Our New Home : Moved in!

Well, it's been a long week, but we're finally moved in. Christine and I went to the old house today. It was a bit surreal. The carpet people tore out the old carpet and all the furniture is gone. It's a shell of a home except the kitchen has all the appliances still. We discovered that the dining room and living room were actually hardwood parquet floors and were later covered with carpeting. We took the last of the boxes from the house tonight and wandered around a bit, maybe lingering longer than we needed. We made a lot of memories in that home. 10 Christmases. I paused and looked at the nails at the top of the stairs where we annually hung up the blanket on Christmas eve so the kids wouldn't sneak down and see what Santa brought. They did anyway, it was more of a tradition than a disinsentive in the last few years. The stairs where everyone of the kids from Lindsey to Sarah would "Jump to daddy".
The front yard, with all the plants we planted and loved over the years seemed to ask "Where are you going?" The path in the front yard is finally starting to look worn with moss. The climatis that I loved and Christine tried to kill (and once succeeded :) is going strong. We'll definitely be planting some more at the new house. The wall where we marked the growth of our children is long painted over and gone. I'm already regretting not saving it. I'll miss that old house, but not much...
Our new home is full of boxes and chairs and computers and drawers and shoes and all other sorts of items strewn throughout. We just got phone and internet service today. We all breathed a sigh of relief. Grandma Wasinger called just after the phones were activated to ask if we'd been washed away with all the rain. Fortunately, we're not in a flood plain, so we're only suffering from the blues. Some of my coworkers are not so fortunate. There are many folks spending the night at friends homes or at Microsoft because they live in Carnation or Duvall and all roads leading to those areas are covered in water. We actually seriously considered buying a house there at one time.
The new home fits us like a glove. It's so quiet here. We rarely hear the sound of a car, but when we do it's a neighbor from down the dead end street. At night, it's so quiet. I'm not used to such silence. I'm used to teenagers doing 360s in the cul-de-sac outside my bedroom window or playing rap music or the sound of the freeway a few miles away. There are more hardwood trees here and so the fall colors are out in full right now. Tonight, I watched the sunset orange and red through the yellow leaves from our library/sitting room window. It was extremely impressive colors.
Amanda has found a new friend that lives right down the street named Katelynn (sp). They met on the bus the first day and became fast friends. She also has a new friend she met at a volleyball tournament named Sarah. Both seem very nice and live within walking distance of our house. When Amanda came home from school today, she brought Katelynn with her to show her the house and then later went over to Katelynn's home to see their house.
We went to get a table today. Our old one was so rickety, it drove me crazy. We're going with the bench concept now. Hopefully, the benches will stand up a little longer where the chairs failed to stand:Under my children's backsides. Even the simple things, like having enough room to put a large enough table for everyone to sit comfortably, are a great source of satisfaction at the moment.