Stranger

That would be me. Yes, it has been 45 days since I last posted. I have not forgotten about my blog. I have been reading all my other blogs, I just haven't had a shred of time or energy for blogging. That is not to say I haven't had any free time. It's just that in these last months of closing on our old house and moving to our new home, I have chosen to spend my time elsewhere. But I think I am ready to enter back into the blogging world again. I am making a comeback!

So what have I been up to? Well, if you want to be bored or have nothing better to do - read on. :)

I think the last time I posted was February 15th. That weekend found us busying ourselves to close on our new home on the 18th and moving that following weekend. Then we were supposed to close on the old house on the 25th. As you might all know, the process of buying/selling homes is imperfect at best. To make a long story short, our new home was not ready and wouldn't be quite done until that weekend. That meant we would be closing on the old house within a day or two. We asked our buyers for an extra day or two and they couldn't do it. We understood and really wanted to keep them happy. In the end the timing was cramped, but God made it work just perfectly. We closed on our new house on the 24th bright and early as the movers began to load up our stuff from the old house. I finished in enough time to meet them at the new house with the first load. The movers made a second load and we worked on getting settled. Brian and I spent our first night in the new house and the kids stayed with grandparents. We were supposed to close on the old house the next day, but thank goodness there was a change needing to be made in the contract and it was delayed until Thursday. Praise God because it took us a good while on Wednesday to clean out the last bit of stuff from the old house and clean it well. We closed on Thursday and that was the end. On Friday we had the last load of stuff from our storage unit and Brian's parents garage (we had done some quick premoving of stuff on the Sunday before). I just about fell over that Friday night when Brian and our friends backed that 26' truck up the driveway and opened the door. It was FULL! Where on earth did I have all that stuff?????

We are settled now and have been for several weeks. I have no more boxes to unpack for the house. I have more pictures to hang at my leisure and a box full of greenery I can use if I want (and by the way I never knew I had so much GREENERY!) I have been in a lull of sorts where that is concerned. I do not feel rushed and we have just been so busy. It has also felt nice to spend spare time watching a movie at night or doing some quilting. We have been busy with putting in blinds and towel bars and making a preliminary organization of the garage and the barn storage above. We are getting closer to working on the yard and the flower beds. We need to do some leveling of the dirt in the back yard and add sod. There are a couple of rooms I want to paint and I ordered another bookshelf. There are many things to do, but the many months of deadlines and pressures of preparing to sell and move are over. It is nice to feel more at ease.

We are loving our home. It felt like home right away. It is a wonderful house! I love the things we did and the way everything turned out. I think the months of being in this house and building it made it feel more like home more quickly. I have not really missed the old house and to our surprise the kids have not talked about it much either. It was very emotional to for them to leave that Tuesday morning of the move and for us too as we knew they would never see the inside of their first some again. It was very hard for me to say goodbye to my first home that Wednesday afternoon. Part of what made it so hard was that it looked nothing like our home. It looked dark with all the blinds closed and worn and old and sad. But it was my beautiful, happy, bright and cheery home! It looked so different. Not to mention DIRTY!!!! I can see now why they say it's better to show a house with the furniture and decor - EW! Walking from empty room to empty room was heart wrenching. Remembering all the years and the happy memories. I loved that home - every minute of every day we lived there. It was the best home!

And then I returned to our new home. The old house has ceased to be home. This is home here. When I returned here that day, I looked around and here was the brightness, the beauty and the cheer. Here were my husband and my precious children. Here were the memories right here - right now. Home. I couldn't love ti more. We are enjoying it so much. It is comfortable and happy and full of everyone and everything I love - home!

Aside from the move itself, life has meandered along. We took three weeks off of school and now we have been back on for a awhile. I am enjoying doing school in our new home. It is working beautifully. And of course we returned to all our other activities - ballet, CCE at church, Cub Scouts, Co-op, etc. We have been busy, busy, busy. It takes most everything I have on a daily basis to keep the house, keep everyone on track and keep my sanity. But we are doing well.

In my spare time, as you know, I have not been blogging. I have been getting in a good bit of sewing and reading. It has been nice. If I can locate the photos, I will post more details in a later post. For now I had to take this BIG step and write this return post, catching my blogging "public" up to speed. I feel caught up now that I have typed this. And now on to the daily stuff I much more enjoy writing about - you know, the quilting, the decorating, the school. The heart of my life.

Thank you all for all your prayers. I am glad to be back.
Blessings,

Celeste

The kids sleeping on their mattresses on the floor for the last time in our old house.

Here is the house on moving day. The weather was fantastic! The movers were great.

Here are Brian and Mikey on his 2nd birthday - the day we were closing on the new house and moving in! Brian's parents helped us out by having a little celebration for him.

Here are three of the kids waiting to enter their new house for the first time since the move!
Not too long after moving we started getting ourselves outside to play in the incredible weather in our cul de sac. We are so enjoying living here. Soon we may even have grass in the back yard too!

Here is a photo of the kitchen from the eating area. I love this kitchen - it works so well! It is big and no one is stepping on each other when we are in here working together which we often are. Our other little one had gotten so cramped!

Here's the den and the kids playing their Wii!

One of my other favorite rooms in the house has to be the gameroom upstairs. It such a wonderfully big room and the center of so much activity. Here are some photos of all the corners.

This corner has a fantastic closet in which we put some white bookshelves that Brian's mom had passed on to us. It is perfect for housing all our games, art supplies, etc. Love it! In that small corner is the play kitchen and house play items and some dress-up. You can see another white shelf on the wall holding all my quilting fabrics and projects and supplies. I am so enjoying having all of it in sight!

This corner by one of the bright sunny windows is my sewing corner. I couldn't be happier with the arrangement. It is great to be in the same room with the kids. I have some cabinets to bring in from the garage and some $40 formica countertop to make a cutting counter for myself. Can't wait!



In this corner I arranged a shelf of more generic toys (blocks, trains, animals) and our glider for reading. The little half wall looks out over the staircase and entry. It should have been a bannister and I am so glad we paid the small amount to make it a wall! There's our bookshelf with half of our children's books and homeschool books. All the boxes left next to it are the rest of the books. I have a new bookshelf on order from Wal-Mart. I cannot figure out where I had all these. The other three bookshelves are downstairs in the study with grown-up books. I put that wonderful white Ikea table up here for school work and the kids computer is also on the wall. The other corner has another desk and some bulletin boards. In that corner on the floor are all the Legos! We are doing school here in the mornings and it works so well. We can all be up here together doing things.

And here they are! My sweet kids enjoying life in their new home with some impromptu choclate fondue one day after lunch!