Goodbye old home, Hello new home

We've been sort of in the market for a new home in order to have more bedrooms for our kids, and so have been looking...for the past four years.  

After looking at various houses, nothing was coming up that fit the bill until this past July.  We made an offer on the house in August, closed in September and started moving in on October 1.

The last time that we had moved homes was when the Yuen family was kidless and moving from a one-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles.  This time around, we have four kids and lots more STUFF.

To move stuff, we needed boxes, lots of boxes.  Which are great to build towers with.

In preparation for moving, Karina got excited about designing the layout of their new bedroom.  She got our her house layout stencil set which she has and started mocking up the girls' room.

She really likes doing this sort of thing and cut out the shapes of the furniture to see where it would fit best.

Part of moving means packing.  However, the new house is only a couple of miles from our old one.  So instead of putting all our clothes in boxes or suitcases, we stuffed most into large Ikea bags and drove it over.

Here is Xiao Yu's room at our old house...all vacated!

And we needed to move the chickens as well!  They probably didn't like it very much but we stuffed them into large Rubbermaid bins.

Had to catch them first!

This one got away!

Because it was the end of summer, our sunflowers were all mature and full of seeds.  So Karina collected the seed heads to feed to the chickens later on.

And here is our house empty of almost everything except furniture.

We moved houses on this day...

We had a bunch of friends help us move our boxes on a certain Saturday.

It took several hours, but with about 10 people helping, we moved all our stuff into the garage.

The movers came several days later to move the large things.  Like our super heavy piano.  The movers moved all our couches, coffee table, dining table, beds, bookcases....everything...in only 3 hours.  They were fast!

Our first meal at the new house consisted of Costco rotisserie chicken.  Mostly because now Costco is less than a quarter mile from our new house.  

The new house happens to have a little 2-bedroom extra dwelling on the land, which we call the cottage.  It was the original little farmhouse on the land before the farm was developed into a neighborhood and our current house was built.  It turns out that it did not have a proper foundation so we had one put in.  The foundation contractors had to excavate a huge amount of soil under the cottage and did it by using a vacuum truck to vacuum the soil.  The truck sounds like a vacuum cleaner on steroids...it's super loud, even from 30 feet away!

There are a few things that are different about the new house.  It has a more expansive pantry.

The stairs has walls on both sides, which our resident monkey like to take advantage of.

A bigger grassy area in the back to play soccer on.

It also has a bunch of moles living there.  Lucky likes to dig into the tunnels they make, but has yet not caught any.

It also had a nice maple tree in the front which is good for climbing.  Unfortunately it was planted super close to the foundation and we're going to have to cut it down soon and plant a new, baby tree further away from the house.

Here is Karina setting up her new room.  She got a loft bed, and so has lots of space underneath for her stuff.

Another advantage of the new house is that it is SUPER close to 7-Eleven.  Which means easier access to Slurpees, which may be Karina's favorite food (if it can be called a "food".)

But being in a new house does not mean that everything in life stops.  Some things keep marching on, such as piano lessons, for which you have to practice for.

So that is our  the new house.  We are getting settled in and adjusting to it!