Our New House!

Well, it's been a little over a month now since we closed on our new house and we're getting settled nicely. It's been a lot of work and it's been a very stressful holiday season, but it's starting to slow down again. Anyway, this is it! As you can see, we've had quite a bit of snow so far this year and even a few ice storms. The house is on a nice, quiet street that's a circle with no through roads (yes!). This is nice, considering our Estey Street apartment was right next to an excavation company that started work at 6 a.m. each morning. The downstairs has two bedrooms, an office, living room and kitchen. Upstairs is all the master bedroom with vaulted ceilings and is very nice. There's also a full basement.

This is a view of our backyard and it backs up to more than 85 acres of forest that we can use to snowshoe, hike or cross-country ski. Our lot has enough space for garden and for Chandre to play in, which is nice. There's lot of plants back there, but since it's winter we don't really know what it's going to look like in the spring - and we can't wait to find out! We also have well water, which is great considering the town water tastes like chlorine.

Ariane's family was here for the New Year and her mom put out some great bird feeders. We've had so many birds to watch in the morning and it's wonderful. There are lots of Chickadees and Junkos, and we even have a few Cardinals, Bluejays and Woodpeckers that stop by. And the squirrels love the food too!

While all our furniture is here, we don't have enough to fill the place and we haven't finished decorating yet. But here's the living room with a beautiful real-hardwood floor we installed ourselves (one reason why the holidays were so busy). That's our greyhound Tao in the background there. We have lots of south-facing windows so the house gets a ton of sun and the plants just love it. The ladies who lived here before even left a few nice plants for us to have.

Here's a shot of the kitchen. It's pretty open and there's lots of counter space (more than Ariane or I have ever had). And best of all, we have a dishwasher now! There's even a washer and dryer downstairs (no more coin-op!). There were 7 of us here for New Year's and all the meals/dishes went very smoothly.

This is another picture of the back yard and the shed too! We're not sure what to do with it yet, but I'm sure it will get plenty of use. We're thinking of making part of it a little playhouse for Chandre. She likes that idea, and she really likes the house too. She didn't want to move at first, but now she loves it here. Happy New Year everybody and I wish you the best in 2009!