Our new home in Indy

We have now been living in our new home in Indianapolis, Indiana for just over a week now. We are basically unpacked now except for boxes of books and decorations... mostly because we don't have any bookshelves to put them on yet. Since we sold all of our furniture before we left WA, it has been a slower moving in process since we had to accumulate furniture too. I spent our first Saturday here running to yard sales, and totally lucking out with great deals on most of our furniture. We found our couch and TV stand on craigslist. I thought I would use craigslist mostly, but some people just ask way too much for their stuff and many things we find end up being too far away to be worth getting. I wanted to wait to post a picture tour of our place till it was more homey... but I figured I better just do it now or it may not ever happen! So just keep in mind that we are still getting things situated. Enjoy the tour...

The front of our 3 bedroom townhouse at Manchester Village

4256 Londonderry Drive

 Entering the front door into our living room 

(coat closet and entry to kitchen/dining on right)

 Another view of living room and front door

 Stairs off the entry/ living room 

(They are split in half with a landing in the middle which has been great for Thomas since he just learned how to go down backwards the week before we moved. He fell down a couple steps on the first day, and has had no problems since... so nice not to have to worry about his safety on the stairs!)

 Half bath off the living room (door is opposite the stairway). There is also a storage closet under the stairs.

 Dining room (which will also be our office area)

 Kitchen (no, we don't have a dishwasher. Those are the dishes we just did by hand covering the counter!)

 This is the pantry I scored at a yard sale for $10! Brian hates the paint, but I don't think it's that bad, and that much sturdy storage for that price is awesome! That is the door to the laundry room on the right.

 Laundry room

 Our little fenced backyard. It is nice to have a private outdoor space, but the grass here isn't really grass. It's basically weeds/crabgrass, not really the kind of stuff I want to let Thomas crawl around in. They don't really have any sprinkler systems here in Indiana, and with the drought the grass looks pretty bad. Grass is definitely something we miss already!

 Upstairs

Our bathroom at the top of the stairs (bathtub/shower is on opposite side behind the door)

 Maybrie's room

 Master bedroom (basically the only room that seems done)

 I snagged our dresser for $15 at a very interesting (junky, dirty) yard sale thinking it would be easy to makeover. We spent $10 on black paint at Walmart, and after a couple hours of work by Brian it went from this (the drawers were already out and he was painting the main part by the time I went to snag a before shot):

... to this! We are pretty excited about it, and I feel like I finally had my own "Nate Berkus" moment! :)

 Thomas's room

 The view of the upstairs hallway/ stairwell from our bedroom. There is a linen closet to the right between our room and Maybrie's. 

There is good storage here and overall it is just right for us right now. It is very basic, but it is clean. The carpet is new, which is nice, but it isn't the softest because there is no pad underneath. Our place reminds me of Wymount apartments at BYU a little... though this is much bigger and is an upgrade in many ways. I'm looking forward to getting things completely put away and decorating to make it feel more like home. 

We have been enjoying our time together as a family before Brian starts school tomorrow. It had been a good two weeks of hard work and family bonding. Our ward here is very friendly and half of the ward is students. We have already met a lot of great people and are excited to make friends with so many young couples/families in our similar situation. It has not been as humid as I feared, in fact I've hardly noticed it. They have cicadas( insects) here that make a super loud rattling sound, especially at night. It's kind of like crickets, but much louder. It is very flat here, so the good sense of direction I thought I had is now gone. Indianapolis is a big city, but it doesn't feel very big because aside from the central downtown area it is pretty spread out. There are lots of freeways to figure out, which you can only go 55 on- weird! I am very grateful for our GPS and my iphone, it has been a lifesaver, and will probably continue to be for a while as we learn our way around. There is probably a ton more I could say, but I can't think of it all right now. From here on out you can expect regular updates on our adventures here in Indy!