if you thought I was kidding about the moving truck, here's the proof!

So we closed on the house Tuesday and it was absolutely the biggest nightmare, especially for Micah who was on the phone ALL day. Half hour after our closing appointment was supposed to have started, we still didn't know if we were closing or not because they had made such a mess of our paperwork and had changed numbers on us and the loan guy we'd been working with was out of the office that day and couldn't help them figure it all out.

..but we DID close and I was ecstatic. Micah should have been, but he was too frustrated and annoyed at that point. But he let me celebrate and obliged when I insisted on getting the air mattress and spending our first night in the new house!

Mom & Dad came a day or 2 later, which happened to be perfect timing for a trip & they helped us move, watch conference, put together furniture, celebrate Easter, make makeshift curtains....we LOVED having them here! It was a sad day to see them go.

Mom & I's project....the dining table!
(We were a LOT quicker than the boys)
Micah & Dad had this project going in the loft most of the weekend.
It's a desk that fits perfectly into our otherwise not very usable loft corner. Micah has been most excited about this part of the house for months...an office!

and without further adieu, I present: the Deuce

Dad commented-"This is the way to move! 4 engineers!" (everything was packed VERY precisely and they got a ton over in one load)

The Crew
Dad, Micah, Brian (the proud owner-Micah's friend from when he was in the singles ward before we got married & I moved down here), Dan (our neighbor in the apartments that's also LDS; we told him about where we were moving right after we signed and he came and checked it out and signed a week later, too! He will be our neighbor again when he moves in this summer!)

The openings of the doors are NOT wide at all so they had to take off the 2 inches of the couch feet because they made a huge difference in being able to get it in the house

Those headsets are for real. I totally thought they were a joke just for show. I'm assuming you probably can't hear yourself talk even in this monster truck without them!

Goodbye and a HUGE thanks!!!

Today is moving day...

and THIS is our moving truck!!!!!!!!!!

Our next Destination Location....

Any takers?!?!

5 weeks to go...

'doors and paint and tile' oh my! ...and cabinets and stucco and grout now, too, but the grout's not in the pics. I'm sure it'll be really hard to imagine what it looks like with grout, but you'll have to try. We're pretty sure the stucco is not the color we picked out, but don't really care one way or the other. Maybe it will give us some bargaining power, though ;) We also realized yesterday they don't have any wires for a light fixture over the dining area! Good thing we check up on it frequently & can hopefully get all this fixed without pushing back our closing date

What's up (lately) doc?

So far all of you out there waiting on pins and needles for us to post an update-we didn't take our camera out over Christmas at all! We had a blast, spending one week in Boston (my first time back since our wedding, which was nice) and New Year's week in Michigan. If you want to see more detail of Boston at least and you're not one of my siblings, I'll direct you over to the family blog links on the side here (and if you are a sibling, you've already seen all that so you don't need the help).

Since Christmas Break:
Windows, garage doors, painted trim & doors....

a great view...but that's always been there

plumbing (how dumb is this? Some new code says that copper piping has to stick out of the wall above the washer & dryer...NEVER seen that before. And not really a fan if you can't tell)

Stucco prep! This is a whole new thing for us. The CM was offended when Micah called this stuff chicken wire and told him how much tougher it was...so Micah called it 'turkey wire' and Dale just laughed.

and just for fun....isn't my hubby the cutest?

Christmas in Albuquerque

Friday night, my old companion in our ward, told us about this place, so we went up on Saturday night. These 2 homes are completely decked out!

Some fall projects

(Best-I finally finished mine!)
This is a little craft project we worked on up in Idaho Falls at Thanksgiving

Us girls hard at work in IF
our Christmasy home

and this 2nd pic will NOT delete for whatever reason, so you get a lights on/lights off comparison!

The lights were all synchronated to music...which you probably cant' hear

a work in progress....

Here's a little continuation of the post about our most likely new address:

pouring the foundation & the cement truck

It makes Micah nostalgic about when they built their home growing up

The view of the mountains and moon leaving the neighborhood one night
(and incidentally our windshield, too)

Micah pacing out the living room

Micah was especially excited to see the roof trusses go up. We almost missed it they did it so quickly!

Mainly finished! The entire building was framed in 7 days!!

Me in the living room, from the kitchen

We've looked at housing here since we got married last spring. This is a condo & townhome neighborhood just a few blocks from us that we've kept an eye on, but never really interested in. We started looking with a realtor again this fall and after a month or so of actually going through homes, we only found one that we were pretty excited about, but way on the other side of town (right now, Micah has a 5 min commute & I have a 2 min). When we were just about decided on that one, prices in this neighborhood, which had been slowly dropping since we'd seen them, suddenly dropped a dramatic $40K overnight, for a total $65K off the price they'd sold for last summer. After some deliberation, we decided that even though it was not really our dream to live in a condo or townhome ("The Office" fans will understand when I say we don't have the Michael Scott-condo-dream-complex), this was definitely the right thing to do for us, so we signed a contract on a townhome! ...which just means that we got to pick colors and have first dibs, but in the meantime if we find something better, we have no obligation to it until we close on it. The floorplan is not our favorite because the downstairs living area is not the most functional, but like I said, we're not staying in this thing forever so we're not worried about our starter home being a dream home- otherwise we are totally excited about it! We only share one wall/it's a 2-unit building. & like I said, since it's only a few blocks away, we keep an eye on it almost daily and it has been going up really fast! We'll soon have room for anyone that wants to come our way ;)