Unpacking Fatigue

Aaaaand we're still unpacking.  A month ago we arrived at the house.  The unpacking was quick at first but now its slowed down a lot.  The boxes left to unpack (of which there are many) are a little more difficult.  I was telling Scott I think I have unpacking fatigue, which is a thing I just made up.  Self explanatory - I'm tired of unpacking and yet there is still much to do.  Our house here is as big as our house in Illinois (which was quite a bit smaller than our house in Colorado), but with less storage space.  And our "office" in Illinois was packed with boxes and things.  I want our office here to be less cluttered (ergo useable) but I'm having trouble figuring out where to put everything.  We've gotten rid of a lot of stuff already.  Everything is pretty much unpacked except our bedroom, the office and the garage.  And summer is slipping away so I'm torn between getting stuff done around the house and taking the kids to do fun things.  So, here are a few more pictures of our exciting unpacking adventures over the past few weeks.  I was happy when our kitchen island got uncovered.  Scott helped make that possible.  Then I could start cooking.

Making meatballs on one of the first cooking days in the house.  Chopping garlic.

We are in garlic country, after all.  The produce here, of course, is just amazing.

Lately we've been enjoying strawberries, corn, peaches...the garlic even seems fresher.

But I digress...

Our backyard from one corner of the yard.  

Landscaping still to be done.  We have a landscaping plan done up and at least one landscaper coming in next week for an estimate.  It's been hard getting landscapers.   There is a lot of new construction finishing up right now in the area and apparently available landscapers are in short supply.

View from the other corner

One of our side yards

The other (skinny) side yard

And here is our yard finished....no, just kidding.    This is a neighbor's house with the same floorplan as us.    We're planning on doing something similar but with a smaller (concrete) pad and more grass in its place.

Here is the larger side yard on the neighbors house.

Kind of similar to what we are planning.

No, our yard is still dirt.  Dirt and nails.  :o

Here's Emma crying at the back door after I told them they couldn't play outside in the back anymore that day.  They keep tracking that fine dirt in the house.  And the kids get dirty.  Need to get it landscaped.

Cleaning Emma up.

Here's the loft in a pretty clean state.

It's always fun for the kids when we find new items in the boxes we unpack.  

To Emma everything is new.

So Emma and Anna share a room now.  Their room is pretty much unpacked.

We've moved furniture around since this was taken.

We built this dresser a week or so ago.  It took Scott and I several hours.

But it turned out nice.

Grant and John share a room also.  The floor in there is usually covered in a thin layer of Legos.  And as of this past weekend their closet is all fixed up (they have a walk in closet that up until recently was full of boxes) and they're ready to go!

And here is the other dresser that we built for John and Grant.

We built this one slightly faster than Anna's.  We'd already been through it once.

There are still a few things the builder is fixing up in our house.

We met with them 3 weeks after we moved in to give them a list of things to fix.  Our (laminate) flooring is having issues.  This week they replaced a panel on the garage door that was dented when we moved in, painted it, painted and puttied nicks and scratches on the walls, replaced our peephole and replaced a nicked shower tray.  Emma celebrated our three week check up with the builder by writing on the wall a couple more times.  I scratched some paint off trying to get her drawings off the wall, so I guess we'll be touching it up again.  :(  All writing implements have to be stored up high now.

She looks so innocent.

And a third dresser we built - we turned our Malm dressers into Ikea for the recall and got some new ones.  This one is for Matthew.  Now the kids have dressers.

The dresser ended up in the corner here in Matthew's room.  There's Grant looking at some of Matthew's stuff.  If Matthew knew Grant was in there I'm sure there would have been "words" about it.  Scott also put together four bookcases over the past month.  He's amazing.

And amid the unpacking that's left to do, summer is still calling.  It's getting close to school starting again.  Anna and Grant will wear uniforms to school this year.  Here's Anna with some of her uniform clothes on.  I think the uniform is going to be hard for Grant.  For some time he has hated putting on church clothes.  He won't even wear cargo pants 'cause they remind him too much of "church pants."  His favorite pants are sweatpants. So I may get some push back on the uniform thing from him.  We'll see.  Sigh.  Back to unpacking.