Steve and Maria Frey

 Update: 4/3/08 – It’s Thursday and I can’t say we’re completely out of the other house yet. Saturday should prove to be the “wrap-up” day. The incentive is that mom has offered to come up for 2 weeks to help us out. She’ll arrive sometime Saturday afternoon, and we’d much rather use her skills and energy on the new house that we own, rather than the old house we rented! Thanks SO much in advance, Mom!! We love you!

Today’s moving day…In fact, right now Steve and his brother Andy are hauling yet another load up 85 to our new house. I, on the other hand am sitting at Starbucks kicking back and enjoying a nice, peaceful, day off work. NOT! I am on a break though. Unfortunately, I was stupid and pushed my body too far in the days leading up to this one, and after a chiropractic appointment this morning, my husband would kill me if I was doing anything that even remotely resembled a thought of anything strenuous. So, there you have it. I’ll Blog. Then, I’ll “gently” go pack up the rest of the house while they’re gone.

In the meantime, I did manage to snap off a few pics. Nothing too exciting, and probably my mother will be the only interested viewer, but I’ll throw them up here anyway. Things are still going well, we’re hoping for a “Completed” report tonight – even if it’s 11:59pm.

By the way, the bright orange things you see in the picture of Steve and Andy lifting the Solid Oak Entertainment Stand are Forearm Forklifts -

The Forearm Forklift® is a pair of lifting straps designed to make moving furniture, appliances, mattresses, dry wall, windows, HVAC units, glass, marble, copy machines and filing cabinets easily.

The other pictures may not look like much either, but it is proof that they successfully moved our 500lb piano. No dropping it!!!! Someday I’ll tell you the story about how the ONE little man showed up to move this beast of a piano (it’s cast iron inside, which is where all the weight comes from) – he of course was no match for the Yamaha, and he dropped it….off the dolly, on it’s back…on the hard, concrete, garage floor. We paid that moving company $650+ to drop- um I mean, move the piano. I bought Steve and Andy a couple of waters…they were good to go. Just goes to show that you don’t always get what you pay for!!

Here are some pictures of the “work in progress”. This weekend we hope to put the final coat on the ceiling, paint the walls, and lay the flooring. We’re hoping for a good report on Monday!

Right now we’re just tackling the kitchen and family room. We figured that’s where we’d spend the bulk of our time, and really they’re both connected, so it’s kind of a packaged deal.

As some of you may already know, we bought our first house March 3, 2008. It might seem a little late in announcing it, but we’ve been pretty busy. With 2 birthdays, mom in town, and of course…tearing up the perfectly good house we just bought!

That of course is us after “stage one of popcorn ceiling removal” – which sucks by the way. Forgive my harsh language, but whoever thought it would be a good idea to cover ceilings with something that Orville Redenbacher thinks is a gourmet snack, needs to be knocked over the head. We of course didn’t WANT to take it down, we just wanted to cover the discoloration in a few spots due to a patching job done by previous owners. Again, popcorn on ceilings – stupid idea - you can’t just pop new corn and throw it up there. You also can’t paint 10 year old corn because what you will get is popcorn floors. That could be something you’d see on Trading Spaces, but not here my friend.

Anyway, you’re probably caring less about textured drywall and how fashionably Steve and I wear it. You’re probably thinking you want to see the house. Well, we’re working on it. In between projects and moving, we hope to put up pictures this week. In the meantime, you can check out this site that the Realtor used to list the house.

3404breezymorn.com

Of course, some parts of the home have been changed to protect the innocent.

More to come later from the First Time Homeowners!

Yesterday was Steve’s birthday – only 3 days after mine. In that 3 days we managed to buy a house, he flew my mom up from Florida, and he put together a great time to share a birthday meal with some friends, family, and unfortunate, now legless crabs.

Pictured below from somewhat left to right are Bryan and Janet, Jeff and Susan, Chad, Dina, Jarred, Taylor, Roger, Norma…and of course Steve and Maria…aka the birthday kids.

We all met up at the Red Lobster last night – a surprise to me – and had dinner. I don’t know about anyone else, but I REALLY enjoyed mine. I don’t think the crabs were as happy though.

Thanks so much to everyone who came out last night to celebrate Steve’s and my birthday.

Oh, and as for Our First House…we closed on Monday night on a house up in University City. We’ll be posting lots of pictures and info on that soon…so keep checking back!

On March 2, 1980 at 8:15pm I made my first appearance into this world.

You know you’re getting old when your husband has to buy 2 boxes of candles for your cake. I’m not sure what it says about your husband when he lights up that many candles on a little 8″ ice cream cake.

Maybe “honey, get the spoon”