Goodbye Emeraldport

Our last week in our old house my friend Amber came over one night and took a few pictures of us.
Much of our house was already packed and put into boxes.
But I wanted a few pictures of us, in the rooms that held so many of our memories.
She did a great job and when we saw the pictures for the first time it was after we had officially moved out and handed over the keys, so these pictures meant even more to me.  Thank you Amber, you were great at making my girls giggle, and at capturing us just being us.

 Looking at these I can't help but feel a little bit sad.
I will miss a lot of things about our old house.
I already miss all of our great friends in the neighborhood.
It seems silly because we are not far away at all, but it just seems different now too.
We haven't had much time to hang out in front at our new house yet.  I'm sure when we do we will meet more neighborhood kids, and feel right at home once again.

The morning we had to turn in our keys to the new owner we drove the girls over to see the house all empty and to say goodbye one last time.

 They were shocked at how empty it was.
And Hannah said that with everything gone the garage looked huge.

 We said goodbye to the measuring wall where Mr. Hass has recorded their heights since they were old enough to walk.

 And goodbye to their room that was first a nursery, and then later their shared bedroom.

 Goodbye to the dining room where we shared so many meals, and so many laughs.

 And goodbye to my red kitchen.  Where I learned how to cook and where I made my first pot roast and hosted many of my first holidays.

 Goodbye to our backyard which we enjoyed so thoroughly.  I can still see baby Claire sleeping in the swing that hung from the patio, and toddler Hannah running around the backyard chasing Abbey and talking a mile a minute.

 Goodbye front porch, where we spent so many afternoons watching the girls ride bikes, scooter, and play with the neighborhood kids.

Goodbye to the first home we owned as husband and wife.
Goodbye to the home we started in as a family of two, and walked away from as a family of four.
So many good memories.
Goodbye Emeraldport.

Furniture, Food, and Pics from the Weekend

Well, our Spring Break is officially over after tonight.
So here I am trying to squeeze in one more blog post.  Who knows when I will do it again!

Remember how I told ya that we found a media console for our new house?  It was this one from Sams Club...

 Well, Friday I was out looking around at Home Goods and TJ Maxx, and I saw this one and liked it SO much better!!!

 So I text the above pictures to Mr. Hass, and he liked it better too.
Enough said.
I ran to the nearest sales guy and asked him to take my piece off the floor so that no one else tried to steal it from me and later that night we went and picked it up.

 We had to borrow my Mom's suburban.
Things like this don't fit in the Prius very well.
Hmmmm.
I'm beginning to think the Prius is just not going to be big enough for me to drive around town shoppin' for my new house.
This could pose a problem for me.  ;)

 After we got it home and put it inside I liked it even more!
I think it is going to look so pretty in our new family room next to the brick fireplace!!!

Here's a few random pics of some recent eats this last week.

 I've made turkey meatballs lots of times before, but I haven't made the recipe in my Weelicious cookbook and man was it good!  

 The shrimp tacos that Hannah declared she was NOT going to eat.  Funny thing is that both girls ate them right up.  And they were gooood.

 This last weekend I bought a delicious loaf of whole wheat sourdough from the Farmer's Market and this morning the girls and I had french toast with the bread and fried eggs with fresh salsa and cilantro from the market too.  I think Claire declared that her "best meal ever".

 Friday night Hannah spent the night at a friend's house for the first time ever!!!
It was a birthday party for a girl in her Daisy troop.
The mom had the whole troop plus a couple more to stay and she said it was several of their first time's staying over somewhere.
I said I would be texting to see how it was going, and that I was fully prepared to run down and pick her up once she got tired and realized she wanted to come home.
But I was shocked when she fell asleep there and stayed the whole night!!!
The girls went to sleep at 10:30pm and slept until 6:30am.
The funny thing is that I'm the one who couldn't sleep.
I didn't expect that, but it was so strange knowing that Hannah was not across the hall in her room.  Plus I was afraid to fall asleep in case she woke up at midnight in a strange place and cried that she wants to come home.  
It was mighty quiet with just Claire at home.  
We got ready to go pick Hannah up and it was only 8:30am.  I had to get Hannah at 10 and normally I can never disappear in the garage to go workout in peace with both girls home because they open the door every five minutes with their fighting and what not. But with just Claire Bear at home, she watched a movie while I even squeezed my workout in!  It was great!  

 We picked Hannah up and came straight home to chill out.  I could tell she was so tired, but she didn't get extremely weepy like she usually does when she's over tired.

That night I picked up our sitter and Mr. H and I met up with some friends at The Mission Inn for dinner.  I always love going to downtown Riverside.  I love any downtown actually.  Mr. H drove me by the hospital to show me all the new developments going on at his work and then we went in for dinner.

