We Moved!

Well, here we are in our new home in Indiana!

I know some of you were waiting to hear how our trip went.  I couldn't post anything until now for obvious reasons.  Where did I leave you hanging?  Oh yeah, our household goods were being packed away by the Samoan dudes.

They set up a table in our garage and took their lunch break which consisted of corned beef mixed with rice.

Peeka really enjoyed exploring her new "kitty park" in our living room.

So on Monday they loaded up the truck and emptied out our house, except for the stuff we decided to take with us.  We ended up sleeping on the floor in sleeping bags, and then got up real early on Tuesday morning so we could start our road trip.

But first, we stopped in Palmer for breakfast.  We ate at the Noisy Goose where they have this bear looking in the window at the customers.

The trip itself really isn't worth writing about because we didn't stop to see or do anything.  We just aimed for our destinations each night before it got dark.  And since I was driving, I didn't have many opportunities to get pictures of anything.  Chuck was driving the truck (with Peeka), and I was following behind him in the car (with Weeners).

On the first day we drove from Wasilla, Alaska to Whitehorse (YUKON, Canada).

On the second day we drove from Whitehorse to Fort Nelson (BRITISH COLUMBIA, Canada).

On the third day we drove from Fort Nelson to Whitecourt (ALBERTA, Canada).

On the fourth day we drove from Whitecourt to Grand Falls, Montana.

On the fifth day we drove from Grand Falls to Cheyenne, Wyoming.

The 6th day was Sunday so we went to church in Cheyenne with Karen and Kris.

After we had lunch with them, we drove to Lincoln, Nebraska.

It got dark out about two hours before we got there, and then we saw lightning, and then the rain came down so hard, all I could see was Chuck's blurry tail lights.  It was a scary time for me.

On the 7th day we drove from Lincoln to South Bend, Indiana.

We stayed on I-80 and skirted the southern side of Chicago where the traffic was crazy AND we drove through another downpour of rain!  Another scary part!

We drove 4200 miles in 7 days.  Well, actually it was 6-1/2 days cuz we spent the first half of Sunday in Cheyenne.  I was able to get just a few pictures along the way.

Before we crossed the Canadian border, we let Weeners out (on a leash).  This was her last time in the Alaska weeds.

For the most part, she did pretty good in the car.  She spent a lot of time on my lap, or Justin's lap.

Or she would find a place in the back part of the car and just sleep.

When we were driving through Canada, we came to spot where there was a small herd of bison on the highway, blocking traffic.  

And occasionally we would see some caribou.

We didn't see any moose or bears.

Whenever we stopped for a potty break, we tried to let Weeners out.  Sometimes she would paw at the windows while we were driving cuz she wanted to go outside really bad, so we tried to take her out when we could. Peeka was the opposite.  She was too scared to go outside, so we quit trying with her.

In northern Wyoming, the rest area had some baby bunnies running around.  They were so cute!

So when we got to South Bend, Chuck looked for a Super 8 cuz they will let people bring cats in the room for an extra fee.  We needed 3 nights in a hotel, and it was really hot and humid in South Bend, so we couldn't let the cats live in our vehicles for 3 days! Anyhoo, when we got there, we thought we went to the wrong one cuz it was under construction and we thought it was closed.  But it was the right one, so we went in, got checked in, and found out where they apparently keep their kitty customers.  They put us down at the very end of this hallway that smelled like cat pee.  Our room also smelled like cat pee.  

Then we soon found out that place was a dump.  Chuck said if the health inspectors came, that place would've been shut down.  The cat pee smell is only the beginning of their troubles.  Just trust me - it was a DUMP!  There was mold all over the ceilings and walls, especially in our bathroom. Chuck even went through the trouble to borrow their vacuum cleaner so he could clean out their bathroom fan AND he fixed the toilet lid which was about to fall off.  Plus our blow dryer was dead so we had to ask for a new one.  PLUS, we were supposed to get a continental breakfast, but it was closed off with yellow tape.  So they just put out some coffee decanters which contained room temperature coffee that tasted like watered down sawdust.  We ended up going to Starbucks for breakfast every morning. Anyhoo, we really appreciated getting out of that place when we closed on the house!

So we got there Monday night and were closing on our house on Thursday, so we spent that time getting familiar with the town and our new neighborhood, and also went to a furniture store and picked out some furnishings that we knew we would need for the house.  Everything went smooth with money transfers and we were able to close on our house Thursday afternoon, so Thursday night we slept in our new house on the floor in sleeping bags.  Woke up with an achy back, but I was just excited to be in our house.

On Friday we had our furniture delivered, one of them a guest bed for our guest room, so we are sleeping on that until the rest of our household goods come, which by the way, hasn't even left Anchorage yet, so it could be mid October before we get our stuff.

Anyhoo, we are so happy to be in our house!

The guy who lived here was widowed about a year ago or so, and she had an "English garden" going, so there's a lot of interesting plants in the gardens outside, most of them I have no clue what they are. The plants are kinda sickly looking cuz the owner didn't take care of them (it was his wife's thing), and I am not a green thumb, but I hope we can make it look really nice again.

