Yesterday we officially moved in to “our” house!

While it feels good to finally be in our own space after living out of suitcases for the last two weeks, the move itself could have gone more smoothly.

Our house is fully furnished–which we took to mean there would be some furnishings in the home. Furnishings there are…as well as cupboards full of pots and pans, closets full of old linens, and dressers full of clothes. The dishwasher was even full if dirty dishes for me to clean–just what I wanted to do on moving day!

Needless to say, there was there a lot of organizing that had to be done before we could even begin unpacking. To make the day even more interesting, yesterday was also Jon’s first day of work. So, while Jon went off to the office, the boys and I went to work on the house.

David helped by sitting in a basket watching Daniel Tiger episodes on the iPad (what did parents do before iPads???):

And Jacob helped me by being a good little baby and taking a nice, long nap:

Jon came home during his lunch hour so we could make a run to the grocery store (I thought it was a good idea to replace the previous tenants’ moldy food with some fresh options). The grocery store had everything we needed…and then some!

In the afternoon Jacob helped me do laundry the European way: we washed our clothes in the washing machine that’s in our kitchen, then hung them out to dry.

Now that I got some of the major organizing and cleaning out of the way, our house is already starting to feel (a bit) like home. The boys seem to like the house (we have soccer fields in our back yard–what’s not to love?!) and it’s a nice cozy space. It’s a bit smaller than what we’re used to, but it has everything we need. Commence “Project Family Closeness”!

Now we’ll just have to see if we can find room for the 57 boxes of stuff we’re having shipped here from the states. My next order of business may have to be finding the Irish equivalent to Goodwill stores…