Moving-in Stuff

So since the last time I managed to post, lots of things have been going on.  I have felt very very busy.  So, rather than try to recap in order, I will just try to remember and highlight what has happened.

• We closed on our house.
• We moved in.
• We moved in all the stuff from our moving van.
• We've worked on getting our house supplied with all the stuff houses need to have, which for us included beds, dressers, bookshelves, food, and other supplies.  We got a membership at Costco for our first huge run, and we've been searching craigslist like there's no tomorrow.
• We bought a commuter car for Brett.  It's a chevy Cruze and it's pretty fun to drive.
• We bought a truck with a snowplow on it and have been battling our driveway.
• We went to church --me only twice so far because once I had a bad cold and once it was cancelled due to weather (although we still drove there, we just drove back home again directly).
• The kids got more immunizations and got enrolled in school.  They had a lot of days of two-hour delays and a few cancelled days for weather.
• We have already spent a small fortune at Lowe's and Brett has almost completely finished the radon-mitigation project in the basement, and has started building the bedrooms down there.
• I signed Talmage up for soccer at the YMCA.  He has been waiting for YEARS, and he is the most enthusiastic player ever.
• Jethro will be starting baseball soon.  We'll try that out and see how he likes it.
• The kids have had fun playing with some toys they haven't seen in five years (the train track is a big hit), and we mailed a box of clothes and girly toys to Ruthie since my girls have outgrown them.  Also Jethro and Hazel have been reading books like it's all they have to do in the world (which it almost is... sighing for the life of a kid).
• We have done really well with my new policy of No TV/Movies/Computer Time At All.  I warned the kids this would be happening when we moved into our new house, and surprisingly, it has been not hard at all to adjust to, even in the cold depths of winter.  Granted, we have had lots of novel toys and things.  And I don't mean we'll never watch anything ever EVER, in fact, in the time we've been here we watched one movie as a family  for Deutschabend (it was Stuart Little in Swiss German), and we let the kids watch one movie when we went to pick up the car since we had been gone so much for running similar errands.
• I have been making bread (I have a bosch again!) every other day it feels like because I pack lunches for the kids every day.
• I have tried to actually become a responsible homemaker and try to get a handle on what are the best prices/where are the best places to shop/what are the best deals for groceries, and that actually takes a lot of effort (but that should taper off now that I have my little notebook mostly filled in).

 Here's one batch of pictures.  I'll have to make a different post to add some more.

How the kids' rooms looked at first--emtpy, sleeping in sleeping bags (so kindly lent by the Kimbers):

 

Exploring our house and land!

Side view of house--that's a door into the basement.

I love this bathroom. The tub is blue like the sinks.

How we ate dinner the first few days--on the floor:

Turkey tracks.  We've seen turkeys several times.  One walked right by our dining room french doors when we were eating breakfast.

Boys helping me with dinner.

Me documenting my happiness and joy and feelings of being spoiled in having my own bathroom!!!  Yes folks, I have a master bath, something I have looked forward to since the time we had our first child.  Woohoo!

Our basement.  Nice and big, perfect for riding bikes in and strewing toys in apparently.  Brett hung up the rope for drying a few towels too.

Jethro throwing snow at Talmage.

Talmage's drawing of the Kratt Brothers and the Tortuga.

The truck and snowplow.  There were many a long, cold, walks-of-shame from the mailbox to our house when we couldn't get up, so we bought this guy.  Then the war was won, except when it partially thawed one day and it turned it to complete ice.  We lost that battle.

I love this kid!  It's so strange having lunch with just Orrin, Wyatt, and me these days.  In Switzerland the kids all came home for lunch.  Now it's just so quiet.

Wyatt laughing his little head off because he threw a snowball and hit Talmage.

 These are out of order, this was back when we first got here and were looking over the place for the first time.

This sticker was in the garage, along with a bunch of Harley Davidson ones.

Brett built a fire in our fireplace and burned the desk that broke in the moving van. It was a huge fire, and I thought it would be a shame to have our house burn down when we had lived in it so shortly. 

Ethne built a snowman.  (She did have a coat on while she was building it.)

This is  a picture of a tow truck towing out the truck that brought our stuff. This is what I wrote that day on our family website. 
1. Today the moving truck arrived with all of our stuff.
2. The truck got stuck in our driveway and eventually had to call a tow truck to get out.
3. Jethro and I and Hazel carried out EVERY SINGLE thing that we could (meaning not the huge tool cabinets nor the motorcycle nor the big dresser, nor the kitchen table because it was behind the huge tool cabinets) and finished RIGHT as Brett was pulling into the driveway from work. Muscles baby.
4. A guy from our ward came and had a dolly and he and Brett took out the last few things.
5. A few other people came over but had to be turned away when they saw that everything was already unloaded.