HAPPY ANNIVERSARY, SANDRA & TONY!!! today was a happy day. our bedroom furniture came in and looks fabulous. we also got a dining room hutch that looks perfect with our dining room table. this place is really starting to look nice. as far as furnishing, it is far nicer than our old house. well, that and the location and the view. i’m just happy to have this place start feeling livable. and not a moment too soon with our first company coming in tomorrow night.

OMG! it must be snowing in hell this morning – our stove just arrived! anyone know how to do convection cooking?

i don’t know about you, but it has been farookin gorgeous here the last few days. playing football on the beach has been not-too-hot. swimming in the pool has been not-too-cold. lovely, it is. and, our home is coming together nicely. stuff is actually jumping out of boxes and into cozy little put-up spaces. we haven’t made any more progress on those other six chairs but, when we do, the dining area will be beeyooteefuwl! on a side note, it amuses me to look down on the coast guard and military helicopters and planes that fly by. most of the time, it doesn’t seem like we’re that high up.

we have furniture!!! yesterday was an expensive day. we purchased our mattress set and our bedroom furniture, which will both be delivered by next thursday. i am looking forward to having a bedroom that looks like a bedroom. and a new, comfy, non-springy bed to hopefully stop my tossing and turning for a while. we almost got a bunk bed but we were shot down at the credit card handover with the pronouncement “out of stock”. dagnabit! it could never be that easy, eh? the only thing that we actually came home with was our dining room table. it’s very purty. we got the table and two chairs put together (after we finally took down the christmas tree and put it away). those chairs were a beast; it might take us the rest of the week to get the other six assembled! we also attempted to buy the elbow for the dishwasher installation. unfortunately, the one little piece we need is the one piece they don’t seem to sell so we had to buy the whole hose. of course, even that was too easy because we got home to realize we had dramatically underestimated the length. funny how we might actually get our stove (mythic purchase that it apparently is) and install it before the dishwasher that has been here all week. such is life. luckily, my husband is all the dishwasher i need. what i am looking forward to, aside from my matress, is my stove. tomorrow is supposed to be the day. i’m not holding my breath but i sure will be excited if it happens to show up. slowly – excruciatingly slowly – this place is starting to look and feel like home.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SANDRA!!! the good news is that good things are happening finally. today, we were the happy recipients of a microwave and dishwasher – only thirty-eight days after we bought them! we got the microwave installed and it looks very pretty. we started on the dishwasher but we seem to be in need of an elbow so it will have to wait a few days for us to go out again. we are told that our stove and stacking kit for our w/d will arrive friday. keep your fingers crossed for us. it sure will be nice to have a complete kitchen again and not have to decide on dinner based on what will cook in a toaster oven (or now microwave). saturday we went on a furniture shopping expedition and i believe we found the mattress set and bed that we want. hubby will be calling to haggle prices make purchases tomorrow. (i am so not a negotiator) we also found a bed for the bunk room that we love but we’re unsure that it will be a good fit in such a small room. it’s so cool looking though. unfortunately, the dining room table that we hearted so much that my boy almost bought it without any prodding from me last year is gone. there is a similar one at a slightly higher price but we’re not sure we like the two-tonedness of it. the only other one we’ve found that we like though is $500 higher for the same setup so we’ll likely get over the two-tone dislike. we have also taken the time the last two days to remind ourselves why we moved here and that all of this is worthwhile. we’ve been playing frisbee and football on the beach and we’ve been utilizing the pool and hot tub. it’s been wonderful. we also started back into the gym this weekend. life is starting to take on a semblance of normalcy. i’m ready for normal.

i tell you, there’s just nothing about this move that has been easy. today we’re dealing with an appliance fiasco. you’ll recall that we bought all new appliances back in december and sold the brand new ones that came in the condo. since we knew we were going to be out of town for the last couple of weeks, we set the delivery date for today, as well as the pickup for the others. that’s over three weeks since we ordered. i got a call late saturday night letting me know that they would be delivered between 09:30 and 13:30. this morning, i got a computerized call letting me know that the range we ordered would not be delivered until the 28th. gee, thanks for the notice. especially since we’re not going to be here again next week. after i was just about done fuming over that, the phone rang again. it was a person this time letting me know that only half of our appliances were there and did we want to have those delivered today or just wait until the 28th to have it all delivered. ticked does not cover it. we ordered these a month ago! it’s not like we went in there this weekend and said deliver it tomorrow. luckily, the appliances that they are able to bring today are the fridge, washer, and dryer. since our old appliances are getting picked up in about an hour, we absolutely had to have a fridge to transfer our food to and we’re about out of clean clothes too. i’m so pleased with my new appliances. they are so pretty. i did a load of laundry already – kid with a new toy, i am. i was very entertained with watching the washing machine go (front loader) and i was astounded by how quiet it is. for those who were priviledged enough to have experienced randal’s old washer, you’ll know why. that stupid thing shook and shimmied and you could hear it miles away. i’m still ticked that we don’t have a stove, microwave, or dishwasher. but at least we got the important stuff. although i’m not sure how we’re going to cook for the rest of this week. woohoo, no cooking!

welcome to the year 2008! we celebrated by officially moving in to our new home. we rang in the new year in rare-for-us whippersnapper style and then spent our first night here. we went out to a club for dinner and dancing and live music and left there around 0200 to stop in at another party. it was 0400 before we got to bed. i really can’t tell you the last time that i stayed up all night like that on purpose. and i felt it yesterday. i slept in until noon, moved to the couch and napped until 1730 when the hubby got a burst of energy and insisted that we attempt to unpack some. he accomplished much. i sat back on the couch to make my new years phone calls. i did get part of the kitchen unburried. today i got enough of it dug out to actually cook dinner. we’ve had multiple obstacles in the new abode, mostly network issues which tried to give us an extra vacation day. i think i’ve counted that i’ve moved ten times in the last nine years (pretty impressive when you consider that we lived two years in our first apartment and almost four years in our house) and this is by far the hardest move i’ve had. not only does it feel like it’s just dragging on, what with us moving out of our house four months ago, but i just can’t seem to fight the discombobulation. we moved all of our stuff in from storage over two weeks ago and yet there is still more in boxes than not. and the boxes are EVERYWHERE. i’ve never spent this long boxed up. i just can’t seem to wrap my arms around it at all. but on the bright side, we spent a fortune this past weekend (enough that we both received calls from discover’s fraud protection people asking if we were aware of all of the large purchases on our cards). when we get back from orlando in a couple of weeks, we’ll have all new kitchen appliances delivered and a washer and dryer (which will be very much needed since we do not have a w/d at all right now). i’m very excited about my very pretty new appliances. next step is a bed for us. we’ve got it narrowed down to three. i’m hoping to have that when we get back home too. the air matress just isn’t holding air like it used to. so much still to do. will it ever slow down??? anyhow, i hope that 2008 has good things in store for all of us!