They Arrived!!

After a lot of eye rolling and huffiness on my part, our furniture was delivered yesterday!  Supposedly they got our number wrong and couldn't reach us to schedule the delivery.  It seems that once they got our number, they still didn't know how to use it.  But when it is all said and done, I made it home five minutes before the truck arrived yesterday and managed to move everything out of the way to make room for them (why didn't Tom and I do this Sunday night?).

this beauty was the easiest delivery, as we preferred to assemble it ourselves because we weren't sure if we'd need to cut it down because of the window; it's hecho en mexico and really lovely.

The cardboard in the window is only temporary.

It's great not to be sleeping on the floor anymore!!

(yes - that is the penguin blanket I got for Christmas 28 years ago - it is covering the lovely gray comforter with yellow daisies embroidered on it)

much more difficult to get in the house was the table - even coming in through the sliding door, they still had to take off two legs.  In a couple days I will get a picture of it with the leaf and eleven people sitting around it.  It's a nice stout table, and yes, Tom and I both sat at the heads of the table for dinner last night.  He thought we needed the leaf in but I thought eight feet away from each other was plenty far.

 Hooray and thanks to family and friends who helped with the table!  It is great, and I can't wait for all the meals shared around it with family and friends alike!

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like...

Our HOME!  ( If you thought "Christmas", take a moment to pause and let Thanksgiving happen first. "/)

Tom just told me that it still doesn't quite feel real - doesn't quite feel like our home.  We just keep chiseling away at out punch list.  Sometimes it is tough - there aren't any daylight hours when we're both home from work and the weekends are too short!  But it is so exciting to see things take shape...

the guest room floor that we finished last week - 

soon to become temporary TV room until the basement is finished

we got the tile back splash up in our bathroom -
I still need to grout it
(it matches the top of our shower)

we've been working a while on this piece -
after pouring the pedestal, we tiled the floor and then the wall row by row -
we installed the wood stove on Sunday, but ran out of daylight to secure the stove pipe to the exterior chimney - pretty cute!

the last pieces of tile went in around the edge of the shelf and stairwell

The progress is pretty cool.  There are lots of other things happening - Tom installed a dimmer for the dining table light, the ceiling fan in the guest room, the heater and thermostat in the guest room, and a number of other little things.  I have slowly been bringing over more things from the trailer.  There is still much to move, but there are fewer and fewer things we reach for and think - ah shucks, still in the trailer.

We also took a break from house work for future garage work - crazy, I know!  We went and salvaged a trailer full of lumber from some buildings knocked down at Philmont.  Tom thinks we scored enough to build the carport/workshop/coop - so I guess we have something to do next summer. 

Our First Big Snow

After much hemming and hawing, we quickly dashed to Denver and back for some shopping on Friday and Saturday.  Those odds and ends of things we knew we could find quickly in Denver, plus a bigger piece of furniture we couldn't find around here, were the reason we went.  The Habitat Re-Stores up there really are treasure troves for us, as people around here know how to use something up before getting rid of it.  With a full little Ranger, we set sail for home on the front edge of a big storm.  When we had to stop, we noticed the temperature drop, and the snow would catch back up to us.  Sunday morning, we awoke to a winter wonderland...  (my dad requested pictures)

We had a pleasant 6 inches or so.  It seems Cimarron got a few more inches and the mountains got at least double.  The declaration that we weren't going anywhere was one I enjoyed (no 4WD, and the truck was still loaded down with a piece of furniture we hadn't unloaded in the chill and darkness of night, and our highway is the last to be plowed).  It meant a bit of scurrying for me in the morning, as I quickly made phone calls to church folks to cancel a class, etc.

We were able to finish unloading the truck.  This beauty slid in through the sliding door, and we got it wiped down and set up...

We were looking for just such a piece of furniture, and ta da - it was waiting for us at the Re-Store for less than a fifth of what I'd seen for a smaller unit at the furniture store.  It already has a plant on top! We did take an unanticipated break to take care of a frozen water valve at the trailer, but good fortune was with us again when Pop arrived with his backhoe to dig up the frozen ground so we could cap the line!  Then we got back to it and set the tile for underneath the wood stove.  We figure it'll take a few more days to do row by row up the wall behind the wood stove, and then we'll ready to install it! 

Lesson No. 2

Don't expect to get as much sleep as the time between going to bed and when the alarm will go off.

Parents probably learn this one much differently when they bring home a newborn and go through the feeding and crying and wet diaper sleep cycles.  Jumping in to the sleep routine without this buffer may leave an unsuspecting night owl a little groggy when the alarm never gets to go off.

I had so much fun with the kids during my week of sitting on babies, but I cannot say I had so much sleep.  The four year old managed to sleep in his own bed all night.  "All night" is just a relative term, and it usually ended around 6:30 am.  Sweet as could be, he would pad into wake me to tell me he was "hungwy" - even on Saturday!  At 6:30 am!

With his little brother after the little one got to go to a fire station and get his own fire hat...

House pics

The house continues to be a work in progress.  After only a week in the house, I was gone for over a week, and I am still playing catch up...

Pics from the house the first week in it - note: I argued the plants all needed to get moved in because the trailer would be too cold to keep them alive.  Tom argued the trailer was too cold for watching TV, even though it is not to be a permanent feature of the living room.  So the plants and TV made the move and quickly filled in the empty spaces.  

Then, in the first week, I had a day off for Columbus Day, so I finished painting the mud porch and hung a coat rack and moved in a shoe bench.  More recently we built a shelf under the cabinets to hold recycling, kitchen things, root veggies, etc.

A week ago I helped Thomas finish the work on the chimney, which he started while I was gone.  We also finished planing the wood for the stair shelves, which he's also gotten halfway done while I was gone.

The other task he started on in my absence and finished in the last couple weeks is the guest room walls.  He textured, and then I painted.  I still want to hit the windows, closet, and loft with yellow.