Our New House

 Shannon here.  

We arrived at our new house in the afternoon on 2 April.  I made the mistake of not taking photos before we have emptied our suitcases and right now the house is a bit of mess, so you will only be seeing pictures of the outside and a few rooms that are currently presentable.  :)

Our new house is in the suburb called Isaacs. We are close to the Isaacs Ridge Nature Preserve.  We have yet to go see it because frankly we've just been too busy trying to make sure we have things in the house like toilet paper and other necessities.  

Here are some pictures of our new place:

Our new house and new (to us) car

Front door

formal living and dining room

other view of living room

Caitlyn's new room

The magpie that visits Caitlyn

the backyard

bird feeder full of bird seed that is supposed to attract "beautiful birds"

we have a lemon tree

The house is bigger than it looked in person.  The girls rooms are smaller than they had in Maryland, but it  will be fine.  We will have to learn to live with less stuff, which is not a bad thing.  We have a nice little yard that should be pleasant to sit out in. And we have a lemon tree (would love advice on when to pick the lemons).  And a bird feeder out back.  Lauren and Mike went to go buy bird food and Lauren insisted we buy the bag that said it attracts "beautiful birds."  Foolish makers of the other bags did not have that listed on their bag, so they lost out.  

We see a lot of magpies around, which could be an issue when swooping season (i.e. when they have laid eggs) comes around.  But our new neighbors claim that if the birds know you, you are less likely to get swooped.  

Another surprise about the house is that is has more storage than I was expecting. So that is a definite plus for us. One of the biggest changes is that we have a smaller clothes washer and a condensing dryer.  So you have to do more, smaller loads of laundry.  And since the dryer doesn't vent to the outside, we have to open the laundry room door any time we use it. It is weird and not at all energy efficient when it comes to heating and cooling the house.  Also, all the windows here are single pane.  This house is not at all energy efficient. 

We feel very lucky to have this lovely house in a lovely neighborhood as a place to call home for the next couple of years.  So far, we have only seen one spider in the house (and it was little), but I'm sure there are more to come.