Settling In

Lots of little things have been going on lately so I thought I'd update the blog.

Last weekend we purchased our first lawn mower! We were hoping to wait until September to purchase it (after all the big bills from the move have been paid) but the weather did not cooperate and it rained so much that the lawn needed to be mowed. Yes we could have borrowed my parents lawn mower but September was only a week away so I caved. I'm pretty happy so far with it. We opted for a Honda self propelled mower. It was a little pricey but it has a lot of nice features, of which my favorite is the blade brake over ride. This feature allows the blade to stop when you take your hand off the handle (that's a federal law) but instead of killing the engine to do this which happens on most mowers, the engine stays on! It's really nice if you need to stop and move something in the yard while you are mowing. We have a lot of trees, terracing, and these little plastic covers on the gutter drains in the yard which I'm sure would get sucked up easily in the mower. It will sure come in handy.

We also got our first mortgage bill in the mail! dum dum dummmmmmmm! It's exactly the amount we expected. . .so no surprises. We also paid 100 dollars over the balance. In the long run this will cut 4 years off the mortgage and save us 40 something thousand dollars in interest. I feel so responsible :) Now I'm just on pins and needles waiting for our first utility bills. Hopefully they won't be too bad since the weather has been cool. We will also be receiving water and gas bills as well, which we never got in the apartment. I used to spend at least 40 bucks a month in laundry money at the apartment, I'm sure that will cover at least the water bill. . .so really the only new bill will be the gas. Oh the joys of home ownership! It's so worth it though.

Jared and I also started our first house project last Sunday, sanding and staining our deck! Unfortunately with the lawn mower shopping we weren't able to start until late in the day so we only got the stairs and a few boards sanded. It's rained this whole week so I'm crossing my fingers it's dry tomorrow so we can finish. We borrowed my dad's belt sander and our neighbors lent us their circular sander so that's really sped up the process. Thank you Daddy and Dave!

My next small project is going to be painting the downstairs half bath. We don't have the spare cash to decorate the larger rooms so I'm starting with something small. The room just looks so bla with the cream colored sink and toilet and cream colored walls. . .yuck. So depending on weather and how the deck goes I may start working on that this weekend too!