Well, for those of you who didn't know, on June 15th we closed on our very first house. The closing went well, so well in fact that because of some credits and such, the sellers ended up cutting us a check to close the deal. Immediately after we got done signing all the papers, we picked up a bottle of Two Brothers Opus 10 and went over to the house to celebrate. Later that afternoon, Anna's dad arrived from Missouri to give us a hand with the most immediate task of repainting the rooms. If you remember the house from the pictures we had up, many of the rooms were painted for children and while Anna and I are quite young at heart, we were looking for something with a bit more sophistication in the area of decor. Anna's dad brought a power roller and lots of motivation, so much so that we got all of the rooms primed and even painted the ceiling in the family room (it was looking a little dingy)... but that wasn't all, we also did first coats of color in two of the rooms. Overall I think we painted the equivalent of eight rooms that day and after some burgers and beers at Murphy's I think we all slept very well.
But alas, Anna's dad had to get back to fighting crime in Jefferson City, and we had to get back to our day jobs. We really appreciated all of his support and hard work though, it made for a really smooth start. Since then we've continued the painting, rewired the outlets in the bedroom we chose to be our office (they weren't grounded), and installed crown molding in the master bedroom. We still have quite a few doors and trim to paint, but we hope to finish that up this weekend.
One thing that we immediately noticed at the new house is the temperature. It is so much cooler than the house we live in now and we aren't even running the air over there. We think it may have something to do with the mature trees or maybe all the insulation in the house or maybe even the gable fan in the attic... whatever it is, it is really pleasant. Hopefully the trend continues and it is warmer in the winter as well. Speaking of mature trees, the previous owners left us a little note explaining quirks of the neighboorhood and of the house and one of the things they told us to get prepared for was the unreal onslaught of leaves in the fall... I don't remember the exact number of bags they said it took to collect them all, but it was immense... anyone want to barter raking for beer in the fall? ;)
In other news... Anna now has her very own blog, http://www.annaraves.com, in the coming weeks I hope to get her setup with some sort of a unique theme based on her guidance; during the same period I hope to fix anthonyandanna.com (I accidentally overwrote the only copy of the site's index that I had). Oh well, I needed some impetus to update it anyways I suppose.