Moving Day...well, days...many of them

I know that I haven't really waited that much longer than usual to post, but at least this time I had some excuses besides pure laziness.  For those of you who haven't heard, Kelly and I were pregnant and I was SO TIRED all the time!  So of course I didn't feel like writing about moving to a new place. Fortunately I was never morning sick, though, so that's good.  Just about when the tiredness finally started to become manageable, I lost the baby.  It has been a really difficult thing for both of us, albeit in different ways.  It has been a heart softening experience.  Most of the four years Kelly and I dated were long distance, and even though we knew we were going to get married we had to wait and be apart.  It wasn't always fun, but it made me appreciate Kelly and our marriage and just being able to be with him so much.  I know when we do have a baby we will appreciate it that much more for having to wait and go through heartache to have it.  Also, thank you to everyone for your kind words, the cards, and flowers.  We felt your love and prayers and love you all.

Well, there's where we've been for the last few months.  I started writing this post about moving at the beginning of August (only slightly delayed, right?)  because we moved at the end of of July, but with taking pictures and uploading them and school starting and being tired or crying all the time I just never finished it.  Anyway, come tour our new apartment!

We are officially more than established in our new apartment by this point.  Of course we still have some work to do, but we've got most things hanging on the walls and our furniture where we want it.  The problem with moving into a bigger place is all the sudden we feel like we need to buy more things.  Fortunately we have a bed and a couch and a table (we hate two of those three, but they're all functional for now), unlike our last move when we loaded up our '98 Ford Escort and drove across the country with ourselves, our car, our clothes, a box of books, and a few wedding presents.  So we're good.  Actually while we were moving we were thinking "How on earth did we get so much stuff!?!?!" Especially considering what we started our marriage with.  So we spent six, yes SIX days moving.  We got the keys to our new apartment on Thursday July 26 and had to be out of our old apartment on the 31st, so while Kelly was at work from 8AM-7PM on Thursday and Friday, I scrubbed everything in our new apartment and made as many trips as I could with stuff I could carry by myself and fit in our car.  On Saturday we rented a U-Haul truck and our friends from church/heroes of the day Ben and Devin came and helped us carry all the the big stuff down three flights of stairs, load it into the truck, drive it to our new place, and then unload and carry it UP three more stories (stairs, of course) to our new place.  Thank goodness we only have a few heavy heavy things (actually the three pieces of furniture mentioned above, the couch, the dining table, and the queen-size mattress.)  The rest were all IKEA bookshelves and chairs and the box spring and stuff like that.  So Saturday was the first night we spent at our new home.  On Sunday Kelly and I made a couple more trips--mostly bringing our FOURTEEN BOXES OF BOOKS!!! (Are we insane!?!) And Monday and Tuesday I cleaned everything in our old apartment and brought the last few things to our new home.  Anyway, I thought I'd share some pictures.  First our old apartment/first home together.  Yes, it was kind of sad moving away from the setting of our first three years of marriage, but by Tuesday we were both really ready to be done moving and basically say "good riddance" to the place with its rocking toilet, drippy faucets, crooked stove, missing tiles, and chipped bathtub.  Okay, pictures:

Why yes those ARE all filled with books!

Empty Living Room and broken blinds that we don't miss

Goodbye tiny bathroom that required us to take turns getting ready

Little kitchen and the drippy faucet that could have institutionalized Kelly had we stayed any longer

Libby is excellent at photobombing.  And she kind of looks like an owl.  Is it just me?

Last picture of us in our first home together.  Yes we were that tired.

Libby made sure we didn't leave her behind

And now our new home, which has a nicer kitchen with more cupboard and counter space, a second bedroom and bathroom, bigger living room, dining room and balcony, and more closet space! Although the faucets work like this:

If you visit us, you have been warned.

But we are loving it here!   Here's a tour of our new home:

Home is where your stuff is...ish

 Welcome to our humble abode.  Here's our makeshift entryway.

 ...and our wall o' books

 ...and our couch, with a random desk behind it.  Eventually we're going to get some chairs and have a reading nook back there.  Don't mind the nerf gun under the couch.  Kelly got it after I miscarried so I wouldn't have to get off the couch to keep Libby from scratching the carpet when she wants attention.  Kelly has also gotten shot with it when I want attention.

Here's the aforementioned random mix of furnishing that will someday be replaced with comfy chairs and a little table.  And behind the curtain is the sliding door that leads to the balcony.

 The console table behind the couch and our tv set up.  Although that has changed a bit since I took this picture.

 Here's the whole front room put together for you.  It still needs some work, but hey, we've only been here a few months.

 Here's the dining room.  It's attached to the living room.  Also, I hate that table. but it was free and it works for now. "Buy a new dining set" is on the agenda.

 This is the view of the kitchen from the dining room

 Much more spacious and so much more storage than our last kitchen.  Although the curtains need to go.

 Here's our open shelving and system to hold all our fancy kitchen stuff.

 Kelly was super excited he could watch TV from the kitchen.  I'm not complaining either.

