No, I'm Not Dead and Yes, We Did Move

Well... it has been a busy past few months.  I apologize for not participating at this blog more, but the pressures of family, friends, work, getting our house ready to move, and ACTUALLY SELLING IT AND MOVING (YAAAAY!) have kept me overly occupied.

I will try to do better, starting with a brief update. 

We had half given up on buying the house that we now occupy when suddenly a buyer emerged.  This happened the day right after our outside freezer died (not a big deal except we had a lot of food in it that needed to be utilized, especially the vast number of raspberries that I harvested and froze last summer).  There were some bumps along the way still, plus all the packing and cleaning and cleaning and packing that needed to be accomplished. 

We made it, though, and are now sorting through our billions of remaining possessions in order to make this house liveable and not stuffed with tons of useless stuff that we don't want.

The upside: this is a gorgeous new house with a lot of new space and we love it.  I don't miss the old house at all, especially the kitchen, which I despised.

The downside: we still have a LOT of stuff.

That being said, we got rid of an amazing amount of old junk.  We rented a huge dumpster that lived in our driveway for a few days.  It was enormous... it took up half the driveway and I think it was larger than the studio apartment my sister-in-law had while she was in graduate school.  There is a flat fee for renting such an item, and it is very reasonable; I believe it was around $130.00.  Beyond that, they charge fifty dollars per ton of stuff to be disposed.  Yes, per TON.  I couldn't imagine we had a literal ton... but it turned out we rid ourselves of 2.09 tons of items.  It is astonishing that the house didn't float away after all of that way removed.

It is true that many of the items included in the dumpster were heavy; an old, unsalvageable couch, a mattress from before time began, the heavy duty Peg Perego stroller that we bought when Alex was born in 1998.  But a lot of smaller items were also disposed of (goodbye useless infant car seats!).  I did think to take a picture of some of what Austin piled up in the garage one day, but of course it is late and he is asleep and I can't remember how to share photos on the blog right now.

Next time I will try to do better, including sharing pictures. 

Promise.