Yes, yes. Once again I am a horrible blog updater, but is that really news to anyone?
We have been super busy the whole month of August, with more than a few interesting developments in life. To begin with, just after we posted the last post, or a week before we were moving back to Utah, we got a call from our apartment complex who told us that we couldn't move in to the apartment we were promised. Apparently the current tenants were not moving out for another month and they couldn't do anything to help us move in to the apartment or any other property they owned. After many tears and great frustration we started the search AGAIN for a place to stay. It was kind of hard because we could only look at what was online until we started back to Utah. We drove back on Saturday and just stayed at my mom's place for a couple days while we started looking at places. We also stayed with Chris and Megan Bronson for a while so we didn't have to drive from Salt Lake every day to go looking. Luckily we found a place in a basement/side of a house (see pictures). We kind of fell in love with it and stayed.
In the midst of all this we decided that since we weren't going to be able to have the apartment of our dreams, we were going to get a dog. We had talked about getting a dog for a while and were both interested in doing it, but our housing wouldn't allow dogs at the time. Well, a family friend in the ward had a dog that she wasn't going to be able to take care of anymore (the husband was opposed to canines) and we jumped at the opportunity of getting a dog that we already knew and liked. Her name is Mika (mee-ka). She is the sweetest little puppy ever and we don't regret our decision for a moment, though it did make the housing search a little more complicated. She is a Cockapoo, Cocker Spaniel/Poodle mix. She is just over a year old, so she's pretty much a puppy still. She is a source of boundless energy and she certainly keeps us going. (More on Mika in an upcoming post.)
So with this place that we got, we were able to paint some of the walls. We started with little to no knowledge of how to paint and the first coat didn't look so good....but luckily I have a Dad who has re-painted our whole house many a time and we called on him for some advice. In the end everything turned out very well and now we know that in the future it is worth the extra cash to call someone else to come deal with the headache of painting. Throughout the whole month we had fun buying furniture and other things to decorate our place and make it feel like home. One other big project we did was that the backyard, while small, we wanted to have a place for Mika to run around. There was only dirt and weeds with a small cement area so we decided we would lay some sod. We got our landlord to go pick up the sod, no way were we getting that in our Miata, and pulled, tilled, and laid the sod so it looks great now. It is even starting to grow!
Unfortunately we didn't take any before pictures so you'll just have to be okay with the afters. We also don't have a camera, so iPhone pictures will have to do.
The first is of our living room. The second is the kitchen, third the bedroom, and fourth the entry hall.
