Home At Last

Because we left Georgia so early, we arrived at our house in Tierra Verde around 12:30 (stopping at Subway on the way in to pick up sandwiches for lunch). Here are the boys enjoying our first meal in our Florida house. Nothing fancy, but we had finally arrived!
Now, I need to back up for a moment because we had an eventful entrance into our house. We have a small lily pond by the front door. We have gardeners who have maintained it nicely for us - my friend, Lora, when checking on the house remarked about how nice the lily pads looked when they were blooming. So, we arrived. Roger had the only key. He and the dogs went around to the front door to go in and open the garage. Then, there was a splash and a commotion. Yes, Max, our water-loving Black Labrador jumped right into the lovely lily pond. Then, it wasn't so lovely... Of course, we didn't want him in the house, so in the process of leaving them on the front stoop while opening the garage, etc. (to put them in the garage instead), Max got back in the water and Meggie joined him! So, now our lily pond isn't looking so spiffy, but the dogs made it known that they are long overdue for a beach run. Here's Roger hosing the dogs down in the back yard and hooking them to the palm tree since Max was already scoping out the pool.
Unfortunately, our house was not in the condition we expected. We had tenants in it the first 3 years we owned it, and this last year, while it was on the market, it was empty. However, we were told that it had been professionally cleaned. We found fingerprints on most of the doors, toilets that were just down-right yucky (and stained from non-use), a refrigerator outlet that was fried, a just plain dirty refrigerator (YUCK), and the list goes on. Needless to say, we were more than disappointed with our realtor, but what can you do?

So, we cleaned, and we cleaned, and we cleaned...I started laundry. I did two loads and discovered that our dryer was kaput. So, now with all of the other issues we had, we had two loads of wet clothes...good thing we have a serious staircase happening - because that's where all of our clothes went. That was one more thing to add to the list...getting a new washer/dryer. We had planned to do it - just not right away. Ah well...

Monday morning brought the cable TV, the internet hookup, and the digital phone. All went pretty well, and when that was done, we were heading to the boys' new preschool. The boys waited patiently, and Roger was kind enough to put together their little director chairs I had ordered for them. Here they are waiting patiently to go tour their new school.