Moving Day

G and L have spent the past 2 days speed paining (is that an Olympic sport?) after all the electrical and plaster work, pretty much every wall in the house needed to be repainted.

Still to go Saturday morning: Hallways (the colour we had turned out to be NO GOOD), Master Bedroom (we hadn't planned on painting this one but it turns out to have needed it), one coat in guest bedroom and touch ups in the office.

We got up at 6:45 and over to the house by 7:45. C runs to the paint store to get bedroom paint and new hardware. L start touching up the office and putting the last coat on the guest bedroom.

9:30 - L starts first coat on the master bedroom, C starts washing up the main floor in prep for the movers10:30 - movers arrive - L and C are madly washing up the floors and baseboards – trying not to get in the way of those guys carrying big heavy pieces of furniture

11:00 - L and G start the second coat in the bedroom.-Turns out the couch won't go up the stairs. The couch almost gets sent to Good Will until we finally figure out the geometry to get it into the living room (darn!).The couch, shelf and chair together completely overwhelm the living room, so we decide to put the big shelf upstairs. The living room still doesn’t look great, but at least it’s livable. I can't wait to get a new couch!

12:30 - the movers move the last of the master bedroom furniture into the living room (careful not to touch the wet paint on the walls!) and pack up.
I spend the rest of the afternoon unpacking while G runs around the city getting L to the ballet school for the kids, bringing E and L back to help for a few more hours.
L unpacks the kitchen while Es helps me in the bedroom. Boy, G's dresser has never been so organized. The girl certainly has an eye ...

Finally at about 5:30 we call it quits. We invite D^2 over for some post moving beverages and takeout. The cat lady shows up with our lovely Ash Cat (we haven't seen our baby for almost 2 months!). Suddenly we realize we can’t find the litter box! So C runs around the neighborhood looking for a pet store open past 6pm! NO litter box, but I found litter at the grocery store. We have to improvise with an old Tupperware container.

Ash Cat seems to like the new digs, although the stairs seem more of a challenge than we had hoped. Within about 2 minutes, she has figured out where the forced air vents are and is curled up in front of one in the living room.

D^2 show up with some beer (and a very hard to get bottle of scotch!! Thank you!) and we hang around, admiring the fabulous paint and trying to believe the furniture doesn't look quite so bad with it.

D1 and I head out for Vietnamese take out (we've heard on good authority that Mimi's is fabulous) while the guys relax with another beer.

Excellent food, good conversation, a great way to start living in our new home, dreaming about back yard bbq's and dinner parties.

We finally head to bed, exhausted at 10:30. Our first *real* night living in our new home.