On ginormous pictures, grocery stores, and closets...

Well, I think I'm just about caught up now in the blog. Yikes. You go without Internet for a few days in a new place and all of a sudden you are w-a-y behind. I guess it doesn't help that you wind up eating out more when all your kitchen stuff is only half unpacked.

So...

So far, we really like Prairie Crossing. Everyone has been very nice. There are little kids everywhere. And I seriously mean everywhere. They flock around the neighborhood, running around in droves and gaggles. I may not know much about the Mid-West yet, but it sure does seem full of breeders. :-) All of them seem pretty well-behaved and cute though. And very friendly. If we do wind up having a kid, this is the place to do it.

Tony took a walk around the lake early on Sunday before I got up and saw a bunch of birds and a muskrat (at least, that's what he thinks it was). The weather was great that day. It's been really up and down (no surprise) -- today it is gray and nasty and rainy. I took a brief walk with him (also on Sunday) and we saw a rabbit. We're definitely thinking about getting some bikes.

So far, settling-in-wise, we're getting there. Right now I'm hanging out in the family room with the fireplace going (it's the gas one - nice, big, and roaring - a new fav thing for Harley). The kitchen is just about unpacked. The guest room is just about settled too. The new (new to us) TV and entertainment center are all hooked up and good to go (since Comcast was here on Monday). Now, we just need our new furniture to get here (hopefully soon).

We managed to hang up the ginormous Flamenco dancer picture in the living room yesterday (it was quite a feat, let me tell you...that thing is over 7 feet tall). Today, Tony is putting in a new closet system in our master bedroom closet. It had those standard white wire racks and he's putting in a cherry finish Easy Track system. It's looking good. I'll post some pictures later. We're hoping to get all of the clothes put up today (or at least most of them; our new dresser is supposed to arrive this weekend or early next week).

The first home improvement we made, though, was to put a new showerhead in the shower. It helped, but this house is definitely not great on water pressure. Our last shower spoiled us. The only other weird-ish things we've found that we hadn't realized before is that the bathrooms just aren't set up for ease of use. You can't fit a regular size bathroom garbage can between the toilet and the sink cabinet in either one. It's kind of weird. And there is no towel bar or storage space at all in the guest bathroom. So we're working on that stuff.

We've checked out the local grocery stores too. Close to us we've got a Sunset Foods and a Jewel-Osco. Both are good (both far better than the Kroger's we had to use in Louisville). The Sunset has a nicer wine section and a bit better meat department (it's kind of like a not-as-fancy Whole Foods), but Jewel has a little loyalty card program (similar to Kroger's) where you can save quite a bit on some stuff and a cool thing where you can register and pay for stuff using a fingerprint. No digging in your wallet or juggling your keys. We'll probably use both stores pretty regularly. I think the Jewel is owned or part of the Albertson's chain. Sunset looks to be a smaller local chain (just 4 stores, I think).