Warning! This post is LONG!

I am writing this blog on Sunday morning in Microsoft Word because our internet is hooked up at the house but our computer is still at the condo. I hope to post it by Monday night or Tuesday.

We did it! Our house is officially ours! I am finally so excited about this. I have been excited to an extent all along, but with all the financial stress of the last couple of weeks, it feels good to get in there and do some work to bring it closer to move-in ready.

Jason’s mom and I spent yesterday (Saturday) morning cleaning the condo. Jay and his dad went over to the new house to accept our deliveries. Then the women brought lunch over to the guys and we spent the rest of the afternoon and part of the evening assembling furniture. But we did get to take a break to order and eat Chinese food as a celebratory supper!

I am so thankful that we were able to take our time with this move. I couldn’t imagine trying to assemble everything we did yesterday (Saturday) with all of our boxes and other furniture from our condo in the way. I think with some furniture in there I finally realize how big our master bedroom and our kitchen/dining area really are. When we had our headboard set up against the wall with the box spring in place, we fit the new king sized mattress flat on the floor at the foot of the bed. I joked that we could fit two king sized beds in our room! (This is as far as I got on this blog on Sunday morning, the rest was written Tuesday afternoon.)

We spent Sunday morning and afternoon hauling over a few things from the condo that the movers wouldn’t move or we didn’t want them to move. Then we were invited to go to Jason’s aunt’s house for supper which we gladly accepted as we could all go for a home cooked meal. Then Sunday evening was last minute packing at the condo of things we couldn’t pack before then.

Monday morning the movers arrived at 8am (they said they would be there at 8:30am). The plan was for Jay and Dale to go over to the house and wait for the people from the Blind Factory to come and install our new blinds, and Clara and I would stay behind and direct the movers and clean the condo once it was empty. All went according to plan except the blind installers never showed up and Dale and Jason were really bored at the house by 11am. The movers took longer at the condo than we thought, but it does take a lot of time to haul things down in the elevator. It took them about half of the time to haul in the stuff at the house as it did to pack it at the condo. They finished up at the condo by about noon and were at the house unpacking until about 2:30pm. They were two young men and they were working very hard the whole time. I would definitely recommend Geransky’s moving to anyone looking for a mover. I can’t imagine having to move all that stuff ourselves. Even though it wasn’t cheap to hire movers I think it was worth every penny. Then on Monday from 2:30pm until 6pm we all worked at unpacking and setting up the computer. We ordered supper in, ate, then we sent Dale and Clara on their way back to Swift Current and we did a little more unpacking but then just relaxed. I think we are completely done unpacking the kitchen, I thought that might take forever but Clara and I spent a lot of time working on it yesterday!

Today we slept in. Well we tried to anyway. We are sleeping on our new ultra firm foam mattress so it is taking a bit of getting used to. The good posture that it causes feels very unusual indeed. When I first laid down it felt like I was hanging upside down a bit. I think that was because our old bed was saggy, so your butt hung down lower than your head or feet. Now that I am laying flat it feels abnormal. We also went out and did a bit of shopping today at Walmart, Costco and Home Depot.

We only hit three snags with our new purchases and deliveries. The first we found out about on Thursday last week when we called to confirm that our stove was going to be delivered and found it that it had never come in. We found out later that everything from Maytag was on backorder and that it will be in on September 28^th. They offered us a loaner stove until then but we declined because our new stove is a slide in range so the countertop has to be custom fit to fit it. It sounded like the loaner stove was just a plain one that wouldn’t have fit anyway. I guess we’ll be doing a lot of barbequing and using our electric frying pan.

The second snag was that our couch and chair didn’t show up on Saturday. We were a little concerned because when we tried to call Ashley (who is in the process of going out of business right now!) all we got was an answering machine that said their mailbox was full. I finally managed to reach someone yesterday and they said our furniture had just come in and would be delivered on Wednesday (so here’s hoping it arrives!).

The third snag was the Blind Factory. I am not sure if we misunderstood, but we thought they were coming to install them on Monday morning and they didn’t show up so Jay called and they said they were only done making two of our blinds (we are getting ten). They called this morning to say that they would be done next Monday and could be installed sometime next week. So for the time being we have sheets hung up over our bedroom windows and need to be careful about what we walk around the kitchen and living room in because we have some pretty large windows in those rooms.

I think the rest of the week will be spent doing leisurely unpacking and probably some rearranging in the kitchen. I know we just kind of threw all of our food in the new fridge without much thought, so that will need to be reorganized. I am really enjoying having a ready supply of ice in the fridge. I will admit that the crushed ice option makes more of a mess than it’s probably worth, but it is fun.

Sorry for the longwinded-ness of this post, but it has been a very full and busy three days of packing, moving, unpacking and assembling things.

I also need to give a good word to Sleeper’s Mattress Factory. We had a very positive experience dealing with them in the store when we purchased our new mattress and box spring. Then their delivery guys were very friendly and helpful. I think that their delivery guys actually work for Sleepers. Whereas Sears and Leon’s hire other delivery companies to do their grunt work. You could definitely tell the difference in the pride they took in their work.

Last, but certainly not least, I need to say a MILLION thanks to Jason's parents for working their butts off this weekend for us. We appreciate it more than we can ever say!