The front door from the inside...the previous owner designed that stained glass sidelight herself. Shoe storage and coats to the right, because we have a zillion pairs of shoes on the floor at any given moment.
When you enter the angled front door you can look into both the living room (left) and the kitchen(right)
This is more of the living room, showing both mirrors and the hearth.
The other end of the living room, and the staircase to the upstairs. The piano will most likely go against the stair wall.
The front half of the kitchen...the window on the right faces Independence Street, and the left window looks out upon the yard. I have never had a kitchen with windows before!!
The rest of the kitchen. I love how many cupboards there are! Just to the left of the stove is the doorway into the dining room.
Looking into the dining room from the kitchen doorway. Behind the dining room door on the right is canned good storage, and on the left is a very deep closet. The door in the background leads up a flight of stairs to the patio.
The other half of the dining room - laundry center, bathroom door, and kitchen door.
Closeup of the bathroom door - Andy calls it the "man bathroom," so I got him this sign as an anniversary present last week. It is a pretty utilitarian room . . .
...stainless steel slop sink, toilet, door to the oil tanks, storage...
...furnace, "man" shower right next to the furnace. The furnace keeps this room toasty - I hope it will continue to do so when the weather turns cold.
Clare, hard at work on one of the electric typewriters that the previous owner left behind.
Another shot of the twins falling asleep at unlikely times and places. Noelle conked out at snacktime. They never used to do this, but our wake/nap/sleep routines are all discombobulated.
Overall it's been a great two weeks. The first week, it felt like we were on vacation in a beach house - everything so spacious and clean, and we didn't know where anything was! Now it's beginning to become familiar. I still look around in disbelief, though - I can't get it through my head that this is OUR HOME now.
The rec room bedroom construction hasn't begun yet, due to Andy's work schedule and all the cleaning that needed to be done at the old house. It still isn't empty, but the garage here is full. Doesn't that mean that we don't need anything else? We will hopefully start building the walls on Sunday.
Right now Sarah and Scott are just bunking on mattresses on the floor up there, right alongside their growing frog & toad collection. Scott bought three frogs last weekend from a pet store, found one toad the same day, and Conor caught a monster toad in our backyard last night. The toads "sing" like tree frogs or some kind of bugs. It actually sounds a little eerie, and man, are they loud!
Last week, Noelle was so upset from the move that she just walked around crying for two days, but since then we're getting into a groove and they seem more comfortable. Both twins chose this week to EACH cut ALL FOUR eye teeth at once. They just walk around, crying and drooling. To top it off, they both got pink-eye as well.
Our yard slopes down from the alley out back toward Independence Street. Theresa was riding a trike down the concrete walkway from top to bottom (in bare feet, I might add). I warned her, but she insisted that she wouldn't get hurt. Sure enough, a minute later I heard her screaming. There she was, at the bottom of the path, bloody scratches on her face and neck from crashing into the bushes. "I forgot to stop!" was all she could wail. She's okay, btw. She also tried to reach something up high today by standing on a plastic tub, which cracked under her weight. I am amazed that she wasn't impaled or punctured on the sharp plastic. Thankfully all she got was a long shallow scratch on the thigh.
Last week, Brian tried a daredevil stunt that didn't work out quite as planned. The wooded lot out back is about three feet higher than the alley. A gravel driveway is in the middle, but there's a sharp slope everywhere else. He (on a dare - thanks, Sarah) tried to jump his bike from the lot down to the alley. It probably would have worked, but he panicked in mid-flight and squeezed his brakes. Instead of landing and rolling, he landed with brakes engaged, and the bike came to a screeching halt. Brian, of course, did not. He flew over the handlebars and bruised himself up pretty good.
We were in mid-swim season when we started the move, but I had to let the coaches know this week that we can't finish. Our routines are so screwed up that nobody's getting to bed at a reasonable hour, and this week swimming practice changed to 7 a.m. That's 0700 hours! Insane! I told the coach he'd see us in the winter, but I couldn't manage right now.
Sarah and Scott both work at the Gun Club and at the International Food Court at Knoebel's, but they don't often work the same shift (ahem, wasn't that the idea when they both got hired at the same places??) so we don't see too much of them. Tonight was fun, though - a friend let them borrow an X-Box and Rock Band, and they taught me how to play. I think I missed my calling. I should have been a bassist in a rock band. 99%, baby. I rock! (Love ya, S&S)
Brian & Conor met some neighborhood kids their ages, and have even been invited to swim and use the basketball court. They were both worried about leaving all their friends behind, especially Brian, who doesn't like to stick his neck out (except during stunts, apparently). He's so shy he can't even ring a strange doorbell.
Clare is something of a priss and loves makeup, as you may have guessed. She and Theresa painted their dolls' fingernails and toenails the other day, and left long nail polish marks on the kitchen floor. I was upset about it, but I found that a light application of nail polish remover wouldn't damage the floor's finish. While I was searching the floor for polish, the babies wandered in and got hold of the polish remover bottle. Noelle, a.k.a. Miss Manual Dexterity 2008, twisted off the cap and spilled the entire bottle on herself and the floor. I heard the splash and smelled the acetone - those are the moments in life when you find a brick in your pants. You'll be glad to know that nobody was harmed, neither the twins nor the floor, although after what could have happened to the floor, I may have had a few thoughts about harming the twins!
No comments:
Post a Comment