The Apartment!

Hey, everybody!

In true Housing fashion, we thought you'd like to see the place we're living. For the past week, we've been unpacking, filling our shelves with groceries, and doing our best to get settled. This will be a picture walkthrough of the place (minus our bedroom and spare bedroom...you'll get those when Liz finishes the curtains). To set the scene, you'll just have to imagine this apartment being on the bottom floor of an 18-story residence hall (pictures will follow closer to opening the hall).

So...coming into our apartment you have a nice long hallway with plenty of closet space that separates us from the noise. This will also serve as a bowling alley for our nephew, Alec, when he visits.

At the end of the hallway is our gorgeous 1970's (maybe a little older) kitchen. At first, we didn't know what to think, but once we got into it we fell in love with it! It's a bit smaller than our last kitchen, but there is no wasted space--and believe it or not--we still have room to spare.

EVERYTHING is magnetic...how fun! Another feature that you can't see is that there is a door that slides out of the wall to cover the kitchen from the view of guests.

If you take a left from the entry hallway, it opens up into a big space that we mainly use as a living room. We've inherited a bigger television (which is great for ROCKBAND). If you notice in the picture, a drum seat and another guitar have been added. Too bad all our ROCKSTARS are spread throughout the States.
The room's big enough that we also have our dining room in this same space (it is in the corner nearest to the kitchen). We're still making discoveries as we explore our apartment in detail, and we just learned that there is an extension built into the table. Woo-hoo!
After arranging the space, we realized we had an unused corner in the room and an extra piece of furniture. It is a dream come true...we have a reading nook! That's right, we're excited about it.

Off of the living room is a hallway: if you take it straight you end at our bedroom, a right turns leads to the bathroom and a left turn leads to our spare room, where we do our art (which we've missed doing but didn't have the space) and work on the computer (including blog updates).

Our bathroom...gave us some concerns at first. However, Liz was able to do some work and got it to be quite attractive.
We've really been able to make our apartment feel like home, but outside of our apartment, we can tell we're missing our friends and family.

P.S. To those of you working and living in a residence hall as a hall director, get renter's insurance. And if you do that, tell them about all your apartment's safety features. The fact that we have a sprinkler system in every room (including our closets) saved us megabucks.

Tomorrow, my training starts (and it looks like a cakewalk compared to what many of us have already experienced). I'm getting to do the "retreat" thing and have the luxury of completing a high-ropes course. Liz will be holding down the fort, exploring campus, and enjoying a bit too much quiet time.

The Big Move and The Fourth of July

As some of you may have noticed, we have not had any online activity anywhere for about the past week. Currently, we're sitting in Liz's parents' home in Indiana. It is hard to believe that a week ago, we were preparing for a long day of goodbyes and a big drive ahead. So much has happened in the past week, it is best to just sum it up by the day.

Monday: We picked up our U-Haul and spent the day packing, cleaning, and saying our goodbyes to everybody in Arkansas. Highlights included attempting to drive the U-Haul with the parking break and running over a hand dolley...

Tuesday: We left our apartment in Arkansas and was on the road by 5:30 (in the morning). We had a caravan consisting of me driving a U-Haul pulling our Sunfire, Liz driving the Impala, and Ellen driving her Jeep and pulling a trailer. We were relieved to arrive in Carbondale by 2:00, but quickly realized only half of the work was done. When we went to check out our apartment before moving our stuff in, we opened the door to our new home to find drop clothes, paint buckets, and ladders throughout our apartment. Things were quickly remedied while we helped Ellen move in, and the three of us spent until 6:00 unpacking in the heat. After that, we went on a scavenger hunt to find a way to park our cars without getting tickets. Needless to say, we crashed as soon as possible.

Wednesday: While I spent the day trying to become an official full-time employee, Liz spent the morning scrubbing the apartment room-by-room. For us, it is hard to feel that a place is our own until we are sure we've removed all traces of any person living there before us. I had an afternoon meeting that was highlighted with receiving a book to read (Strengthsfinder 2.0). I hope that this book is integrated into the way we work as a staff, because it encourages developing your strengths and relying on other team members to cover areas that you are weak in. That afternoon we took off to travel to my family's house, with our own apartment packed full of boxes.

Thursday & Friday: These two days were spent hanging out with my family in Lowell and ended with a day spent outside eating a ton of grilled meat and watching fireworks explode all around us. The highlight for us had to be a moment Liz shared with our four-year-old nephew, Alec, during the fireworks. Liz had told Alec a "secret" that would help him see the fireworks (stand in one place instead of running around) and immediately after telling him that, a Roman Candle went off. As soon as it was complete, he ran up to Liz asking her to tell him another secret, thinking that Liz had the ability to create fireworks.

Saturday & Sunday: Early Saturday morning we got up and drove to Liz's family. We visited Liz's grandparents, went out to see WALL-E, grabbed a Coldstone Creamery cake for dessert, and went to a family reunion the following day.

Needless to say, it has been an insanely busy and tiring week. In three days, we had woken up in three different states. But the time we have spent at home--as limited as it has been--was great because we got to see our full families, including those we might not get to see for awhile again.

By the next post, our apartment will hopefully be set up and we'll probably dedicate the post to showing our apartment and describing some of the most unique (and awesome) features.