Home Sweet Home

Say Hello to Our New Home!

I have been waiting for a spare minute to write this post, but since we haven't connected internet to the new house yet, it means staying late in my classroom, which is where I am now.  


Our new house is slowly transforming from someone else's to ours.  It feels like magic to say that we own this house, that me... the girl who has moved 30 times has settled into one house, I won't have to pack it up in a year and move on.  We have never really known where we belong because everywhere we've been has been worth the trip, every place has brought us incredible friends, irreplaceable memories, and taught us a little more about each other and more about life itself.  Sometimes we aren't sure if Maine is where we're meant to be, a big part of us still misses the Caribbean and wants to return, and another part of us misses the places we've yet to explore... but for now, this feels like home and it feels like the right place to start this next part of our lives.


This makes me think that maybe sometimes fairy tales do come true... not in the cheesy Disney sense, I mean let's be real.  I'm realizing that sometimes the girl ends up having her dreams come true, sometimes she falls in love, goes on amazing adventures, sails off into the sunset and ends up living happily ever after. I'd say she meets Prince Charming, but I don't dig dudes in tights... just sayin'.  Plus, the whole damsel in distress bit is so over played, girls need to know how to change their own flat tires, if you know what I'm saying.  The road to being a homeowner has been sprinkled with hills & valleys, some roadblocks, major potholes, some unexpected detours, wild sightseeing, but now, here we are.  Nearly 10 years later, Kevin and I own a house and are expecting a baby... as in a living, breathing creation of the two of us.  It makes me laugh, makes me cry, makes me wonder how it's all even possible.  


The first day we owned the house, we walked from room to room exploring and dreaming of the possibilities and then we stood side-by-side at the edge of the pond looking up at the house and I couldn't help it, tears filled my eyes and I looked around me wondering if it's all just a really wonderful dream.  It's not, it's real... I pinched myself just to be sure!  


Since then, there have been moments for every emotion possible: unbridled joy, incredible fear, wonderment, disgust (I mean really... I wish everyone left houses as clean as I do when I move out!), excitement, trepidation, exhaustion, the list could go on for days and would be exceedingly long, so I'll stop while I am ahead!


Thus far, we have worked in nearly every room and some of the items crossed off our to-do list are:

• painting the ugly green living room
• cleaning, scrubbing and painting all of the baseboards throughout the entire house
• painting the ugly "smoker's teeth yellow" trim throughout the house
• remove wallpaper & paint the downstairs bathroom
• scrub every inch of the place
• painting the kitchen
• painting the guest bedroom (messiest room in the house when we moved in)
• removing all carpeting
• installing new wood flooring
• replace old broken dishwasher
• fill in various dings, scratches and holes
• clean windows
• touch up paint various spots
• and more that I can't even remember...

And here's what we still need to do:

• clean up litter left in the yard (the people before us seriously just left trash in the edges of the woods, gross!)
• flooring in the living room and guest room
• paint our bedroom
• nursery "details"
• move the rest of our stuff in from the garage
• replace the nasty carpet on the stairs
• design the play room (paint, clean, etc...)
• new bricks on the walkway to the door
• curtains... lots of curtains...
• paint the cathedral ceiling room, eventually
• paint the upstairs bathroom
• and on, and on, and on...

In the next few weeks I should be able to include some before and after pics, room by room, stay tuned for more!  For now, that's all folks!  I also want to share some pics of the blooming that's happening all over the yard. Some of the flower beds remind me of the Secret Garden, they are lovely, but have been left to their own wild, tangled devices for a bit too long.  We have lilacs abounding, azaleas (pink & white), daffodils rimming the pond, roses, flowering cherry trees, apple blossoms, some sort of magnolia, and countless yet-to-be-identified  plants and flowers here there and everywhere.  What a place for a little boy to grow up!  I can't wait to walk with him around the yard and in the woods.  This adventure is our next chapter and I can't wait to read live every minute!