Orange you glad the room is blue now?

October 19. Our first weekend in the new place! Home Improvement Project #1: repaint the front bedroom/office. We used Benjamin Moore Aura paint in Buxton Blue. Unlike most interior flat finish paints, this stuff is really thick and self-priming... and it dries. Super. Quickly. By the time you move the ladder, the place you were just painting is already tacky. Note to future Aura users, do not go back and touch up the paint. You've got a window of about 30 seconds before it starts to get funny on you and puckers up. The first coat was a royal pain in the 'tocks, but once we knew how to work the paint, the rest of the job was easy. And it turned out beautifully!

1. Junior and Senior hard at work; 2. How lovely! Don and Betty Draper would approve.

Last days at the old apt.

Our last few days in the old apartment were pretty hectic. We did manage to pack up 67 boxes and about 5 suitcases worth of stuff. We got everything neatly labeled and wrapped up in packing paper... for the most part. There was, of course, the last-minute "sweep" where we just took all the straggling odds and ends and swept them up into a garbage bag. Not necessarily the recommended way of packing, but hey, the movers were coming in 20 minutes!

Many thanks to the trio of movers from Pat Ryan Moving. They showed up at 8:30am, loaded up the truck, drove to the new place, unloaded the truck (depositing each box and piece of furniture in the correct room), and were done and outta here by 1:30pm. Let me tell you this: I will NEVER move myself again. Hiring movers is more expensive than renting a U-Haul and coercing your friends to help you out, but it is so worth it. Those movers were working hard--my back hurt just watching them!

Ahhh. Watching our humans scramble around packing up really IS a lot of work. Time for a little doze in the sun...

Three little pigs

I needed to escape my apartment. The packing, the boxes, the piles! Seriously, it looks like someone came into our apt and took everything off the walls and out of the closets and threw them in the middle of the room, and then threw himself on top of it, and then had a seizure. Being a complete neat freak, I. had. to. get. out.

What a perfect excuse to see my cutie-pie nephew! It's been a few weeks since I've seen Ryan. He's getting big now, cruising around pretty fast. And my what new teeth he has! We brought the pigs with us, of course. Ryan had a blast hanging out with his cousins; check out those smiles! Oliver was a little camera-shy, but Russ wasn't afraid to get up close and personal.