House update: T minus 10 days and counting!

It struck us today that this will be one of the last times we go "visit" our house on the weekend - only one more time doing that, then our final walk through, and then it's finally ours! I tell you what, it's been such a wonderful experience watching our dream house grow from the bottom up, but it is freaking DANG time we're in it. I'm ready! I'm tired of our crappy rental couch jacking up my back, I'm tired of hearing our upstairs neighbors do aerobics at 6 am (seriously, I'm not making that up), and I'm most of all just tired of not living in our house yet, I'm so ready. This last weekend we wrapped up the last of our "must-buy" list....we got some gorgeous bedroom furniture and beautiful sheets...we are all ready to pop here, honey!

Not too much changed appearance-wise at the house today, I'm sure it'll be like that until we move in since it's just the final details at this point. They did switch out our chandeliers as we'd asked them - now the big huge ol' sucker is in the entry way, they completely removed the extra entryway light, and put the smaller chandelier downstairs in the dining area.


The dining room one is still super low, though, and will block my views of Matt Lauer in the morning as I make my omlettes, and I just can't have that. So, we'll probably have to ask them to raise it at the walk through, but maybe they'll see that in the meantime.

The other thing that's different is we got our rain gutters. Definitely one of the least exciting added option (it's seriously an option to have rain gutters, can you believe it? Apparently it's not a San Diego city code...hmmm.....) but I'm actually really happy with them. They're fancy and have mesh wiring on the top so leaves, etc, won't clog them up. Kinda fun! Ok, not really. As house options goes, one of the most wah wah wah (but yet not as boring as adding insulation - one of the decisions that made me feel like such an ADULT making).

Our landscaping is almost done, and it's beautiful. I'm really excited to see it grow in eventually.

I also like the railing they put in the front porch area - it's cool and I would imagine they'll eventually paint it a dark black or brown. Hopefully that'll make it obvious that's not our front door.

And finally, they've installed our tuff racks in the garage - way cool! I want to put my Xmas decorations up there right away! Or hang on it like the commercials do....Okie doke - we're all set to go......10 days until magic time! Get to work, Galileo, you've got a lot to do, freeloader.

House update: we have landscaping! And toilets.

Because nothing says "new house" like the addition of landscaping and toilets. :) It was quite a day at the house today - we had a painter and handyman join us there for quotes on work we need as well as an interior designer sent out from a store where we've pretty much spent all of Galileo's college fund. It was fun having folks over to get stuff scheduled, it's really happening! Just over 2 weeks until the big day - holy crap. G seems pretty thrilled.
Anyhoo, as I mentioned, we have landscaping started! It's so thrilling to see it all go in, it's gorgeous and makes it seem so real.It's funny, we didn't get to choose our front landscaping at all, but they're actually doing things that we would have done ourselves, such as planting bougainvillea to eventually climb up the patio woodwork, awesome!!!

I also like how they're starting to plant around the front porch, which will be nice to make it look less like the front door (which its not but already I could see delivery people getting confused, and nothing would be worse than the pizza delivery dude going to the wrong place, right? Tragedy averted).

Here's a few shots leading up to the front door:

They still have a lot to plant, clearly, as evidenced by all the potted plants hanging in the back yard. So fun to see what will be going in, looks like ferns, roses, and stuff that I have no clue what it is.
They also put a gate in next to the front door, thank goodness - that made no sense to not have an entryway there to the backyard.
As requested, here's a shot of the back of the house, standing at the corner of where our fence meets the stone wall. Ask and you shall receive.Inside, big changes were happening too. We have toilets, woohoo!!!

Oh, and stuff is finally getting cleaned so I got to try out the tub a bit for a dry run, it's perfect! I can't wait. You can bet I'll be soaking my sore post-moving muscles on like...day 2 at the latest. :)

And carpet! It's so fluffy and clean...we'll see how long that lasts between G dragging in the backyard dirt and the movers tracking in goodness knows what...but for now it's quite pretty. Here my lovely models show it off:
The laundry room is finally uncovered, the counter was just the standard corian, and I'm glad we didn't keep that in any of the bathrooms, boring. Perfect for a laundry room, though.
The other cool thing happening are the last minute fixes and changes by the builder. We brought it to their attention that the dining area chandelier is HUGE and will totally block the line of sight to the TV and rest of the room, not to mention will easily attract our huge noggins slamming into it repeatedly. So, it's cool, they're going to trade it out with the entryway chandelier which is actually smaller, wasn't that sweet?


We also finally got to try out our dove tail drawers that Rob wanted so badly. I'm so glad we got them, it's way cool - check it out! (and sub note, check out how excited Robbio gets playing with them).

George and Helen's wedding!

It was an absolute blast, from start to finish, and we both feel like we're about 90 years old today (which is always a good litmus test of any party, dontcha think?)

Started off with some cocktails in the La Valencia hotel prior to the ceremony...Look at those handsome guys: and us lovely ladies:
and then we baked in the sun a bit...and it was all worth it, the ceremony was beautiful: followed by a nice cocktail hour...

Then we headed to the patio at dinner for some gorgeous views and shenanigans:



Which table are we at, Rob? Dinner was delicious, drinks were flowing, and the silly started emerging.
And then, the dancing fools came out:

And then at the end of the night, we all lined up and sent the new couple off in style with lei's and orchids...it was beautiful. Good times, congratulations George and Min, we're so happy for you!!!