Skip to main content

Home Sweet Home

Timing for our new home could not have been better. We moved in on June 4th and it went so smoothly. The movers showed up on time (yes!) they were careful with our things and efficient (yes!) and we have successfully moved everything from MN into our new home in PA with absolutely nothing getting scratched, dented, or broken. We picked up our storage PODS and got the rest of our furniture, our china and our china cabinet. Everything we own is in one place and it's so great.

We got a lot unpacked that first week, which was good because we were off to Firefly just a few days later. My last day of school was on Wednesday. I drove home to meet up with everybody and we were off to Dover, Delaware to camp in an RV and listen to live music for the long weekend. This is our 5th year in a row going to a music festival, and our 3rd year at Firefly. We love the fact that you get to camp on site and hang out on the festival grounds the entire time. We have found a great group of people to go with who are super low key and just like to have fun. Now we are home, laundry is done, and it's time to settle in to the new house.

Some things I really love about the house:
-The yard. There's just so. much. space. Deb loves it.
-The kitchen. For the first time ever, all of our kitchen stuff fits IN our kitchen. Life changing.
-The appliances are all newish and top of the line. It's nice to know that everything works and works really, really well. For those of you that know what we dealt with at the old house, this is a big deal!
-We finally get to settle in. We have been living in limbo for about a year, knowing that the apartment was temporary. It's nice to know that we can paint and hang stuff up and not have to undo it all in a few months.
-We get to have a grill again!
-I can shake my rugs out or empty the vacuum OUTSIDE because I have access to fresh air without walking down a hallway, going down an elevator, and down another hallway.
-We can do stuff like clean and vacuum our cars, store light bulbs in the garage, etc. because again, space.

There was nothing that we HAD to do to the house, but we did decide to paint a couple rooms. I have been slowly working my way around the house, painting here and there. It's been HOT and humid lately. I have one room left to do, but need to wait until I can open the windows again.

I would say the best thing about this house is the feeling we get being here. Since the second we got the keys and got to walk in by ourselves, it's felt like home. There has never been a moment where it's felt like we are living in someone else's house. It's comfortable and just seems to have a good vibe. It's great for entertaining, it's great for having visitors stay here, and it's great when it's just the 2 of us (plus Deb).

Besides the new home, life in PA is splendid. I have taken a couple of day trips to Baltimore, Manhattan, and the Jersey Shore. Andy is golfing every weekend. He is working ridiculously long hours, and I am taking advantage of my time off this summer by going to the pool, reading, and preparing for next school year. We head back to MN in a couple of weeks and will get to see a lot of our family and friends. After that, Andy's brother and his family will be out to visit. We are SO excited to have more family out here and to get to spend some quality time with our adorable nephews! We have a lot of fun things to look forward to as the summer wraps up. Here are a few before and after pictures so you can see some of the painting I've done. I'll also toss in a couple of pictures from our summer so far. Happy summer to all!


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Hello Fall!

This was my first year in more than a decade that I didn't have a classroom to set up in the fall.  Andy and I decided that with the logistics of the move, this was a good time for me to take a break from teaching and decide what I want to be when I grow up.  I have not said goodbye to education forever, but it will probably look a bit different in the future as I don't see myself going back into a classroom as a classroom teacher.  We shall see!  That being said, somehow this summer went faster than any other that I can remember.  To even think that it's October feels strange as my daily routine is so different than it would normally be this time of year. The changing of the trees even surprised me as I didn't realize how late in the year it was.  So let's take a trip down memory lane and review what the last part of what our summer looked like. As I mentioned previously, teachers have to take advantage of their time off in the summer, so I had some frie...

And Then There Were Four!

As you can see, blogging got pushed WAY far down on my to do this these past 18 months.  18 months!  James is 18 months old already.  There's no way I can recap a year and a half in one blog post so I'll just give some of the highlights.   When I was pregnant I found a group of other pregnant woman who met on Zoom once a week.  Everyone on the call was about to be a first time mom and we were in the thick of Covid so we were all quite isolated.  I honestly don't even remember how I found this group but it has become our village.  There are 18 of us that all mostly live within a few miles of each other and had babies within a 6 month period.  To this day we keep in touch daily.  We had to move from regular texting to an app with different channels/topics (clearly I don't really know what I'm talking about here) but the point is that we are all in constant communication and this group has come to our rescue multiple times. We have get toge...

Not Funemployed for much longer!

October felt like one long weekend. November has been fairly quiet in the Black household as we are settling in and getting ready for our first holiday season in New Jersey. Andy's been busy at work, as always, and I've been trying to keep myself busy while not working. Our friends, Scott and Linda, were in town for a weekend in October and we did a day in NYC. I posted a picture in the last post but didn't share much about it. We started the day by breezing through Hudson Yards and then heading to the Upper West Side and had lunch at Jacob's Pickles. That place is insanely good! We walked over to Joe's coffee and then headed into Central Park. I was hoping for some fall colors but we were a little too early. It was still a super pretty day and fun to walk in the park. We walked all the way to Times Square, and then headed home. It was a LONG day, but we saw so much! Every day in NYC is a long day when it's all about sight seeing. I would much rather walk everyw...