Firsts and Lasts

On Wednesday, we moved into our new house!!

I had been making 1-3 trips a day over the last couple weeks to bring things over slowly and put them right away rather than having to deal with a hundred boxes all on moving day.  It was such a great move (ha ha, no pun intended!) and really helped us settle in quickly.  The kids had come with me so many times that they were really familiar and comfortable in the house. 

On Wednesday morning, the movers arrived and loaded up all our furniture and random items we hadn't yet moved ourselves, including several boxes of books we figured were best left for them to lift and haul instead of us!  Leighton was at school and Riley was very helpful and excited by all the activity.  It didn't take them long and we were on our way to the new house for them to unload, which also didn't take very long.

Roy, Riley, and I had our FIRST lunch at the new house (we were organized enough to even have our placemats on the table!).

After getting Leighton from school, we went over to the old house (strange to no longer call it 'home') and I took the kids for one LAST ride in Billy's wagon.

We will really miss having Billy as our neighbor.  He took such good care of us.  We will make sure to go back and visit him though.

We loaded up one LAST car load for the day and came to the new house for our FIRST dinner.  We decided to go very complicated and gourmet and fired up the BBQ and had hot dogs!  We hadn't brought over everything from the fridge at the old house though, so I had to buy new condiments for that night.  We now have enough ketchup, mustard, and relish to last a lifetime.  Guess we will have a house warming and serve burgers and hot dogs to get rid of it all! 

The kids had fun pretending to sleep in their new rooms and Leighton was incredibly pleased with having all his things in his new, giant (and tidy!) bedroom.

Next up was the FIRST bath in the new house. The kids were SO excited.  Their bathroom is a Jack and Jill style that connects their two rooms and it has two sinks.  Riley loves going in and pointing out that there's, "One Leighton and one baby."

On Thursday, I tested out my new oven and baked my FIRST batch of muffins.  We had some guys installing a safety fence around the pool, so I whipped up a batch to share with them and to have for the kids on the ride home from picking Leighton up at school.  I just made banana muffins, so they were fast and easy.  I have already baked twice since then though, so I'm doing pretty well!

Yesterday, we had our FIRST dinner guests.  Our friends John and Anna came over for a much overdue visit and to see our new house.  They brought with them a most fabulous and fitting house warming gift to pay tribute to our love of ice cream and our FIRST day we had the new house and brought the kids here for an ice cream treat: a waffle cone maker!

You know that we just had to give it a try after dinner.  And not only because the kids were excited to taste them, but also because John was pretty excited to see how it worked and to test it out!

There was a definite learning curve between the FIRST ...

... and LAST cones.

But they were easy, tasty, and the perfect vehicle to get ice cream into the mouths of the kids.

And to make drops of ice cream out of the bottom onto the plate to lick up.  I wish I had sound effects with these pictures.  

We are looking forward to many more FIRSTS in our new house!