night #2

Heading into night #2 at our new apartment and it's going very well.  We have phone and internet already!  For those of you who prayed for heaters I thought you might like this picture of them being unloaded onto our porch and ready for installation. 

The porch (that you see behind glass doors here, opening off one end of the living room) is every bit as cool as it looks.  Even better, actually.  Once we really get things settled and moved in I'll take photos and post a little photo tour of the whole place.  The porch is quite possibly the best part of the entire apartment. 

It seems that Matt spends most of his days fixing things that were incorrectly installed or plumbed or wired when the apartment was finished last summer.  It is SOOOOO frustrating that so many things are already "broken" or were never working correctly.  Six months in America and I conveniently forgot how almost everything here is designed to leak :) 

Matt has re-plumbed part of the hot/cold water piping, changed hoses on the bathtub faucets, caulked the bathtub, re-hung curtain rods and ..... well, the list goes on.  We've learned from experience that Matt's workmanship is more reliable than the local fix-it man, so he does most of it himself. 

He's also called the landlord about the kitchen light fixture (doesn't work) and the door to Isaac's bedroom (permanently closed) and a few other problems.  The first day we were here we closed the door to Isaac's room and it hasn't opened since.  And Matt has tried EVERYTHING except take the door off the hinges!  The locking mechanism in the door knob is broken.  Argh. 

Luckily, Isaac's room is the only one with two doors - you can also access his room from the utility porch.  The photo below is him standing in front of his bed at the house we lived at for the past week.... the family has four girls and Isaac slept in this girly toddler bed :)  Lydia was in the bunk beside him and Julianna up top.  Perfect.  Except maybe a tad too feminine for our little man! 

Speaking of sleep, check out this shot of Lydia napping in her bed at the new place.  Our days have been long and hard and she's not gotten as much rest as she needs, so we were all grateful when she took this nap :)  Do you see her curls?  She ALWAYS sleeps like this, totally buried under the covers. 

And one last photo... the playground at our new apartment complex.  We live about two minutes away (walking).  Today Matt fixed the child seat to the back of our electric bike while the kids played at the playground and I unpacked the final three suitcases!  Then he took the kids for a little ride before we headed to supper at a neighbors house (that we knew before we moved in). 

On the list for tomorrow?  A trip to the market (we emptied our cubbards before the big move and are starting from scratch - the other night I bought basics like flour, rice, oil, noodles, diet coke .... but I'm dreaming of a day when our children once again eat vegetables and once we get the oven set up and ready to use I'll be on my way towards cooking once again!)

We may even get some stuff hung on the walls if we can borrow the neighbor's drill.  (Our across-the-way neighbors are a hip young couple with a four month old little boy whose English name is Tiger.  I mean, seriously.... what do you say when someone introduces their child and says 'his English name is Tiger'.) 

Matt starts work this weekend, and I am eager to be mostly settled before he heads off to campus.  We're also hoping to get the girls enrolled in local school for a few mornings a week.  Schools are all closed so we haven't been able to do much looking around yet, but it seems there are at least two potential options. 

One of these nights I'm going to collapse into bed at 8, but for now adrenaline keeps me going..... so I'm off to work again!