Everybody Lived

Whew.

We're back at Gilligan's Island, as of last night.  Had a fun, busy, stressful, exhausting Christmas, what with family get-togethers, Taj work and moving!

We did actually make it into the house on the 23rd and spent our first night there.  It felt pretty weird, especially since there were no window coverings in the whole house.  Kinda like sleeping in a fishbowl, but luckily there aren't any line-of-sight neighbors, so nobody got an unwelcome peep show.

We still have to move things and tweak it a bit, but most of our stuff is in and it's starting to look like something!  I've learned a few things, too:
--those bathroom light+fan+heater things are The Bomb! 
--3-year-olds do not transition easily into new homes, even after 6 months of prep work
--only crazy people move at Christmas


So, anyhow.  We survived.  We still need to move the remaining small stuff from Uncle Todd's Cabin, but we are close to being done there and that will be the end of the 3 utility bills per month!
Photos below, but first a Christmas recap:  Michael was given lots of great presents, all of which he liked and will enjoy.  Nobody went too overboard, which was wonderful.  Michael is already richly blessed with crazy family and bad parents, so we try not to overdo the gift-giving!

In addition to some other things, Shawn gave me a Keurig coffee maker, rendering me twice as caffeinated in half the time.  Obviously, nobody pointed out to him the faulty logic there.

Okay, so on to the Taj photos.  Bear in mind that it's still a work in progress!

Tank's Room:

We've got to put some blinds up in there and make better use of the space, but I thought the paint color turned out pretty nicely.  I have a vinyl tree decal to put in there, too, but ran out of time this trip.  Note the toy organizer we scored off a neighbor who was tossing it.  We won't tell Tank it's girly colors if you don't!

 

 The living room, after the tree was down.  Santa had the train running around the tree when Michael woke up on Christmas morning.

The den fireplace, which works perfectly (nice surprise there!)

 

Best pal/Gilligan next door neighbor came up on Monday and presented the boys with Big Guy and Little Guy caps.  Little Guy looks deranged...he may have been in the Keurig.

After a sizeable SNAFU on Thursday, we finally got the washer and dryer hooked up on Tuesday.  I did about 7 loads of clothes, since everything was dirty by then.  LOVE my new LGs!

 

I'll take more photos next trip, after we move things around to suit us better.

I'm just glad we made it in time to celebrate Christmas there.  Everything else will work itself out!

Hope you all had a great Christmas and that 2012 is very, very good to you!