We're in!

I’m writing this on a cool and rainy Monday morning at the local Panera Bread (which has free wireless), next door to the grocery store, which is my next stop (we don’t have cable, phone or internet until Friday). We’re (finally!) in our new house. It’s exhausting to pack up a house, but it’s just as exhausting, in a different way, to live out of boxes and try to find a place for everything.

Things may be even more chaotic than normal moving chaos, because our very fine PA movers put all the boxes in the back of the truck and all the furniture close to the door so that the furniture would go in the house first. But of course the order was reversed when the stuff was loaded into the storage unit - the furniture went into the unit first and then the boxes. The second team of movers ended up putting the boxes in the house first and the furniture last. The net result was that we had all the furniture in the middle of the rooms and boxes all around them. Yesterday we finally got the furniture basically arranged, and now we’re tackling boxes. It took me two days to find the silverware and dish drainer, which I came across about midnight last night, literally in the bottom box in the last stack of boxes – I was almost convinced it got left behind.

Saturday night Larry got stung by a bee right on the side of his nose whilehe was outside our garage (we’re pretty sure there’s a nest somewhere). It seemed fine at first but the next day it started to swell and this morning he looks like he went several rounds with Mike Tyson. He went over to the Urgent Care Clinic – they said it looks like it’s infected (apparently not uncommon) and he started a 10 day course of antibiotics. No end to the fun.

Caleb watches lots of videos, but Alana prefers to putter around; they both like to “help” move boxes and lift furniture – it’s quite endearing. Casey prowls around a lot and Rudy has picked the landing of the stairs as his favorite sleeping spot.

We’ve eaten in lots of local restaurants, most of which have been very good. There’s been no Welcome Wagon or covered dishes from neighbors – I guess that era is over. But we have met several people in the neighborhood. Next door is a family with two kids, a boy 4 (Jacob) and a girl 7 (Maddie). Many of the houses around us are older couples, but there seems to be a few younger families in the neighborhood.

Silver lining: There is a babysitter behind us and the family next door uses a nice neighborhood girl named Caitlin.