the third I was able to talk to someone at the property management firm.

House

The house was being rented for about a hundred dollars less than our current apartment, has two bedrooms and one bathroom, a two car garage with washer & dryer hookups (but not supplied - also the refrigerator is not being supplied), new carpet & paint throughout, wood laminate (instead of tile or linoleum) in the kitchen, bathroom & entry way and also a great sized backyard. Square footage is not huge, but I'm actually pretty happy because I'm sick of cleaning so much space when its only the two of us. The bathroom is a good size with a new tub and the place on a whole looks very well kept and clean. The community is cute too, and has a pool that we'd have access to. A landscaper is not included - not surprising - but the front yard is very well kept that I think it'll be easy to keep it looking so nice.

As soon as they told me the rent, I asked if we could see it and also offered to bring any paperwork that might speed up the leasing process. They said we could view it that afternoon and so met them around 5:30 (originally 5pm, but the person meeting us was told the wrong location by the office). Though, because it was after dark and there wasn't a lot of built in lighting, we couldn't see everything. But in my opinion, I felt like we'd seen enough (all of the interior and the size of the backyard) - and it was exactly what we were looking for. I spoke honestly with the leasing agent about my concerns with my credit, as the last time I filled out lease paperwork it was rejected due to our "risk" level. Once she heard my credit rating and I showed her my pay stubs she said that there would be no problem (as long as I was telling the truth) and felt confident that we'd get the place. She was really helpful too and told us that if we really wanted the place we should fill out the application tonight, swing by a grocery store and pickup a money order for the application fee, and drop it in the door so that it could be processed first thing in the morning. It was time consuming (we were sitting the the McDonalds across the street from the leasing office until about 8pm filling out the forms) but worth it because I really want this place.

So. That's it. I really want to rent this house, I'm feeling the same kind of excitement I'm sure a new homeowner would be feeling! I was thinking all night about where I wanted to put our furniture and how cute the baby's room would look and how happy Ripley would be with a backyard to run around in. We even found out that since Paul's parents are consolidating most of their home furnishings with his grandparents, they have an extra refrigerator, washer & dryer for us to use! It seems to be all working out so well - I'm just keeping my fingers crossed. Hopefully, by the start of the new year we'll be in a home we can be proud of :)