Craigslist? Wut?

Just fyi, I know that "wut" should be spelled "what." Just in case you thought I lost my mind. But 'Wut' is internet slang, denoting confusion. Or maybe laziness in typing.

Anyway, moving on! As I mentioned in another post, Todd and I have been buying a lot of stuff of off Craigslist. And it occurred to me that some of you might not know what Craigslist is. So, allow me to introduce you.

This is Craigslist. It's a website that has different regions. For example, Todd and I search for things in Phoenix (duh). The site itself has a ton of stuff (like personals, job listings, discussion forums, etc.) but Todd and I mostly look in the 'For Sale' section. You can type in what you're looking for (e.g. Stainless steel refrigerator) or you can go to a broad category and see what people are selling - like appliances.

As with anything, it's important to be careful. We always go look at the item before we commit to buying it. But you can usually get great deals on things, especially when people are in a hurry to sell stuff. I imagine that the majority of our furniture is going to come from there.

So now you know. ;)

~Ashlee

Ring ring!

That's right, I got a new phone!


It's a nice phone and I'm still discovering all sorts of neat things about it. I'm on a different plan now (but I have the same number). But now, I have unlimited texting! So, all those people that I told not to text me like crazy because it cost me money? Forget it. =D

Now, I just need to get used to the keyboard...and all the things that it does. So far, I haven't even figured out how to lock the keyboard so that I don't press random buttons during the day...

~Ashlee, the new phone owner and home owner

What a mess. What a house!

I've been getting comments from several different people on our lack of pictures of our new house. I had wanted to get pictures put up here as soon as possible...but I just kept delaying. I mean, shouldn't those boxes be put away before we take a picture? Shouldn't all our clothes be hanging up? Shouldn't we be really settled in?

But I was told today that it was okay if our house didn't look perfect when we posted the pictures up. After all, we just moved in. So here's your warning: Our home looks like a disaster area right now. We're in the midst of setting things up and all our stuff is everywhere. You've been warned.

(And mom, this means you can't make any comments on how messy it is and how it resembles my room when I was younger!)

First of all, here are our washer and dryer that we bought from Craigslist.

And here's the laundry room. The washer and dryer are behind the door. We have a table, a shelf, and cleaning supplies stored here.

Next, we have our refrigerator that we also bought from Craigslist. We really wanted a stainless steel and black kitchen so we're keeping an eye on Craigslist for other cheap appliances. The fridge is great -no marks. We're already putting up magnets! Oh, and there's Titus in the picture too.

Titus is enjoying the new house. I think he's still unused to all the space. He usually hangs out in whatever room Todd and I are in. Right now he's sleeping next to my chair in the office. Anyhow, back to the pictures. Here's looking at the kitchen. Obviously we're still in the process of filling our cabinets.

And, here's turning around to face the family room...

Here's one with a little more light.

That couch isn't going to be there much longer. We're going to look at a nice leather/microfiber sectional tomorrow. Hopefully we'll be able to put that in there (that's my goal). And that couch will either go in the office (until we can get a futon) or out in the living room for seating purposes.

Speaking of living room...right now it's our place to store empty boxes.

We've got one bookshelf in there so far. Let's go on to the office. We just got it somewhat set up today. We've got both desks against the same wall. We want to put a futon against the opposite wall, we think.

Sorry for the poor lighting. I was obviously the one taking these pictures. At this point in the evening, Todd was doing homework. And now, the guest bedroom (which is acting as storage right now).

Here's the master bedroom. Most of the stuff is set up, but we're still in the process of putting all our clothes away. It's really roomy right now. In fact, we're keeping an eye out on Craigslist for a Queen or King (or California King?) bed set. We'll see how it goes.

Again, sorry for the lighting. The sitting room has become my space. My dresser is there, along with a 3-drawer piece that holds all of my make-up, hair stuff, etc. And of course, my walk-in closet.

The last thing I want to show you...

OUR POOL!


It's pretty large. The deep end probably gets to 9 or 10 feet deep. Todd and I have already enjoyed a couple of nights in it. We've had fun splashing around and even Todd says he's happy the house has a pool (he was originally against the pool idea). It's so nice to play in and it helps with the heat. We're also looking on Craigslist for some cleaning supplies and such to keep it looking good.

So that's a brief rundown. The three-day weekend was a nice time to get stuff together. We still have a ton to do, but we're not rushing or stressing about it. After all, life is too short. We're taking our time, enjoying it, and enjoying the pool. ^_^

House drawing

Tonight, after dinner and while Ashlee was relaxing some after another busy day of trying to get our house to look more like home, I pulled out a tape measure and my laptop. This is the result:

Because I rounded to the nearest inch for everything, and because I was a bit lazy, the values I used to make the drawing may have been off by an inch or two. At this scale that is really negligible though. Anyway, there it is, complete with "scale box."

