Finally moved in!

We spent our first night in the new house! This is the sight that greeted us this morning...

Today we're packing and cleaning and doing laundry and packing and cleaning at Hubby's dad's place.  We have a lot of stuff here.  I had forgotten how much... Hubby left a little while ago with a full pickup load to drop at the house, and then he's coming back to help some more.  It's been a long day, and it's not over yet.

Back to work!

Happy New Year!

To welcome the new year, I present my first project, knitted entirely this year. ☺

The pattern is Twisted Tambini by my dear friend Andrea.  I used Paton's Decor wool blend in "chocolate", and US8 needles.  I'm considering making another one with smaller needles, because this is kinda enormous on my head.  But it'll keep me warm, and that's what matters!  I love this design.  The reversible cables on the brim were a bit tricky, since I'd never used that technique before.  The result is terrific, and I love how the brim cables transition seamlessly to the main body cables.  You can't see the crown of the hat in this pic, but that's okay, because I messed up somewhere in there, and couldn't figure out where, so I just faked it.  I don't think anyone will know unless I tell them.  Keep my secret, okay?

In other news, we have our stuff, and it's in our house!  There's still some organizing to be done, and lots of painting.  I started the painting yesterday, with Princess and Kitty's room; pink, of course.  Angel and I will do her room this morning; turquoise.  I'll do the bathroom and laundry room in the same turquoise, and then I'll have to calculate how much beige to buy for the rest of the rooms.  I'm thinking a five-gallon bucket of satin finish, and two gallons of semi-gloss...but I'm not going to just go with my guess.  Made that mistake before...

Anyway, we're still staying at my father-in-law's house, since we won't have tv service until the 12th, or internet until heaven-knows-when, and Hubby has forgotten how to live without those things.  But FIL has gone to his winter home in Arizona, so we have the house to ourselves, and we can take our time moving all of our stuff to our new place.

Hmmm...what else did I forget to post about while I was busy in December?  I turned 31, and Princess turned 7...Merry Christmas...we celebrated Christmas with Hubby's family, but at least I got to call my family.  The girls and I are planning on driving down to Kansas at the end of January to visit them. ☺

Oh, I almost forgot to mention: I started working on a new baby blanket design; it's about halfway done.  I'll post a pic in my next post.  I've got to run now; time for paint!

Time for truth

Okay, I know I've been posting all excited about the progress on our house, but the truth is: I wish I were still in Texas.  I didn't want to move here.  Ever.  And Hubby knew that.  But he wanted to, so that's all that mattered to him.  So here we are in the middle of nowhere, North Dakota, and I am depressed.  I'm having a really hard time adjusting.  The problem isn't the weather; I'm loving the cooler temps(for now).  The problem is the isolation.  But even more than that, the problem is that Hubby chucked "our plan" out the window in favor of "his plan".

Even before we got married, we talked about retiring in Colorado.  We discussed other spots, but kept coming back to the idea of Colorado, because it would be somewhat close to both of our families(closer to mine, I'll admit), and they still have the cold winter weather that he loves.  He would always make jokes about living in Alaska, or North Dakota, and I would always reply that I don't want to.  So he knew how I felt about it.  And yet...when he got the opportunity to move us here, just a few minutes' drive from his family, and 19 hours drive from mine, he jumped at it.  And since we're building on family land here, he intends for us to stay here forever.  So I have to just forget about Colorado.  I have to forget about ever living close to my family again.

Instead, I get to live super-close to his family.  His dad is a barking moonbat.  His brother almost never smiles.  His sister doesn't seem to like me very well.  I get along best with his aunt, but she's a barking moonbat as well.  Yay for me.  I need some friends. 

I hate it here.

We have a basement!

Well, almost.

The basement for our new house was dug yesterday.  Here's a picture of the girls checking out the huge hole in the ground. ☺ When it's all said and done, the spot where they're standing in the pic will be part of the garage.

