NEW HOUSE AND FALL TRIPS....

Here is a picture of our new home!! We moved in on September 29th, which happened to be one week prior to our 1st wedding anniversary. Besides the moving part itself, having a new home was a wonderful way to celebrate!

We really, really love it and are looking forward to enjoying it for many years. It's in a great location and neighborhood. It's got room to grow, with 4 bedrooms (1 downstairs, 3 upstairs) and a big backyard. The dining room and living room are separate. The family room and kitchen are combined. Upstairs, there's a small bonus room that we're using as a computer room. The house only has 2 bathrooms, so our plan is to add a half bath in a year or two. An extra bonus is that there's a large laundry room as well as a storage room and 2 car garage...in other words, plenty of space for all our holiday decorations and wedding gifts! AND room to park our cars inside.

Here's a look at the patio and backyard--and yes, the house came with the playset. (A.K.A. no, we are not expecting babies asap...amazing how many people have asked that! )

The story of this house is pretty awesome. We had seen it back in March when we first started looking at houses. At that point, the sellers were still asking too much for it, plus we weren't quite ready to make a committment. We wanted to fully scope out the market and see what our options were. Between then and August, we toured about 35 homes in addition to following several online. In the beginning of August, we decided it was time to put our townhouse up for sale. We didn't know how many months it would take for a buyer to come along, especially in this economy. We were SHOCKED when it sold 10 days later. And also that we go thte amount we wanted/needed out of it. We were surprised yet again when the house we ended up buying /had been watching since March came down significantly in price two weeks later. AND that they accepted our offer price. There's really no question about it: The Lord was definitely in control of this house hunt! Not only that, but he provided us with a wonderful realtor who made the process go very smoothly and who prayed for us along the way. What a blessing!

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The first few weeks have been quite hectic though. In addition to unpacking boxes and finding a place for everything, we went to New York for 6 days and travled 8 hours there and back to an Auburn game. Both trips had been planned before we knew we would be moving that month. We had a wonderful time, of course, but just haven't had much time to get settled in even though we moved in nearly a month ago. What time we've had has been spent getting the locks changed, the alarm installed, the trees trimmed, roof worked on, lawn taken care of, etc.

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Anyway, while I'm on a roll with catching up on this blog, I might as well post a few pictures from our New York trip. Because we were there for so many days, we got to do more than either of us have ever been able to, simply because we had more time. Highlights were the NBC and Radio City Music Hall tour, all the fabulous restaurants, seeing WICKED again on Broadway...we truly did a ton so there's just too much to list. Part of it was business, but most of it was leisure/celebrating our anniversary. The good thing about rolling it into the business trip was that our room was paid for---at the RITZ CARLTON!! Our view was overlooking Central Park...not too shabby. Plus, they picked up our airfare, transporation, gratuities, and some meals. They even arranged for a private driver one day! Let's just say we soaked it all in....

Here's our room. I don't have a picture of the bathroom, but it was huge--and covered in marble.

Here we are in Times Square.

Financial District.

One of the nights, they rented out the Statue of Liberty for us. This picture doesn't do it justice. The experience was truly quite incredible!

They catered the three course dinner right outside the Statue of Liberty and provided live music as well as fireworks over the NY harbor. Definitely an evening to remember! Oh and the next day, I bumped into Diane Keaton. Literally! At Bergdorfs in the shoe department. She was shopping with her personal shopper...I was merely picking up shoes and turning them over to gasp at the $1500 to $2500 price tags. CRAZY!

The following weekend after our NYC trip, we went to Auburn for a game and stayed at Emily's lakehouse. It was great for all the husbands to get to know each other better, and of course all of us girls couldn't stop talking...so much to catch up on in person. By the way, Jenny's little girl, Maddie, is pictured to the far right. She is adorable, it was so fun seeing her. In January she'll become a big sister!

Despite the FREEZING weather (I do not remember it EVER getting that cold during my 4 years there)... Tim and I had a great time tailgating and going to the game.

That's it for our travels until Thanksgiving...so maybe it will finally start feeling like we actually LIVE in our new house. : ) I'll post pictures of the inside in a few weeks once things are more orderly. The painter is supposed to start tomorrow on the living room, so we'll see!! ... I'm a little nervous. Finding the right shade of yellow was sure tricky!