Get Moving!

Hellooooo everyone! It has been a few days but that's because we've been so busy with moving into our new place! You'll see why I've chosen the picture of David with his head in his hands as you read. ;-) We arrived Monday evening in Phiadelphia and got to stay in Villanova with a family I knew from a family I taught at Chief Kanim. Beautiful area, beautiful house, wonderful family. Other than that, pretty uneventful as we basically just slept and headed out to move in to our new place on Tuesday morning. What follows is the highlights of the last few days that usually ended with our head in our hands (as seen in the picture). However- I'd like to preface all this by saying- these were all small things in the scope of life, "character building" as I'd like to say. We are both healthy, happy and safe and that is what is most important. That being said....

Move In Morning: We discovered, after getting our keys, that where we had to park the truck in relation to where our new apartment was .... was a LONG way. And the freight elevator we had to use to do all our moving, ya, not so "freighty." It was the same size as the resident elevator only it was metal instead of wood paneling and you could reserve it so you wouldn't have to hold it up while other residents tried to use it. We also chose the hottest day this week to move. 95 degrees and humid. We each made about 25 trips with all of our stuff up a long ramp into the basement, up the elevator, and down to the end our apartment was on. I don't know that we'd ever been so hot and exhausted. We must have gone through about 5 bottles of water each.

Returning the Truck: After all that moving, David decided he REALLY just wanted to get rid of the truck as soon as possible. So we decided to drive to downtown Philly and return it that same evening. We might have re-thought that idea had we known we were about to experience an east coast rain storm. We gassed up, got on the freeway, I was following David (who was driving the truck and empty car carrier) in my car. And about 5 min in, it started to dump rain. Now- I need you to step back and picture it really dumping the rain... like big FAT raindrops, really hard, so hard and fast that I couldn't even see out the windshield. People around us slowed down to about 30mph and put their flashers on. I couldn't even see out my window. I literally started praying out loud. Somehow, we made it, with me following behind David. I honestly, truly feel blessed that we both got there at the same time with no issues. But when David pulled into the PENSKE parking lot, there was no where to go. There literally had to have been about 25 other trucks parked there that had been returned that day. We ended up helping the guy who worked there (becuase he was there by himself), in the pouring rain/thunder/lightning (yet still about 90 degrees and humid), move the car carrier by hand away from the truck. What a fiasco! But we got it there safely and had our first Philly rainstorm experience. ;-)

Target: We discovered there is one right up the road. Which makes us happy. We've been there at least three times already. There is also a California Pizza Kitchen, Chipotle, Starbucks, and a take out PF Changs place next door. It's pretty much awesome. We have also memorized how to get there and get home from there. Just thought I'd share that. It's kind of a big deal.

The Apartment: We love it. It's very big. 1400 square feet feels huge when you've been living in 625 sq ft. We have cabinet space we still haven't even used yet in the kitchen and plenty of counter space. The dining room is an actual room with a cute little chandelier, the living room is really big (with a fireplace which I love), there is a long hall way, a half bath and a full bath, two bedrooms and lots of closet space. The area around the complex has a locked gate, in order to enter the parking lots you have to have a resident sticker in the window or register with the management that mans the gate, you have to have a special electronic key to enter the builiding, and we have two locks on our door. I feel VERY safe and everyone we've seen around here so far has been friendly and looks pretty normal.

The Hitch: So we noticed the first night that our toilets didn't really seem to be flushing properly, either one really. Then Tuesday evening the half bath one clogged up out of nowhere. We just figured we'd leave it for the night and go to Target the next day. Then the main bath one clogged up as well... and OVERFLOWED! We cleaned it up and called the emergency maintenance. They came up about 2 hours later (and 3 phone calls later), to unclog both. It seemed they just needed to be plunged. So then we felt a little stupid that that was all it was. Then the next morning, the main bathroom toilet overflows AGAIN! So we go up to Target on Wednesday morning and get a plunger (it was a good excuse to go get Starbucks too since the coffee pot wasn't set up yet). We come back and attempt to plunge it. Then we flush it again. It starts to overflow for the THIRD TIME but David turned the water off JUST IN TIME before it actually overflowed again. We called maintenance and he cam up and worked on it for about a half hour. Everything finally seems to be working properly but we both still get nervous anytime either one of us needs to... well... put "something" in the toilet so to say. ;-)

Wal-Mart: Neither of us have every been Wal-Mart shoppers before. But when you have so much you need and you're on such a tight budget, Wal-Mart is pretty helpful. We found one the other day and did a little bit of shopping there but it seemed a little sketchy. The curtain rods we purchased weren't the right ones and we needed to return them so we decided to head out again today, but this time we went to an area of town we thought might be a little better... BINGO! Super nice and normal Wal-Mart! With food... which was awesome... cuz we needed to restock our fridge and cupboards. We even got a few pieces of furniture we needed for cheap (like a new desk set, a little bookcase for the CD's and extra DVD's which David told me I was going to have to put together myself but I plan to distract him and find a way out of it, and a SUPER CUTE little Italian clock with vino bottles on it for the kitchen (only $8). It was a good trip and our kitchen is full so we can stop eating out, which let me tell ya, after more than a week of eating out... I cannot WAIT to make home made tacos tonight! ;-)

The Plan: We are working on trying to get our Comcast internet and cable set up out here but apparently whoever lived here before us hasn't cancelled theirs yet and they are having some issues they want to take care of before they come and install ours. Luckily the downstairs lobby here has wi-fi which is what I'm using now and we have plenty of movies we can watch (and David is happy to be able to play video games still). Hopefully we'll get all that resolved early next week. We are hoping to get the artwork and photos up on the walls today and do the finishing touches on the place. Once it's done, we are planning on doing a video tour of the place, loading it on the computer, and sending it out to many of you so you can see the new digs!

Goals: Ikea trip either this weekend or Monday, find a movie theater so we can watch the last installment of Harry Potter, and start the job search/studying!

We love you all and can't wait to share our new place with you and keep you updated on all the Phiadelphia adventures ahead!