The girls are very excited about this basement, because I've told them they'll be allowed to ride scooters and skates down there, until we get around to building rooms in it.  I think they'll spend a lot of time doing that this winter, whenever it's too cold to play outside.

Speaking of cold weather, the girls and I drove up to the "Bigger Town" about 40 miles away yesterday(while the above digging was taking place) and hit Walmart, McDonalds and two thrift shops.  It was nice to feel like we were part of civilization again, if only for a few hours.  What was I saying....oh, yes.  At the thrift shops, we found snowpants for each of them, and ice skates for Angel, Kitty and me.  We'll have to look again for some skates for Princess; they didn't have any that would fit her wide feet.  All of the ice skates will, of course, need to be sharpened; I've had butter knives that were sharper.  It's going to be fun to get back out on the ice this winter.  I used to skate a lot when I was a teenager, and I did it a few times last winter, but now we'll have more opportunities for it.  I'm thinking I maybe should have bought some snowpants for myself as well; maybe I'll even get out and play in the snow with them.  Oh, well.  I'm sure we'll visit more thrift shops between now and winter.  Anyway, I still need to find snow boots for Angel and Princess, and for me just in case.  They each have several coats, but I'm not sure which ones will work for the extreme cold here.  I haven't sorted through them since we got here.  The girls wanted to look for cold weather gear for Daddy too, but I pointed out that he'd have to be with us to try the stuff on.  I didn't mention that he probably won't have any time to play in the snow.

Hello from North Dakota!

We have arrived!  Actually, we got here on Wednesday, but I didn't have the wireless router set up until today.  Anyway, we are pretty well settled at my father-in-law's house in what will be hereafter known as "Small Town, ND".  I don't like to put my precise location online, just for safety's sake.  We drove out to our house site today, just to take a look around.  The girls picked some wheat, and we were able to see our road and the well up close.  The next step should be getting the basement dug and poured.  And that means I need to get on the ball and figure out how I want the basement set up, as far as plumbing.  I have a drawing I'm working on, so hopefully I'll get that done soon.

I got a little knitting done while we were in Kansas last week.  I finally finished the socks I was making for Princess.

These will be the next design I submit to Knit Picks.  The name is "Little Sweetheart Socks".  As soon as I have MS Office loaded on my computer, I'll get the design proposal written up and sent off.

But for now, I think I better go check on my kids; they went to the park a while ago, and I haven't heard anything from them since.

Hello from Kansas!

Our house in Texas is empty and clean.  I cleaned like a crazy person yesterday, so that we could leave today.  Which we did.  We started driving at 5am.  12 1/2 hours later, we arrived in my hometown in Kansas.  We'll be visiting family here for almost a week before heading north.

I'm glad the packing is done, but I'm sad that we no longer live in Texas.  It's a great place to live (as long as you don't mind the heat and humidity).  I've decided to continue thinking of myself as a Texan, even though we won't likely ever live there again.  I don't have any pictures to post today, but I might later in the week, depending on what we end up doing while we're here. ☺

Oh, hello there...

It's been a week.  Oops.  But in fairness to me, it's been a crazy busy week.  I've been organizing(a lot) and packing(a little) and cleaning and cleaning and cleaning.  Hubby left on Thursday.  He should be at his new office at this very moment, starting his new job. 

And I'm stuck with all the real work.  Oh, and my air conditioner died.  In Texas.  In July.  With three kids.  And a buttload of work to do.  At this moment, I am sitting in front of a giant fan that I bought yesterday on the way to church, and trying not to sweat too much.  My neighbor's air conditioner guy is on his way, and I don't want to greet him at the door drenched in sweat...even though it might make him sympathetic so that he'll charge me less...

Anyway, back to the update on what I've been doing(besides sweating).  On Saturday, some guys from the local thrift shop(love that thrift shop, and really really going to miss it) came by to pick up some large furniture that I couldn't bring to them.  They left with a large dresser with a mirror, a chest of drawers, three bedside tables, a queen-size mattress set, an entertainment center, a glider-rocker and a wingback chair.  Whew. 

