The Strickland Bunch: Settling In!

Finally, the crickets have been silenced again on the blog! I know I have kept you guys waiting on a moving update for awhile. I finally plugged my camera in and dumped a ridiculous amount of pictures onto the computer. My hubby loves when I do that :)

So we're here! In Wisconsin that is! Over the next couple of days I am going to catch you up on some late posts (kids last days of school, Easter, ect.) But I know you are all anxious for a current update so today I will just catch you up on life so far.

We are finally a descent amount unpacked. We have all of our living areas done and now I am just spending a little time each day going through the boxes in the basement and garage. You know the ones....we haven't "needed" them for anything the whole time we've been here....but we might need them..one day...for something! Yep, those. Other than that, we are unpacked now! Yeah!

I guess you would call our house split leveled. Maybe it's just normal and has a basement. I don't know. I'm from Florida so I don't know what it's technically called. When you walk into the house you actually come in on the first floor (the house is built into a hill). So upstairs on the main level, there is a living room, eat in kitchen, full bathroom, and two bedrooms. Noah's room is upstairs next to ours and Ella's is downstairs. When you go down the stairs, there is another full bath, big room that is another living room/playroom, and then two closets. One is just a small closet with the water heater, ect. It has a tiny bit of storage room. The other is a huge room that is unfinished. It's basically an unfinished basement. That is my current project. Getting all of the boxes in the basement organized and getting rid of anything that we don't want to keep. I did this as I packed, but I never got to the boxes from the attic so I want to go through all of those as well.

I know you want pictures and I haven't taken a whole house tour for you yet. I will once we are more settled though. We are also going to be painting the very white walls that are everywhere. Just have to decide where to start and what colors we want!

For now I just have some pictures from the move in general.

We had so much help loading our truck up in NC and unloading in WI. The night we picked up the truck in NC, our small group came over and had everything loaded in no time. They were amazing! We probably needed a bigger truck really. I was so worried it wouldn't fit, but they packed it really well and we actually ended up with a tiny bit of room to spare!

The drive up was soooo long. The excitement wore off pretty quick for the kids and then the fighting began. Uhh.. It was a long ride in the van with both of them poking and griping at each other lol. We drove from I guess 7:30am until 9:00 or 9:30 on Monday. That night we stopped at a hotel in Ohio to sleep and got on the road again the next morning. I don't remember specifics about day two. I think I was too tired to think! It was something like 6 or 6:30 am to like 6:30pm. It was brutal. The drive shouldn't have taken that long, but when you factor in two preschool size bladders and a moving truck that only goes 40 MPH up hill......well, it makes for a long day.

At one point the kids were so antsy that we decided to let Noah ride in the truck awhile.

My little boy, his dog, his Daddy, and a BIG truck. Too much happiness for words. He is still talking about it.

When we arrived in Wisconsin, we were greeted by a driveway full of smiling faces. They have been wonderful. They had us unloaded in 30 minutes. Our kitchen was stocked with staple items and we had a freezer full of meals ready to be put in the oven when we needed them. That part has spoiled me. The first several nights I didn't have to worry about cooking at all. I just pulled something out to thaw and stuck it in the oven! Voila! They really thought of everything.

Oh and just by the way...take note of the difference in attire between packing and unpacking. Shorts and flip flops to long sleeves and jackets ;)

The beautiful view at our new house is wonderful. Every one of our bedrooms looks out to this! We also have a sliding door in the kitchen that leads to a deck, too. Can't wait to get some seating out there!!

Getting comfy..

We had limited cabinet space in the kitchen so we picked up a little cabinet to store some pantry items in. Here's Randy and Noah putting it together for me.