getting settled in

Meanwhile... back at home, I attempted to put our house back in order.  Since most of the house was still in the garage, our piano was out, and our house fairly empty, I wanted to paint some of the rooms.  I painted Savannah's room, the hallway, the living room, and the dining area.  Then we (I) started to get the rest of the furniture and things out of the garage. We had sold some things before we went to England, like our TV center, so we didn't have anything to put the TV on.  I bought some things, like 2 armchairs, a large rug for the living room, curtain rod and curtains, and a TV stand.  The armchairs required a small amount of assembly, but they were easy.  The TV stand was a bunch of pieces though and required lots of assembly.  I wasn't sure if I could do it, but after working on it for about 4 hours, it came together.

Alex was gone the 2nd week after we were back and then most of September (conveniently...), so I got to do most of the work of getting things back together.  I saw our neighbor one day as I was hauling some things from the garage, and we joked about Alex not being around to help.  I said, "Well, I put most of the stuff in the garage last summer, so I guess I'm getting it all back out now..." 

Alex helped put the large items together that first week - the kitchen table and bunkbeds.  He pulled the old curtain rod out of the living room and put the new one in, put up a rack to hang backpacks on, and helped hang up all our pictures.  We also finally got our piano back, which has been at the home of someone in our church.  The friends who were borrowing our piano while we were gone moved in March, so they had to find someone to keep it for us until we got back.  Once we were here and started painting and such, it stayed over there.  By the time I was ready for it, Alex was out of town.  I can do a lot of things on my own, but moving a piano wasn't something I could do by myself.  I put that on Alex's list of things to do.  He finally got some guys to move it in the first week of November.

It's amazing how long it takes to get all the "little things" together that make a home, trying to put the kitchen back in order and all of the things for the bathrooms, bedrooms, clothing, and craft/office/school supplies. We left quite a bit of things in the garage and tried to bring in only the things we needed, but it was still a lot of work.

I put together some new pictures from all of our adventures last year, which are fun memories for us. Our sea glass is in a jar by the door, along with a candle that was given to us by a friend in England.  I also put together a flower photo collage in Savannah's room of pictures that were mostly from England. 

The mat in our wedding photo collage had turned yellow (it has been 18 years), so I pulled those out and made a new arrangement (bottom right).  I also like how the canvas prints of the Denver Temple turned out. 

 
Our house isn't decent enough right now for other photos (can't keep up with the laundry and clutter), but it does feel much more like home now.  We finally found all of the items we needed, got a little bit of new furniture and accessories, and got some pictures up on the wall. 

AND... we got cable TV!  It was automatically included in our maintenance fee at our condo in Houston, but since 2005, we have never had cable TV.  Nathan and I convinced Alex that we needed it to watch college sports again.  It has been nice watching sports with Nathan.  I see it as a tool for bonding with Nathan - he doesn't have too many more years at home.