Update: Per Ashlee's suggestion, I labeled the rooms.

Exhausted but Moved In

So much has happened this past weekend and I don't know how much I'll be able to detail before I need to get moving on to other activities (like setting up the classroom for today's activities).

My update today is coming from the school, since we don't have internet at the house yet.

We were supposed to close on the house on Friday, but the loan documents were late in getting to the Title Company. So we didn't sign until 5pm and by then it was too late to send the documents to the county in order for the process to be finalized. So we couldn't technically get the keys until Monday... =(

However, our Realtor drafted a "Pre-Occupancy" agreement, whereby Todd and I could occupy the residence until the papers were finalized. We were hoping that the sellers would sign it Friday night. Unfortunately, they didn't sign it until Saturday night. So we spend 3 hours moving stuff from the storage shed into the house on Saturday night. We couldn't move longer because the storage unit closed at 9pm. On our last trip, we arrived with a carload and a truckload of stuff and opened the garage door...
...

...

And little things scurried across the floor of our garage. Not just any little things. Cockroaches.

I stood there, paralyzed by my phobia of bugs. I must have been pale because Todd asked if I was okay. Being the caring person he is, he took the box from my hands, set it down, and said we could go to Walgreens to buy pesticides.

We bought an arsenal. We had the Instant Death Raid cans. The foggers. The bait traps. And the powder to go in crack. Mind you, this is for the total of 3 cockroaches we saw.

The rest of the night, I walked around, Raid can in hand, ready to defend my life. If I saw a bug, I would squeak and shoot the spray all over trying to hit it. This stuff was potent though. A little bit went a LONG way towards making those little buggers twitch and die. Before we left for the night, we set off the fogger in the garage. Those bugs will NOT be around for long.

We didn't get back to Apache Junction until late. We were in bed at about midnight or so. And we wanted an early start on Sunday.

The early start was early, but not as early as we would have liked. We got to the storage unit about 8:30am instead of the 6am we were hoping for. We moved stuff all day long in the hot sun. But, it's done. The storage shed is empty, we have a washer and dryer and a refrigerator (pictures will be coming of our new appliances!), and most of our stuff out in Apache Junction is cleaned up.

We are going to head back out there tonight after work and clean the rest up. We were just too exhausted yesterday to do much else than hit up fast food Mexican, lay our bed down, and sleep.

Oh, and jump in our pool. Because it's ours. And it's awesome. Even Todd admitted that he liked the pool. It's pretty big and we think it gets maybe 10ft. deep at the deep end.

So, we're in the house now, but we don't have internet. Hopefully that will get hooked up soon.

More updates will include pictures, plus a little entry on Tom, Sonya, Katie, James and their kids (Bobbie and Megan - our flower girl and ring bearer). They all came down to Phoenix towards the end of the week and we had a great time hanging out with them!

And now, I need to set the classroom up for my class!

First Day of School...

Today is the first day of classes. I've looked over my online courses a little bit and I've come to a rather disturbing realization...

I'm going to school full-time.

Now, I knew this, of course. I knew that I would be considered a full-time student. But the online format had me fooled into thinking that there wouldn't be as much of a time commitment as there was for me as an undergraduate.

I think I'm wrong.

It's dawning on me that I'm going to be going to school full-time while working full-time. And it's going to be a really busy 2 years.

It wouldn't be so troubling if my full-time job didn't involve so much paperwork, observations, recording, meetings, etc. But I have a lot to do for my job...and a lot to do for school.

Someday, things will slow down a tad.

Or at least that is what I keep telling myself.

And now, off to work - to begin another week! A week in which we MOVE INTO OUR HOME!

Eeep!

We just experienced our first Arizona monsoon! The rain thundered on the roof of our little unit this afternoon. Todd and I quickly lifted the blinds to look outside. Here are some pictures of what it looked like here after only a few minutes!

This is looking across the street from our unit at my Uncle Pat and Aunt Wanda's unit. Their little PT Cruiser almost looks like it might float away. Okay, not really. But there's definitely a lot of water there!

Here's a look down the other side of the street. Mind you, this is only after a few minutes of rain. Luckily, it doesn't rain much longer than that here. It's already cleared up.

Here's a look down the street. All of that water drains into a a spot at the other end of the park. They say that the canals and ditches in Arizona are really dangerous because they can flash flood in mere minutes since the soil doesn't retain much water.

So that was exciting for us!

Other than that, we are just relaxing tonight. I took my AEPA earlier today (Arizona Educator Proficiency Assessment) with hundreds of other educators. It's required for the state. I didn't really study for it but I think I did alright.

And Todd went and picked up our new washer and dryer today. They're GE front-loading and we got them cheap from Craigslist! I'm sure we'll put up pictures of them soon. We get excited about things like that =)