Our Stuff!

Hallelujah! Our stuff arrived! I hope you'll forgive my absence when you see the hot mess of boxes I've been dealing with :) Everything arrived the week Alex left (2 weeks ago today!) I've been busy unpacking, organizing, and tossing boxes. Things are almost entirely unpacked, but I have a lot of organizing to do and a few projects before I hang things on the walls. All in all, the house is coming together quickly!

I know he misses Alex, but he does very much enjoy being able to snuggle on the extra bed space (especially now that we have more pillows!)

  

Unpacking is hard work. Very, very hard work.

One of the first things I purchased when we got here was a meat grinder attachment, so when my mixer arrived (like the 2nd thing I unpacked), I had to test it out! Ground meat is hard to find and very expensive when you do; this grinder has been AMAZING. I ground turkey and chicken; I made green chile chicken breakfast sausage, spicy italian sausage, turkey burgers, and more! I am loving it!

 What. A. Mess!! They pack everything in brown craft paper, which works pretty well, but I've taken probably 50 bags of it onto base to recycle (not to mention the trips for flattened cardboard too!) Speaking of, I don't think I've really talked about the trash and recycling here. We can take it to base, no problem and it's pretty easy if we do that, but then I have to load it up in the car and drive with stinky trash. My neighborhood has 4 pick up days throughout the week; I have to sort my trash and drop the particular items on it's assigned day. Sometimes they get to go in clear trash bags ("combustibles" i.e. kitchen refuse, real trash trash, goes in such a bag) and sometimes they have to get sorted into bins in their designated areas. So, we have 4 trash bins in our kitchen: combustibles, plastics, glass/aluminum (which I have to separate out for that pick up day) and paper. WHEW. It's a bit of effort, but now that things are a bit more normal life, it's not too bad to sort and drop it off on my walk with Sam late at night (because technically I'm only allowed to drop between 0730 and 0830...shhhh).Homemade Pumpkin Spice Lattes! There are Japanese Starbucks (they don't drink coffee too much over here), but apparently they don't make Pumpkin Spice in the fall! (My friend Casey said they do a toasted coconut?) So I made my own, and it's delicious!

Getting some puppy snuggles in! I tried to get him to take a picture for Alex, didn't go so well haha.