Peeka already found some ledges to sit on.

At night we leave the bedroom window open and listen to the frogs.  The cats will sit on the window ledge and listen to them too.

And of course Peeka already lounges on my kitchen counter.

Weeners did a lot of hiding at first, but it didn't take Peeka very long to feel at home here.

"rub my belly!"

After we moved in, we found some really cool amenities that we didn't know was here.  Like this hot water dispenser.

It's perfect for someone like me who likes to drink hot tea almost every night.  No more heating up a mug of water in the microwave!  This dispenser makes instant tea, and it's always ready!

Okay, so this is not an exciting picture, but this is really cool, especially for people who like to sweep their dirt under the rug (no, I am not one of those people).  But this house comes with a central vac, and it works really good, so we really won't need to use our regular vacuum cleaner that much anymore.  And it turns out we really won't need a broom or a dust pan either.  This little hole under the kitchen cabinet leads to the central vac bag.  If we flip the switch, we can sweep all our dirt into it, and it gets sucked into the central vac bag.  How cool is that?

Here is my kitchen.  Nice and big with lots of cabinet space.  The only problem is that they are so high.  I cannot reach the top shelves without a step stool.  This kitchen was made for a giant woman.

I wanted an island to use as my work station, like I had in my other house, so I was kinda disappointed that this island has a range in the middle of it, BUT!....if you look behind it you'll see that I have a long uninterrupted counter space, which makes up for the loss of island space.  

Look Ma!  Two ovens!  It's hard to see but next to the fridge is an oven and a microwave.  The oven that you see in the island is actually a convection oven, which I have to get used to. The owner of the house told me that he mostly just used the regular oven by the fridge.  The range is electric, which is a disappointment cuz I prefer gas ranges, but it's something else I will just have to get used to.  The only thing I really HATE is that refrigerator!  It's one of those fancy ones with the double doors.  I HATE THOSE!  But it came with the house, so I will just have to tolerate it.  Unfortunately, it's fairly new, so I will have to tolerate it for a LONG time.

I have a very nice laundry room, also with lots of storage area.  You can't see in the picture, but the wall opposite the washer and dryer also has more cabinets, plus a place for me to put my laundry sorters.   The washer and dryer came with the house.  A little too fancy for me (too many features), but they are pretty nice.  I think I figured out now how to use them.

I love the sunroom, but we are going to repaint it.  It's too much bold yellow.  After we tone it down and add some wicker furniture, it will be really nice in there.  It'll be great for reading or hand-sewing.

This is the study room where I will be doing all my Greek and Bible studying.  Chuck will use it too, for work related stuff.  It would also work as a Halloween room if Chuck would let me, but I think he would put his foot down about that.  So I think my Halloween decor will be scaled back quite a bit now.

I didn't take any pictures of the bedrooms, but we have a nice master bedroom/bath and two guest rooms (come stay with us!).

The downstairs is ridiculous big! 

What you see here is only half of it!

It's hard to tell on the pictures, but it really is so ridiculously big, it's almost laughable. Even with all my scap booking stuff and my sewing, I still won't fill up all that space, but after I get my stuff, I will be spending a lot of time down there.

Justin's bedroom is also down there, with a full bathroom.

But we will probably use some of it for storage cuz we are not allowed to have a shed.  All of Chuck's manly belongings will have to go in the garage, which has limited space.  So everything we had in our crawl space and stored in our shed will have to be stored in our new basement.  I suppose a significant amount of space will be taken up just by my Halloween stuff.

As for our neighbors, we already met some of them.  On Saturday, a lady from across the street came over and provided us with lunch and a pan of brownies.  She's a really nice lady.  We went over there today to return her brownie pan and she invited us to stay and visit with her for a spell. 

Then today, another neighbor lady came and brought some more goodies.  She has a swimming pool behind her house and told us to please come over and use it whenever we want.  She's not home a lot and she doesn't want it just sitting there not being used.

And as you know, my good friend Tammie is now only an hour and a half away!  So she and her husband Pete came to see us yesterday.  She brought me my rhubarb and raspberry plants, which are all looking very healthy. They stayed for dinner and we got caught up on a lot of things.  It was so fun seeing them again!  I am of course planning on going to her house in the near future.  We have a lot of stamping to do!

Today we visited a church in Mishiwaka.  It was SO different than what I'm used to!  After we left, I wanted to fly back to Alaska cuz I missed my Wasilla church family so much!  But like Chuck said, I have to give them a chance, and I know he's right.  The people were friendly enough; the problem is me trying to force myself to let go and accept change.  For some reason, it comes easier for Chuck to do that.

So that's pretty much the gist of it.  This week Chuck has off, and then he starts his new job next week Monday.  So we will be spending the week picking out paint, getting more settled, and taking care of important business, like opening a bank account and things like that.  And on Wednesday we have someone coming over to measure the bedrooms so we can start the ball rolling for changing out the carpet.  We want to get that done before our stuff comes.  We will have lots of things to do to make this house our own, but it'll be fun.