A Beautiful Day in the (New) Neighborhood...

Well, even though there's SO much unpacking still to do in the basement, and a lot of stuff still has to find its place, I think I can safely say that we're settled in our new house. The kitchen is done (with countertops and a new fridge!), furniture is all pretty much where it's going to be, and our main living spaces are arranged. Hooray!

Today was so gorgeous we decided that rather than tackle the basement, we'd spend our time outdoors. We took Sebastian to the tot lot right behind our house, and he had a blast playing on the swings. The dogs had a great time sniffing and exploring the new neighborhood, and we got some fresh air. The "tot lot" is more like a little park, actually, with lots of grassy space, a playground, some trees, etc. And it's literally 50 yards from our back gate. I have a feeling we're going to be spending LOTS of time there.

After the park, we decided to tackle a bit of the front courtyard. It's sort of a hard place to explain, but it's basically a recessed front yard, with (deteriorating) terracing built in, and a wooden patio at the bottom. The door of the basement rec room opens out there, and I imagine it'll be a really cool place to hang out when the weather is nice and we have the place cleaned up. It had what looked like several years' worth of leaves piled up, though, and vines and plants run amok!

We did some trimming, some raking, and some pruning, and it does look a lot better. We're planning on redoing the terracing (well, this time, so that the walls aren't crumbling!) come spring, but we want to wait to see what kind of plants come up before we start digging! It's a bit hard to explain, and this picture is dreadful, but you can sort of get the idea. The pictures is taken from the "bridge" that goes to our front door. The house is on the right, obviously, with the door to the rec room directly at the bottom right of the picture, out of view. Around the corner of the house, stairs go up to the gate.

Sebastian was a very good helper, as were the dogs, and the former even got in a nap while Äiti and Daddy slaved away. In any case, it was a good day, even if I'm totally exhausted now. Sebastian got up at 5am (daylight savings time? who knows!) and didn't really want to go back to sleep, so it's been a loooong one. And with that, I'm going to stop writing and go veg on the couch.

I'll be getting back into blogging more regularly now that the major moving stuff is done with. So stay tuned for more in the life of us and the spawnling!