Our New Old Home

Normally, I don't like having church at a late time but the day after we moved in I was SO thankful that we have 1:30pm church. There are 4 wards in our building. Our ward is called the Highlands Ward. Pasco has numbered wards but over here they are names. Even though church started at 1:30, we still managed to be a little late. So of course we walk in and sat in the back, so a lot of people noticed. As soon as the meeting was over, we had multiple people come right over to get our information and introduce themselves. Within minutes we had our records pulled over to the new ward, thanks to technology. Charlotte didn't want to go to Primary that day but I took her anyway. She has a good size class with very nice teachers and although she didn't say it, I think she's glad she stayed. We had a very warm welcome! And the building is a little familiar because it looks just like the Deerflat Stake Center back in Nampa. This building is also a stake center.

Well, I decided to get some of my own pictures of the house. Since we'll be fixing it up I need to have some before pictures.

Living room with a big front window view. These brown floors are the only floors we're going to keep the same since they look relatively new and nice. It covers the living room, dining room and upstairs hallway.

Dining room.

Upstairs hallway (with a mirror on the end).

Master bedroom. We just moved in...don't judge. 😂

The girls' temporary room across the hall from our room, which will become part of the new master bedroom when we're finished remodeling.

Garrett's room/guest bedroom. For now, both of the boys are sharing it while we fix up the downstairs first. Garrett will have a queen size bed eventually, so when we have guests, they can stay in his room while he goes down to share with Jack on the bunk bed.

View from the deck in the back yard.

Our swimming pool. I love that we have a flagpole also.

Looking down at the front door. Those are the rocks that were in the way of the fridge so we couldn't bring it this way.

Downstairs in the family room.

Other view of the family room.

Downstairs hallway. When the boys came New Year's weekend, they already pulled some carpet (where Charlotte is standing and in the bedrooms downstairs) because of flooding in the basement.

Closet under the stairs. Nope, I don't see Harry Potter down there. Ha ha!

Our laundry and utility room.

The steps leading out of the utility room to the back yard. This is where the water pooled up to cause the flooding.

Downstairs bathroom. We need more lights!

Downstairs bathroom again. We have since removed all of the shells glued to the walls.

This will be the girl's room when we're finished.

They have a bigger closet than we do! I like that they'll have a little wall to put stuffed animals and toys on. It's a good size room also.

This will be Jack's room. It's the biggest of the bedrooms right now. You can kind of see two closets on the right.

Then there's a 3rd closet by the entrance. I want to put the board games and maybe food items in there.

Curtis was working on hooking up the water line to the fridge.

Now installing the dishwasher. It's nice to have a handy man!

We have a lot of work to do to fix up this house (that was built in 1976) but it will be fun to work on it together and we can't wait to see what it will look like afterwards!

The sliding door in the kitchen has a doggie door. We're trying to teach the cats how to use it. Sage wanted that wet food but she didn't want to go through the door. 😂 It's a nice heavy one that has a magnet on the bottom.

I spent most of Monday (the 16th) setting up the kitchen. We don't have a pantry so we had to improvise with our can holder on top of the hutch and cabinet for other pantry food.

Thank goodness we had this cabinet. 

Ah, looks much better without all of the boxes!

Moving Day

Moving is so exhausting! Every time I turned around I had more things I needed to pack. I was trying to get packed as much as possible before the truck loaders came but I didn't get as much as I wanted done. We were afraid that we wouldn't have room for the kid's mattresses in the truck and since they were all old anyway, we decided to throw them out and buy new ones when we get there. The kids slept on the floor (or blankets) for one night while we still had our mattress on the floor. 

Never ending boxing!

The night before loading the truck. The next morning Curtis took the mattresses to the dump.

With my laundry basket out of the way in my closet, Sage found a nice cozy spot.

I was so glad that Mom and Dad stopped by a few days before the move to wish me happy birthday. They gave me a beautiful necklace and bracelet set. It came with earrings as well, but I don't wear earrings, so not sure what to do with them at the moment. I was sad that I wouldn't be in Nampa for my birthday so this definitely helped me feel better about that!