After that, I was able to get one room upstairs completely emptied, vacuumed, shampooed, and the walls touched up.  And now I'm organizing stuff in that nice clean room.  Anything that we're going to need right away when we move(and that isn't enormous furniture) is going in there.  Most of our stuff is going to be stored in South Dakota until the house is finished.  We're not going to need much while we stay with Hubby's dad.  Or at least that's what I thought...that room is getting filled up quickly.  Anyway, I'm putting that stuff in there so it won't get packed in with the to-be-stored stuff.  In theory, it sounds like it'll work.  We'll see how well it works in reality. 

Counting today, there are 12 days before the movers arrive.  Damn.  I better get back to work.

Editing to add: The AC guy came, saw and conquered.  $165 later, I have a working air conditioner!  It's cooled down to 80 in my house, and it feels much better!

I'm back from vacation!

Hello, dear readers!  I've missed you while I was on vacation.☺  But I'm back now, and I have an update!  This is the land where our new house will be built:

 It's a "quarter-section", which is farm-speak for roughly 160 acres.  It has tree-rows; you can see one of the rows there to the left.  I took the picture while standing precisely where the house will be.  So this will be the view out the back windows.  I designed the house myself.  I drew a rectangle, representing 28 feet by 60 feet, and filled it in with rooms.  When I showed it to the builder and asked if they might have any plans similar to what I'd drawn, he pointed to the drawing and said, "We can do that." ☺

♥

I intend to update with pictures as the project progresses, although since it will be a modular home, built in two pieces and trucked to the location, there won't be a lot of in-progress pictures.  And yes, I'm aware the the picture shows a planted wheat field.  Some of that wheat will be sacrificed, but there will still be plenty throughout the rest of the field.  There are seven or eight tree-rows, and we're building between the second and third to the south.

♥

This next picture shows the "treehouse tree", which is part of the row on the other side of the house site.

It's a big, old cottonwood with several trunks.  It has a few dead branches, and will need to be trimmed up, but the girls are very excited about the prospect of a treehouse, and swings.

♥

Last week, I had two more patterns published on Knit Picks.  Visit http://knitpicks.com/ to see them. ☺

Picked a realtor.

We had some realtors come through our house yesterday to give us comparative market analyses.  First was a husband/wife team from Re/Max.  They were very polite and helpful.  They took detailed notes and listened to what I told them about the updates and improvements we've made.  I explained to them that we were in the middle of cleaning and organizing, and they were very understanding about the state of general disarray.  They were not impatient when my children interrupted repeatedly(though I was).  They told me about their company, and what we could expect if we hire them.  They showed me statistics that backed up what they were saying about the company and the process.  They named a very fair price for the listing; it was a bit less than what we paid for it, which I expected with the economy in the tank how it is(thanks a lot, uncle sam).  All in all, I really liked them, and thought they would do a great job getting our house sold.

Then another agent from Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate came through.  She had a loud, slightly-annoying voice, and one of the first things she said was that the carpet really needs to be cleaned. (which was already on my list)  She told me several times that I have my work cut out for me. (duh! that's why I've been literally working my butt off for the past weekandahalf.)  She didn't listen to what I said about the house, and hardly took any notes at all.  She gave my kids dirty looks when they interrupted.  She pointed out the same things that the other agents did, but the way she did it was just rude and unkind.  I think she was expecting to walk into an unoccupied, perfectly-staged house that would fit right in to...Better Homes and Gardens.  It seemed she was unaware that actual people live in houses, and actual children live in large houses.  She pointed out how long other houses in the neighborhood have been on the market, and the fact that several of them were in foreclosure...and then she named the listing price: the same price we had paid four years ago, before the economy crashed.  She just didn't seem to have a solid grasp on reality.

We decided to go with the team of agents, even though they suggested listing lower than the other.  Moving is stressful enough; I don't think I could deal with her condescension along with that.  So now I just need to finish organizing and getting ready!