Moving Adventures

Gary and I bought a house.  We are so excited!

We had never gone through the process of looking for a house, making an offer, and then paperwork, paperwork, paperwork!  And then more paperwork.

Seriously though - it wasn't to bad and the timing was right for us. We are so excited and cannot wait to get everything unpacked and in place. But here is some of what we have experienced in our process.

We started looking at houses in January. We have been renting since moving to Tulsa almost 13 years ago and decided the time was right we wanted to own our own place. So we looked and looked and looked. We came across this house in March while attending an open house and thought it fit our requirements:  large kitchen, separate dining, large living.  BUT - we weren't ready at that time.

While the house seemed just what we wanted we did not act. Believing that if it was meant to be then when we were ready it would be available.  The house was taken off the market after we looked at it as an offer was made. The house was put back on the market. The price was reduced.

We took a second look at the house. The pink tiled bathroom we first saw had been reglazed!  WOW what a difference that made.  We made an offer, counter offer, etc.  Accepted and started the loan process!

Then we started packing. I had a lot of stuff in my attic.  We also decided to take our annual vacation to Corpus Christie. So we had a month to get everything done. We accomplished it. We had our vacation - we took our trips - we packed - we moved - we shopped for furniture.

Gary's job means that he has the months of June and July off (with pay) so that was a big plus.

We signed our papers and became home owners!  Happy happy dance for us.

Then Gary went and picked the grand kids up for help. They spent a week with us.

The first item I had them working on was washing the inside of my cabinets.

Looks like Grampa hadn't taken a ladder over yet. Way to improvise.

We had a great friend who helped us change out some light fixtures. Remington made good use of the styrofoam packing.

Hoover boards!

Every day they helped Grampa move the boxes that we had been packing. They would take 2-3 van loads over every day. Did I mention that we happened to choose the hottest week of the year to move! Of course we did.  The kids were troopers and by the move in date almost every box that was packed was already sitting in our new garage waiting to be unpacked! We had another friend who brought his pickup over and moved 3 truckloads of boxes in it throughout the week.

We had rented a U-Haul and picked it up at 7:00 am.  Friends came to help and by 11:00 am all our furniture was over at the new house and the rental truck had been returned!  We have some wonderful friends and family.  Now I'm not ready to show the inside of the house yet as we are still unpacking and organizing but here's some pics from our move.

The kids were impressed with the big truck.  Wanted to get a 'selfie' of us together.  However, I was not able to climb up there, although I did try.  By the end of the week I felt like I was ready for all the surgeries my doctors are recommending.  I could barely walk!

We comprised on this selfie:

The new house has lots of gardens! They need lots of work at this point!  The kids and I were sitting outside on the patio one evening and they wanted to 'explore the Jungle Garden'. The back yard garden is full of tall tall plants and bushes. So we went exploring.  We found treasure!

Remington came across a wrought iron bench end.  I did some searching and found the other end! We are way excited about this and plan on restoring it and adding planks so we have a bench.  I will post pics of all that later along with other 'treasures' that were found.

In the meantime, Gary and I will be busy unpacking and storing, and unpacking and unpacking.

A Full Table

Well, I obviously missed posting anything last week.  Kinda busy getting ready for vacation and a move. But that's not what this post is about and I know that you know that. You know that it's time for NEW FOOD NIGHT!!

No centerpiece for you to look at today - I told you getting ready for a move. But we did have a full table.

It was kind of hard to get all of us in the picture :)  Can you see that we have a visitor this week? Sitting back there underneath the lamp is Grammy!  She traveled many many miles just to eat at our table.

Tonight was Mexican Night!  That is almost as popular for us as Italian.

Miss Annette brought a Mexican Salad.

She makes the prettiest salads.  This is just full of all kinds of goodies. You see the corn, tomatoes, avocado,  and black beans on top; but, you cannot see all the greens underneath.

Along with this she had a homemade lime, citrus vinagertte dressing.

I was not real certain abut this but always try anything new at new food night. That's the purpose of it.  Gotta tell you, this was a really good dressing and I don't usually like vinegarettes.

Mr. Rick made some refried beans.

Now these aren't the 'open the can and heat them up' kind of beans. These are the real thing. Pinto beans and seasonings cooked in crock pot then mashed up real good.  Who doesn't like refried beans?

K.C. made some pork carnitas.

She took pork and rubbed it with seasoning then let it cook in the crock pot nice and slow. She then shredded the pork and served it with corn tortillas.  Yummers!

Gary made Taco Pie

Crescent roll dough, taco seasoned meat cheese on top.  Two pie pans of deliciousness for us to scarf down.

Now it's my turn.  I went with a Pinterest recipe I had seen - Shrimp Bites.

Now this was pretty simple - my kind of dish.  Potato chips, guacamole, and shrimp.  The hardest part here was trying to find whole chips in the bag. I had to tell K.C. to not eat a chip unless she was going to eat broken ones.  LOL  Seriously though, this was good stuff. I just seasoned the shrimp with some chili powder and cooked it then layered on chip.  If you make this be sure not to make to much ahead of time as the chip will get soggy from the guacamole.

Her is what my full plate looked like.

The plate was as full as our table. That always makes us happy - full plates and full tables of friends and family.

Have any of you tried any of the recipes we have used on our New Food Night?  If so, what did you try and did you like it?  Let us know your thoughts.