I was so grateful that my in laws came to help with things on Friday. Curtis's dad helped him pick up the truck and trailer while his mom helped me with packing. We're also so thankful that Curtis's work is paying for moving expenses and that we were able to hire a couple of guys to load the truck. It was so worth it! They did awesome and we had room to spare, loading it in about 3 hours I think. We had scheduled them for 4 hours. I guess we could have kept those mattresses after all. Oh well, I still wanted new ones anyway.  After school was out and the truck was packed, we had some friends stop by to see us that had forgotten about the open house. We're excited because these friends might follow us to Kennewick some day since the husband is from Kennewick and wants to get back there. They have been thinking about it longer than we have. He's just waiting for the right position to open up for coaching and teaching at the high school. They told us that they visit Kennewick every summer, so they will definitely come to see us. His friend who was at the Harry Potter party that they always visit, lives very close to us, so it will be easy. Can't wait to have visitors!

Matt and Chrystal Hayes - friends from 37th ward. They're currently in my sister Melissa's ward.

Charlotte, Elie, Titus, Alice

We went out to dinner at Smoky Mountain Pizza using the gift card we received for Christmas from my parents. Right after we got back, some more friends came to see us. The Wallace family who were one of our old neighbors. I'm so glad we got to see both of these friends before we left!

Back Row: Luke, Jim, Ashlie, Lilly, Tyler, Jack, me, Curtis, Garrett
Front row: Alice, Sydney, Charlotte

Jack's friend Porter happened to be there so I had him take our picture. 

We visited with the Wallace's for awhile but Curtis dropped Garrett off at a farewell party that the Priest quorum threw for him. I thought that was so nice of them to do that. We're so grateful for good friends and hope to find good friends in Kennewick as well!

Cocoa found a bed in our closet the night before moving. So cute!

Moving day has finally arrived! (Saturday, January 14th)

Goodbye Idaho 😢

Saying good bye to my in laws. We wanted to leave at 7am but didn't make it out until 8am. Gaya made us some sandwiches for the road. With Curtis driving the moving truck, that left me to drive his truck and pull the van. I was a bit nervous but it turned out fine. It got a little wobbly at times on the freeway and scared me but I learned to control the moving and make it smoother.

Boys rode in the moving van. Garrett, Jack, Curtis

The girls and cats rode in the truck with me. The cats meowed sometimes but handled it pretty well.

Proof that I'm driving the truck!

Halfway on our trip we had a pit stop and let the cats roam in the truck out of their carriers. That made them much less scared.

Back in their carriers and ready to ride! However, Charlotte let Sage out of her carrier for the last hour or so of the ride and Sage did just fine. She would sit on the girls laps and sleep. More importantly, she stayed in the back. I was worried about cats coming up front where I was driving. I didn't trust Cocoa though.

We made it to Kennewick a little after noon. The weather couldn't have been much better. For months I had been praying that we would have good weather for our move because we're moving in the middle of winter and will be going over some mountains. Our prayers were definitely answered! The roads were a little wet first thing in the morning but soon dried up. We had a little fog in a couple of places but other than that, no rain or snow to worry about and clear roads. It was smooth sailing. If we had gone a week later (like I had wanted) it would have been a different story. I heard that Nampa got several inches of snow. Who knows what it would have been like on the mountains. We certainly left when we were supposed to. 

When we got there, we unloaded some stuff and made room in the back of the moving van for our new refrigerator and dishwasher. The unloaders were scheduled to come at 2pm to unload the moving van. We drove over to Lowe's to pick up the appliances, even called them on the way, but it took about 45 minutes to get our stuff outside. We didn't get back until about 2:10pm and the movers were already there waiting. They did a great job also. They even helped put couches together after moving them inside. The biggest pain was getting the refrigerator moved inside. We couldn't take it through the front door because the rocks from the chimney were sticking out too far. We took it up the back deck and through a sliding door but Curtis had to take the doors off of the fridge first for it to fit. He had to cut the water hose line to the fridge and later buy some parts to connect it again. What a headache but we got it in! It also started to rain right as we were finishing unloading the truck. Perfect timing!

There's lots of work to be done on this house before we can fully move in but we made it and I love the view!

Home sweet home.

The view out the back yard through the kitchen window. I love it!

This is basically the front view and you can see the school Jack will be attending. Lots of space for parking for visitors!

The view out the kitchen window at night. We get to see city lights! Again, I love it!