Home Sweet Home!

This Tuesday we hosted a late holiday party for a section of our department. It was for the CASA volunteers for our county. They volunteer their time to advocate for abused and neglected children, and to be their voice to the judge in dependency cases (just a brief little education about what I do and who I work with....what a CASA/Guardian ad Litem are for those who don't know).

We have only had Tim's parents over, and a couple of our friends who really only stopped by to pick us up to go to dinner. For the party we had a group over. It was SO great to have people over. We had good food, gifts, and it made me love our home even more. :) (Is that even possible?)

Big Sky Motor Movie

One of my coworkers informed me that our home was built where the old drive-in theater was located. She sent me a link to prove it! How fun! There is an old building of some sort that is across the loop where we live. Tim just said the other day, "That really needs a bull dozer taken to it," because it's kind of an eye sore. Well, I'm going to have to take a better look at it. Maybe it's part of the old drive-in!

Yep, I'm posting about our boys. :)

The move has been a little stressful on the kittie boys. Apparently cats are not like dogs when it comes to moving or going to a new place. Dogs enjoy the adventure with their owners. Cats are attached to their environment. We were planning for the worst of Julius peeing on something brand new because he was mad about being uprooted. Other than living pretty much on the stairs for the first couple of days, he has adjusted. The two younger ones were fine from the second they walked in. They have double the space they had in our apartment, and don't know what to do with themselves. They sprint up and down the stairs and skid across the wood floors because they can't stop!

They have also already found all of the places they are not supposed to be. Including walking across the light fixtures in the bathroom and jumping on to some high window sills (which they can only get to after jumping on the dining room table) ugh. Sometimes they meow for no reason. I think they are trying to figure out where we are or just want to hear their voices echo across the house.

Here are some pictures of trouble (mostly Slater). Jasper has already figured out how to open cupboard doors and climb on in.

I went to grab some napkins for Tim and I. I turned around to see this.

We can never get all of them in a picture together because they are too wiggly. We brought their tower into our new home so they would have something familiar. It's currently in a horrible place and I plan on moving it somewhere else....they are daring me to move it.

SOLD!!!

Yay!!! We got the official thumbs up on Friday, and packed a load of boxes over to our new home. After a weekend of moving boxes and furniture, I was spent. I forgot how much work moving is, but all of the hard work is definitely worth it!

At work on Monday, one of Tim's associates asked him if we liked our house. He told her, "Every morning so far, I wake up, and the first thing I hear Kirstin say is, 'Can you believe this is our home?'" It's true. I still feel like I'm just in a vacation home or something.

Time flies.

I can't believe it's already DECEMBER! Tim and I have been married for over 4 and 1/2 months!

OCTOBER:
The last few months have brought us a lot of work (I even went and worked a few days at Tim's office for tax extension deadlines).

My dear Grampsy passed away unexpectedly in mid October. For his memorial we had a potluck at my Nama and Grampsy's home and all the cousins and aunts and uncles got together, looked through old picture albums, and talked about our memories. It's sad that it takes such a tragic event to get a whole family together. I hadn't seen some of my cousins in probably about 10 years, and I used to spend weeks at a time with them when we were younger! For his obituary, my Nama asked each of us to write 5 words or a 5 word phrase/sentence about Grampsy. Mine was: "Goodmorning Chef; Hotcakes with Love!". Every grandkid rembers craving Grampsy's breakfasts of bacon and hotcakes. It was always cooked with perfection. It's actually how I received my nickname of Bacon Queen.

A picture my cousin Amanda drew of Grampsy

NOVEMBER:
I am the person that is always on the real estate sites. I want to see the houses on the market in Pullman, see how long they stay there, and how much their prices change. Mostly, I just do a lot of dreaming. I always show Tim houses, and we always end up feeling a little defeated by what you can (or can't) get for your money in Pullman. I don't know why, but the Pullman housing market sure seems inflated for living in the middle of a wheat field!

About a month ago, November 18th to be exact, (I keep almost every activity of my life in my planner), Tim scheduled with a realtor to go look at some townhouses in town. Just to give you a little background, we've looked at houses before with this realtor, about a year ago. I'm not sure why, because we weren't planning on buying, but he humored us and took us anyway. Same thing this time....or so I thought.

It was funny because we walked into one home, and Tim had questions about it's stats (year built, sq. footage, etc). I rattled 'em off like an encyclopedia. Like I said, I'm on the sites all the time. I know what's around. :) It was just a normal, boring, run of the mill townhome. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but I love our rental for what it is, and hoped that our first home would be something I would look forward to making a home. The second place we were supposed to look at had actually sold, apparently in a day.

Off to the third home on the list, which I literally rolled my eyes at because I had peeked in the windows (it's new and empty) and knew I wasn't going to want to leave. Sure enough, home #3 was #1 in my heart! I fell in love! Long story short, we started the home buying process (completely backwards). We put an offer on the home the next day!

Someone must be looking out for us because we got our apartment sublet (and didn't get caught with our cats we aren't supposed to have). I've been living with prayers in my heart and crossed fingers.

Tim isn't the biggest fan of eating off of plastic utensils and paper plates, but we have boxes packed and ready to go. We are waiting patiently.