 If you walk through the dining room there's a hallway and the first door off that is a closet, but the next one is the second bedroom.  I was working on it as a nursery, and I think I'm going to paint it and do some stuff to it anyway.  We're planning orange, grey and white. 

 Here's the chair I bought to cuddle with my baby in.  And I will,  just not as soon as I thought.

 Right now we have our old desktop in there, but we're looking to replace it and move it elsewhere.  This is where the crib will be.

 This picture isn't really anything, just the closet in the second bedroom, but while I was walking around the house taking pictures Libby was following me and would wait patiently until I moved to the next room.  I thought it was cute.  She loves me even though I shoot at her with nerf guns.

 Here's the hallway looking straight out from the second bedroom.  Our room is straight ahead, a bathroom and frame wall is on the right, and a pantry and washer and dryer is on the left.

Here's a better look at our frames.  We filled them with random stuff we like that are too nerdy to display where guests would see. Ha ha.  The one with the glare is a Keep Calm and Carry On poster. 

 Our washer and dryer is across from the frame hall.  I can never go back to the laundromat. It would kill my soul.

Our guest bathroom.  It's actually Jack-and-Jill, so the master bath and the guest bath share a shower

 This shower, in fact.

 And our bathroom.  Now that is a mirror and vanity for two looks like.  Hooray!

 And our bedroom.

 I still need to hang something above the bed.

 Our dresser with my green Craigslist mirror that is now black and looks like it was made for our dresser.   The door on the left leads to the bathroom, and the door on the right leads to the hallway.  Those closet doors in the hall is where the washer and dryer are to give you a frame of reference.


Now you've been through our whole apartment! Hooray!  Our cat was really scared at first and was running around while staying as low as possible and hid inside our couch for a few hours.  She's good now.  She's liking all the space and the way bigger balcony.

We have already done a few fun things here.  I had my 25th birthday.  Kelly gave me a saphire necklace.

You can also see my first attempt at a 5 part braid in this photo

 Over Labor Day we watched my TFA buddy's dog Pepper.  He's a yorkiepoo (Yorkie and Poodle mix.  I can never get over how funny that name is hahahahahahaha) and so little and cute.  We had fun, but we're glad we don't have a dog.  We're kind of really really really lazy people, so playing fetch and keeping a dog company so he doesn't cry every single day would not be ideal for us, but we had fun with him for a couple days.

We also had some of Kelly's friends from Michael's over for games and food on a Friday night in September, so we have hosted some people here once so far.  That was pretty fun, even though I didn't know most of them very well.  So we're settling in and it's our home now.  We are still working on the second bedroom even though there isn't a  baby coming to stay in it at the moment.  It is kind of theraputic, actually, and I feel better about painting fumes and that kind of stuff without having to worry about what it could do to the baby.  For the time being it works great as a guest room, so if you know us come visit.  If you don't know us, either make friends with us and build a trusting relationship first, or stay away!

 For Thanksgiving it was just Kelly and me here in Baltimore.  Kelly and I made dinner together (okay, he made most of it.  I helped a little).  We had a rotisserie chicken and parmesan mashed potatoes, stuffing, peas in cream sauce, salad, cranberry sauce, and rolls, with Kelly's creme brulee for dessert.  We mostly just enjoyed having a couple of days off. I gave Kelly his xbox I got him for Christmas early so he could enjoy it on his time off, and I uphostered our shoe bench and a chair.  I'll post pictures of that later.  Meaning probably in March.  Hopefully not.  Anyway, to finish this LONG post up, here are some pictures of our Thanksgiving:

 Kelly cooking Thanksgiving dinner--apparently at the speed of The Flash judging by the blurriness of this picture.

 Our third Thanksgiving together.  And our first at our new apartment.

Kelly made us a feast for two

 Kelly's mom always sends us a little package each holiday.  This year she sent us some Turkey salt and pepper shakers for our table.  I'm sensing a family tradition in the making.

 

For the whole month of November we wrote down things we are thankful for and put them in this jar.  It was a good thing for us to do while grieving.  Even though we have sad and difficult things happen to us, we were able to think of so many things we have been blessed with and are so thankful for.  We read them right after dinner and it was really fun.  I was going to be all fancy when I made this and printed out a template and was going to Xacto knife it out and made a stencil and spray paint the words, but I got my Xacto on a killed it, so I got frustrated and just freehand wrote the words with a sharpy.  Sometimes cutting corners works out. Don't tell my students I said that.

 Kelly playing a game on his early-Christmas-present-xbox.


Now I can't think of a good way to end this.  I always was terrible at writing conclusions to essays.  In fact, in high school on AP tests I would write my whole essay and write a sentence and a half of my conclusion so it would look like I ran out of time so I wouldn't have to write it!  Of course, it only worked on the last essay, so if there were three I still had to write two conclusions, so the reviewers could probably see right through me after reading two weak conclusions and seeing I conveniently didn't have to write the last one.  Anyway, in conclusion, we love our home, come visit if you know us, and s--