We bought a new house! Our adventure in Oregon can "officially" begin because we have our new digs. We listed our condo for sale as soon as we left California, so after a few weeks settling in to the corporate apartment we started out with a realtor to hunt for our new home. We visited lots of nice places, and are happy to share some of the highlights with you:
- A house used as a rental where the master suite was clearly occupied by the teenage son in the house...approximately 40 pairs of Nike Air Jordan sneakers were carefully posed around the room.
- The mother/daughter who were so dedicated to maintaining their Hawaiian Tropix orange glow that they had a tanning bed in one of the bedrooms.
- The family who had commissioned a work of "art" to match their mid-80s couch with the sprays of color that look like fireworks--in shades of pink, silver and forest green. It complimented their living room decor, which featured porcelain plates, prints and figurines of forest creatures like grizzlies, bald eagles and squirrels.
- The "diynetwork.com" house, where the people had decided that they didn't just want to try ONE of the painting techniques they saw, they wanted to try them all: brushing, sponging, striping, bold colors, tone-on-tone, a CHARCOAL room...we would have had to fill the bed of our truck with primer to try to cover up what they had done.
Our new house is in a very cute neighborhood; it's a newer development off of a street that winds and curves and goes off into the country near the horse properties and llama farms. Our subdivision has a little park and is a two-minute walking distance to the elementary school (aww, can you picture little Alton in school?). The house has a front room where we have put the beautiful piano that Ma and Pa Rhyne gave us. There is a living room that opens up into a dining area with a sliding door to the little patio in the little backyard. Nice big kitchen with a GAS RANGE and a bar where we could put barstools for fun, and a small powder room in the little hallway that has the door out to the garage. Yay! A garage for Andy to work with power tools and build Minerva a doghouse and wear safety goggles and say things like "cantilever," "joist," and "hacksaw." It's two-story, as most houses in Oregon are, and the upstairs has a laundry room and three bedrooms, which includes a master suite with walk-in closet, bathroom and a huuuuge soaking tub. Then there's a second bathroom and a small office-type room that has a window but no closet; we have turned that room into a playroom for Alton. We are going to take a little walking photo tour and will post that later. We're mostly unpacked at this point--our move-in date was April 21, but we've been in the house for about 6 weeks now. So wild to think that this will be the house where Alton takes his first steps! Come visit!
