Closing Day!

Last Friday we closed on our brand new house! It was a wonderful day full of excitement. We met the construction manager and the painters at the house at 9am so we could take a look around and request last-minute touch-ups, and then we went to the title company's office for closing! 

Jeff went to work pretty early, so I met him at the house. Before I left, I decided it was silly to waste a drive to the house by not filling my car, so I packed some boxes and loaded up my Mazda!

As I was headed to get in my car and leave, I found this little guy in the parking garage! A brand new, shiny, heads-up penny! That has to be a good sign on closing day, right? I picked it up and carried it with me to the new house. :)

When I got in the car, I suddenly remembered that I never told y'all about my new haircut, so I snapped a quick photo. The last time I got my hair cut was almost a year ago when I chopped off my "growing it out for the wedding" hair. It had been WAY too long, but law school gets in the way of things like haircuts and dentist appointments. Anyway, I made an appointment as soon as finals were done, and last Tuesday I had six inches cut off (and more like eight inches on the shorter layers!). It was intense. I wasn't intending on it being so short. I'm still getting used to it... it feels so light and weird! But, I did finally find a stylist that I really like, so at least next time I get it cut I won't have to be so worried!

Back to the house... once we finished up with the construction manager and signed a ton of papers at the title company's office, the house was ours and we were able to get the keys! Jeff had to head back to work, so I got the keys and went to the house by myself. As soon as I got there, I HAD to see all the appliances!

GE microwave and gas oven/stove

GE dishwasher

GE fridge/freezer - it DOES have a water dispenser in the door! Haha!

When I walked into the laundry room, I was expecting a basic washer/dryer pair. Instead, I was greeted by a giant washer and dryer that look like something from the future! These things are so fancy!

They even have drawers underneath them!!

What do all these buttons do? I have no idea.

I think this might actually make laundry FUN! At least... for the first few times. 

Once I had seen all of my new appliances (and turned the gas stove burners on and off at least a dozen times because I was just that excited), I spent a couple hours unpacking my car and emptying boxes. We have about 15 cardboard boxes, so we're emptying them as we go and bringing them home to re-use. 

Of course, since the stuff I had packed was a really random assortment of things, I ended up with weird piles all around the house. Here are most of our DVDs:

...and a random stack of cookbooks, plastic cups, and wine glasses.

After all the boxes were emptied and loaded back into the car, I took a break and spent ten minutes or so just lying on the floor in the two-story living room. You can see a lot of the house from that spot, and it was nice to just have some time to look at the house and thank God for giving us such an amazing home. It still hadn't sank in that it was really OUR house and that I was really a homeowner. I wondered how long it would be before the house felt like home.

I shouldn't have worried about not feeling like a homeowner, because right after that moment something happened that made it all feel real. The construction manager had suggested that I put some things outside in the front yard to make it look like the house was occupied (to prevent someone from breaking in to steal the appliances... apparently that happens sometimes to empty houses). So, I opened the front door to take a look at the front yard and.... I found a giant ant infestation! 

There were ants everywhere. I had noticed a few ants when we looked at the house with the realtor, but we'd been going through the back door since then, and I had no idea that a giant swarm of ants was living on our front porch! They were crawling all around the porch... it was just disgusting!

So, I did what any good homeowner would do, and I went straight to Wal-Mart (SO convenient to have a Wal-Mart nearby!). I came back with this:

I sprayed all the cracks in the walkway, the crevices and corners that they were crawling in, and the bottom six inches of brick around the patio. I sprayed a nice thick coat under the door to ensure that the ants wouldn't get inside. I stood outside in the Houston afternoon heat, and I sprayed that stuff all over the porch, and I got rid of those ants! Two days later, there are still no ants on that porch! 

I also picked up a couple things at Wal-Mart to make the house look "occupied." I put a doormat by our front door (although I think I'm going to move this one to the back and get a bigger one for the front eventually).

And I put a cute little garden flag in our front yard!

Speaking of the front yard, it looks so nice! The construction guy re-mulched it for us and put in two new gardenia bushes (he totally surprised us!). Here are the bushes that surprised us with white flowers... anybody know what they are?

I love that our front yard is already landscaped... such a nice little "extra" that makes our life a little easier!

While I was waiting on Jeff to get done with work and come over to the house, I tackled a project I've been meaning to do forever - alphabetizing our DVDs!

Ta-da! A through Z!

It was kind of sad to leave the house at the end of the day, but I'm glad we have the one-month of overlap with our apartment. That month is making the whole moving process so much less stressful!

More house updates to come!