Home Sweet Home

Well, we've been here almost 3 months now...it might be more "home sweet home" if we had all of our stuff...but we are still waiting for most of it.  The good news is that we just found out it's coming on the 27th or 28th!  And our air shipment came last a few weeks ago, which was mostly full of toys, some linens, kitchen items and winter clothing.  We had a 1000 lb weight limit and came in at around 950 lbs.  Not bad considering we had no idea what we were doing back in September when we were trying to divvy up piles. Oh, and we also got our SUV last week!  I am starting to feel complete.  I actually started writing this post in November and kept getting sidetracked...I'm almost to the point now where I could have just waited until we had all of our stuff to show you, but eh, whatever.  I can check off this box now.
So, our house will hopefully look a little less sterile in a few weeks, but until then, here is a look at where we are living.

The outside - we live on a corner.  The street in front of the house is quite busy.  Fortunately we have a gate that surrounds the entire property.

This is what you see when you walk through the front door (ok, so maybe not the most awe-inspiring photo to start with...).  This is the main floor - the kitchen and living room are through the doorway to the right.  On the left, there is the office, a bathroom and the playroom.

 

Here is our living room.  We are anxious to get our own couches and our big tv.  For as big of a house this is, it's design is lacking.  The main living space (living room/dining/kitchen) is quite cramped.  That is a wood burning fireplace you see.  And the white walls carry throughout the entire house.  We're anxious to get some things hung up on the walls, though we won't be able to do it ourselves.  The walls are all cement, so we need to submit a work order into the Embassy to do the job.  This gives my indecisive self a small anxiety attack...but I'm going to have to march on.

So here's the kitchen and dining area.  The overhead lighting is, um, interesting.  And there's a 2nd oven floating in space.  See it there to the right of the window?  It would be nice to have a 2nd oven, if I could actually reach it and not sustain 3rd degree burns by trying to pull scalding bakeware out from over my head.  Ah well, so a decorative piece it will have to be.  We do have a "normal" size fridge, along with a separate wine fridge and beer fridge.  We can barely fit the family at the dining room table.  This house is not good for entertaining.  Which gives us a good excuse, I guess, not to do it.

On the opposite side of the house is the office, a bathroom and the playroom.  I have a wonderful view of the hillside from my office...as well as a convenient way to spy on my Zagrebian neighbors who are always walking by.

Ava has taken over this desk that was left for us and made it into her own little art station.  She has been busily producing works of art and decorating the walls with them.  There is a book series that she loves to get from the school library called The Rainbow Fairies.  I don't know, there must be about 87 fairies (Even a Seal fairy.  Yeah, I don't really get it either, especially since it's part of the "Pet Fairy" subseries.  Who has a seal for a pet?) and she has drawn about 73 of them.



The upstairs has 3 bedrooms and a bath. 

Here is our master.  I will be so happy when our bed comes.  (Disclaimor: Guests - you'll be fine.  This is a fine bed for a week...but it certainly was not made to comfort anyone for longer than that)

Ava's room - Bedding is from, where else, Target.  The door on the right opens up to a balcony which she and Reese share.

Reese's room - Her balcony door is on the left forefront.  Again, bedding from Target.

And, finally the basement.  What may be lacking in bedtime comfort is made up for in the bathroom.  Am I right?  Have you ever seen anything so um, pink?  And industrial?  And large?

And the spare room - I promise it will be a little more spruced up for our guests!  The bed that's in there now will get moved out and the one we are using upstairs will go down here.  There's another room downstairs that we are going to use as a tv room.  It doesn't really have anything in there right now, so I'm not going to attach a picture of an empty room.

 

There you have it!