 It was a really fun night.
And afterward Mr. H and I even had energy to walk across to a new bar we wanted to check out call Prohibition, but it was spelled Pro A (upside down A) Bition.  It was neat, live music, cool atmosphere.  We stayed for one drink and then headed home.

Mr. H has been working this weekend, so this morning I decided to start packing up the kitchen.  I packed 5 boxes full, and it took me half the day.

 The stack of boxes in the garage is getting bigger everyday.  

 And the inside is looking more and more bare.

 We've also had time to sell a few things on Craigslist before we move too which has been nice.  Tomorrow we are listing this rocking chair.  Makes me a little sad to see it go as it was our first baby purchase when I was pregnant with Hannah.  We were so excited and proud when we bought that rocking chair.  

Mr. H has patched all the holes and painted the walls.
And tomorrow it will be 21 days to go!!!!!

CAN.  NOT.  WAIT.

A Pic From Inside The New House! And Flooring Choices... oh my!

So things are moving right along with the new house as far as escrow goes.
It's looking like April 28th will be the day we get the keys!
Hey, that's my Grandma's and my cousin Deanna's birthday!
What a good day then huh?
Although we will take our time over the week to get moved in for a few reasons.  The first, being that the 28th is a Monday.  The second, is that the new floors will take about 4 days to install.  

The good news is we can still be there moving into other areas while the flooring is being installed.  Like the kitchen!  That's pretty much the most important room that needs to be up and running right away anyways right?

So, here's a pic I snapped during the home inspection.  I think I was standing upstairs in the hallway that leads to the master bedroom.  

First let's talk about how much I hate that light fixture.  I hate it.  And everyone knows that lighting makes a huge difference in a room right?  Right!  So please tell that to Mr. Hass would you?  And please tell me great places to purchase new lighting options!  ;)

Ok, so you see that tile by the front door?
That stays.  The tile runs through to the kitchen and family room which is to the left in this picture.  But you see that carpet underneath the pool table  and on the stairs?  That goes!
There is also carpet in the guest bedroom downstairs too.  And the entire upstairs is carpeted.
Buh BYE Carpet! Don't let the door hit ya on the way out.  hee hee.

We decided to do a laminate hand scraped wood floor replacing all the carpet.  And I could not be more excited!!!
The only bad thing is...
SOOOOOOO many choices!

 And normally I am pretty quick to make a decision.
I don't like to waste time hemming and hawing over what's what.  
But this flooring situation is different I guess.  I've always wanted wood floors (Or a laminate wood floor),  and I always thought I knew what I liked, but after seeing so many choices I guess I was wrong.

 And the thing about these samples is that they looked different from every angle you looked at them!

 Although the girls thought we just brought them in the house to play some sort of a ring around the roses game.  And don't ask me about Claire's outfit ok.  She dressed herself.  Flooring was a big enough decision for the day, I couldn't decide what the girls were going to wear also.  ;)

 These two wound up being our favorites.  And we have gone back and forth with them a million times.

And see how different they look in every picture?!

Oh the options!

Pinterest has been my friend though.

And google.

I've been Pinterest'ing and Googling images of walnut floors, and images of hickory floors to death.  

One thing we have officially decided on is how we want the stairs to look, thanks to Pinterest for helping us reach that decision.

I really like the white risers below each step.  We aren't doing a carpet runner down the stairs, but I wanted each step to stand out so that they didn't just blend together and increase the risk of accidents and people slipping.  

I love these two pins with the before and afters.  What a difference paint and flooring can make!

If you go back and look at the first picture I posted of the banister on the stairs in the new house you'll see its white.  The seller recently had it painted so it does look very clean and fresh, but I like the black banister like in the above picture on Pinterest.  That might be an option.  Especially if little hands going up and down make the white banister dirty!

On Sunday we did some packing and then we ran a couple places to look at media centers.  Our tv sits in a built in media center in this house so that is something we wanted to have right away for the new house.  

Nothing we liked for media centers in Cost Plus, but they do have a dining room table I really like.  That's not it where Mr. H and the girls are sitting though.  

At Sams Club we found one we liked a lot and the size was right.  

 So we asked my parents to watch the girls while we ran down to pick it up.

 Mr. Hass looks thrilled to be spending money doesn't he?
You should see him whenever I tell him about new decorating ideas I have for each room.
His eyes sort of gloss over, and I can actually see him adding up numbers in his brain.  It's like he takes every one of my ideas and then computes it into a price,  and starts adding it all up and rolling his eyes all at the same time.
Men! ;)

We were pretty excited about our first big purchase for the new house though.

 The inside is starting to look quite bare in our home now.  And the garage is starting to look more and more like this...

Poor Abbey.  All this packing and moving nonsense is just too much work for her.  She's getting old.  Almost 11 this summer.  I'm curious to see what she thinks of the new house.

Today I took the girls (and Abbey) our for a loooooong walk and on our way home we walked by our new house.  

27 more days!!!!!!!!

But who's counting?  

;)