Home, sweet home

this chaos :

has been transplanted to here:

 

After two weeks of no internet, lots of moving, and back and forths, we have finally landed in Cola. We basically spent week 1 carrying small items in just our cars to cola while I looked for a job. Since I finished work and Charley finished work we went ahead and left Charleston and stayed in Columbia.

 

We spent a week at Charley’s mom’s house with our stuff stacked in her spare room

That’s five dogs, two cats, one bird, 4 fish and a hedgehog and three people in one house with a lot of junk lying around. Charley’s mom is pretty awesome for entertaining guests like that.  We also had  a lot of fun watching Juneau chase her Roomba vacuum cleaner around and try to be buddy buddy with the cats. The cat’s were pretty miffed at us and insisted on sharing the bed.

 

On Saturday afternoon we realized that our plan to get a U-Haul and move on Sunday was going to fail- U-Haul isn’t open on Sunday (duh!). Since we had no other day to move, we jumped in the car and made it to Charleston just an hour before they closed on Saturday and packed up our furniture through the night. We had a  lovely and much needed egg’s benedict and coffee from the Early Bird Diner before driving back.

We got back at 3am and would have much rather slept all morning but woke up at 8 to see if anyone had answered our Facebook invite to  help us unload.  Charley’s brother and my Mom and Dad came to help us get er done. We were so so so tired and achy from the night before and coffee-less and rather grumpy when who should come up the street but our new wonderful neighbors with a big thermos of coffee, sugar, milk, homemade bread and cups to drink it too. That little thing was such a huge blessing…I don’t know how we could have kept going without the fuel. Did I mention our new sweet neighbors? The lady who helped me finish college and took us to Europe twice?

My sweet mom and dad also brought us half and half, m+m’s, eggs and bread to stock our pantry and well…that was that nights dinner (judge us not).

The next morning we woke up and head breakfast on the patio. In my sneaky stealthy weird wife ways  I was watching Charley work through the window and couldn’t resist taking a picture. He was working on  recipes, menu items and sourcing for ingredients for the restaurant that will open at the beginning of the month. I sorta kinda love his serious face-pretty cute huh?

 

 

 

And now that we are all settled - we love this house like crazy! There are so many things about it that make it special. The first winning point being the back patio in the morning. It’s like a little slice of hobbiton with wildflowers blooming, breezes blowing, butterlfy’s flutterybying. We’ve had cute little frogs and lizards coming up to the steps in the rain and we think the squirrels are on steroids. The play set is a pretty darn fun place to sit up in (and I went down the slide to …er…demonstrate for my niece). Seeing her get excited about the slide pretty much made my day. (That and listening to her say “cha-lee” and “sah”).

We also love the hominess of the house. The warm wood. The fireplace. The ginormous shower. hexagon tile. Rustic looking kitchen. The huge closets. The spider that lives on the porch named Charlotte.

and  Juneau’s first moments in her yard (the first time she’s had a yard in a year and half):

 

 

There’s even a fun little chalkboard wall in the new art room:

 

 

My sweet mom even got Juneau a little snack for her first night at the new place and she was pretty excited to be allowed in to eat it (while charley did a double take around the yard to make sure miss crafty can’t get out).

 

 

We’ve spent the week unpacking and waiting for our internet to work…which finally ended up in Charley changing out an old  phone cable under the house late at night because the AT+T technician was to lazy to check all the wires and just hooked it up to one. We knew the DSL box worked if we used it outside connected straight to the box on the outside of the house but for some reason the wires running under the house were either old or not working. For a brief moment we pondered bringing the computer outside and just using it in the great outdoors…(not!).

I also found a part time Job this week as a Secretary/front desk person for Saluda Shoals park! I’m still looking for a second job but having one is such a blessing and a testimony to the fact that God provides. Well actually, this whole moving process indeed. The fact that we are in Columbia reunited with friends in a wonderfully awesome house with a yard just shouts of that fact. It’s a big sigh of relief to have some stuff behind us and be so incredibly at peace and full of joy at all the new and exciting things happening.