Moving

The day of the move and we had lots of lovely ward men come and help with all the heavy lifting both in Brisbane and in Ipswich. Also a big thanks to my parents-in-law: Warren helped with the move all day, and Michaela watched Jaren for me which was a life saver.

 My dear friend Kym Smith came that week to help me do some cleaning, which was so wonderful. But sadly we didn't really think to have anyone else come and help and it ended up being a huge job to do all alone while looking after a 2 month old. Phew! Luckily Mr. Swing and Reid got along very well that day, poor neglected kid!

  

Here is a shot of us on this busy day, to say goodbye to Reid's first home.

We didn't get a good group picture of the Ipswich helpers sorry, but thank you to all those lovely men and missionaries that came to help!

Warren got some shots of our pretty "brand-new" house before all of the stuff was brought in. It was raining that day which made it harder for all the movers, and a worry for all our new carpet, hence the old sheets laid down in an attempt to try and protect it from muddy feet.

Oh my pretty new kitchen was my favorite part of our remodel. It is so much more convenient and modern and lovely. :) Look how shiny it all is. I should also mention that we decided to convert our garage into a fourth bedroom. This has been a great change for us. It's not like Utah where you need to protect your car from ice and snow and scraping windshields. We had stopped parking in our garage ages before this. And now we have an extra room to use as an office/library/guest room. :)

My next favorite part was our bathroom. We knocked out the wall that separated our "toilet room" to include it in the bathroom. I realize this is the American in me, but I hate having separate toilet rooms. It's yucky to me. There's no way to wash your hands until after you open the door and go to another room in the house. If people ask you to use the bathroom you have to show them the way to the sink bathroom and the toilet bathroom. And the entry to our toilet was through our laundry room so I hated having my guests having to go through there to us the toilet. All in all, this was a much better scheme. I admit that there are a few times when someone is in the shower and someone else needs to use the toilet and having the one room may be inconvenient, but so far the pros far outweigh the cons. Also with kids I love having it all in one room, to be able to help them on the toilet and then right into the bath, and to have plenty of space has been great.

We had only two downsides to our new house. They used the same floor tiles in the bathroom and didn't put enough of a slant to have it drain well due to such large squares. It was a bit gross taking a shower with an inch of water at your feet. We tried to have them come back over and over again to "reevaluate it" but apparently it's "to code" and they wouldn't change it. And the other thing, which I think I mentioned in an earlier post was our "grey" carpets and our "grey" tiles weren't as matching as we expected them to be. The former has a blue tint, and the latter a brown tint. But both of these things bothered me at the beginning and I've sine gotten used to it.

Our initial paint was neutral but in the end too colorless for me. Varian is very opinionated and wants to be involved in all the house decisions as well. I admit I'm at times a little envious of girls who's husband's don't really care how they decorate. There are nice things about doing it together, deciding and carrying it out. The hard thing is that our styles are often quite different. His taste is conservative and simplistic, and I like...well I like a lot of things, but color and life being one of them. :) This time we compromised a little, getting some color feature walls in the bedrooms. Sassy red for ours, and a bright green and blue for the boys.

 

It was a bit hard bringing all the boxes and old furniture into our new shiny house and then trying to find a place to fit it all. It was quite a task. Remember too this whole time I'm recovering from a c-section.

Ah, moving is exhausting! But nice when it's all done.