may 21st- The HOUSE

May 21, 2009
THE HOUSE
Oh wow, is all I can say! It is a mansion, and hey girls on Capitol Hill, more storage than I know what to do with! Here is a description and I will add pictures as soon as I can… When you walk in, there is a large entryway with a full double mirrored door closet with shoe drawers, coat racks, storage and more shelves up top. To the left is our half bath and the office/guest bedroom (futon). If you go straight, you walk through double doors to our living room and formal dining room. The living room is huge and has 2 couches and 3 arm chairs and the dining room has a table that seats 8-10. The dining room also has a china hutch and a buffet with so much storage I gave one to the kids for their office/toys! There are double French doors off the dining room out to the back yard terrace. Steps down to the grassy forest if you are brave enough to face the bugs! Back inside, if you go left from the entryway, you reach a kitchen that was so well designed a chef would be happy to cook here. Drawers and cabinets everywhere! Even a little breakfast nook where we can snack. If you go right from the entryway, you can go up or down some very wide steps. (MY cap hill girls get this one too) Upstairs there is a huge walk in closet and shelves in the landing, a bedroom and full bathroom to the left (Noah’s room), a bedroom with it’s own bathroom and jacuzzi tub to the right (Nick’s room unless we have visitors, then nick bunks with noah and this becomes a very nice guest room- hint hint!) And a master bedroom with a master bath that is to die for…there is enough room to do yoga in the bathroom! There is also a computerized jetted tub and a tube shower! OH, I forgot the walk in closet that you pass through to get there that hold so much stuff there is still room after tom and I filled it in with our stuff! I think the next coolest thing up here is that all the windows have outside metal shades that come down and close over the windows to darken the rooms. This is a must when the sun stays out till 10 and is back up at 4 a.m!
There is also a full staircase to the attic which is more storage. If you go downstairs from the entryway on the main level, you get greeted by motion detectors that turn on all the lights for you. Downstairs straight ahead is a wall of closets and closed shelving. To the right is a family room with a whole wall of gorgeous cabinetry and storage and a fireplace. There is a door that shuts this off, so another great place for guests (another hint hint!) Left from the stairs down here is a storage closet (suit cases, table and chairs, etc fit in here) and then a hall to a king size guest suite and full bathroom and a storage hall and the garage where the laundry and water distiller are. The garage is tiled and heated. The garage door is remote entry and the driveway is heated as well… This place is a mansion and from what the other wives are telling me, we hit the jackpot! We got the best place by far! Thanks for all your prayers, this adventure is starting out very nice!

March 22, 2009 First full day
Well, it is the evening of our first full day here in Warsaw and wow, what a time it has been… We had a great first day. Tom woke up and went to work. I started to unpack and wait for the kids to wake up…I waited and waited…I took a shower and waited… I made a grocery list and waited… I finally had to wake them up at 10 a.m.! As we ate breakfast, told the boys what our goal was for today…we had to go grocery shopping at the market at the end of the street…this may not seem like a big deal, but for those of you who know me, you know I hate going to the store, especially with my boys in tow…add to that a foreign currency and a foreign language, both of which I do not totally understand and you see my heightened stress level. I promised the boys that if they were good helpers that we could come home and play the rest of the day and that they could open their new house present from their Aunt Cindy and Uncle Ken (two really cool remote control amphibious vehicles). Well, we had some whining on the way there and some compromise by me ( 15 minutes at the park to play before shopping) but we made it to the market without much trouble. Now finding the things on my list should not be hard, right? Laundry soap. Dishwasher soap, juice, lunch meat, peanut butter, jam, honey, trash bags, toilet paper, paper towels, cereal and dinner for tonight…all easy things…well, with Nick knocking things over on every isle and the pictures on the containers not always matching the item that I was looking for, it took a bit of concentration and effort, but I got out of there with most everything on my list and without breaking anything. No one told me I need to bring my own bags…so thank goodness there was a box at the door and noah could carry bread and crackers and nick had toilet paper under one arm and paper towels under the other. After we got out of the store I realized that my box was really too heavy to haul all the way home, but what choice did we have? I put it down for a minute, turned around to the boys and said the following, “Gentlemen, thank you so much for your help in the store. I loved the way you listened and did not break anything. Now, we have a medium size walk home and I have a very heavy box. I do not want to hear any complaining or I will trade your light items for the box I am carrying, got it?” I must have had that look in my eyes because the both smiled and in their sweetest voices said, “yes mommy” and noah added, “thank you for buying all these good things for us and then carrying them all the way home, you are such a good mommy!” We made it to the house and got the boys started on their rc cars, me unpacking the box of groceries and starting laundry. It was a successful morning. We ate peanut butter with our apples, we enjoyed our juice and then we went to the living room to dance. We also had to take an afternoon walk to the corner market to get ice cream before the rain started. While out there a neighbor boy asked Noah to come play and that was the last I saw of him for 2 hours…Nick also found some playmates outside and I was able to get the neighborhood scoop and visit with two embassy wives. If I did not know any better, I would say that I had been dropped in a 1950s neighborhood where the kids are free to run and play as they like, the moms do their chores and hang out and then scatter when dinner time is near to prep the house and the food…kind of scary, but I like it. It seems like the best part of what I loved about the hill. So, for dinner tonight we had pasta…I forgot the sauce…so we had pasta and peas and butter and salt and pepper…the last 3 ingredients being a treat because we did not have them before my adventure to the store today! Really makes you appreciate the little things in life!