Our New Home

We are finally moved in. We are so thankful, happy, and feel like we found the perfect place for us. It was so sad to leave our amazing neighbors in North Park. That was the hardest part. We were over the house, done with it, tired of not having a back yard and living on a busy street. But our neighbors were the best. But we promised to visit, especially because we are keeping Axel at his preschool in North Park. We love it, he loves it, so we're not changing.

 A lot of people have been asking us how it feels to be in our new home. I have been telling people that the best part about it is that we don't have to leave! We can actually stay home! That probably sounds weird to most people, but in our North Park house, we were always so antsy. Since we had no backyard, there was nowhere to really relax or play. We left the house almost every morning and every afternoon that we were home,and it was exhausting a lot of the time. But now, we can play in the backyard, inside because we have so much more space, or in the front because we live on a col-de-sac street. Axel can ride his bike without worry, Leia has already made her way to the next block checking out the 'hood (okay, she "walked" away), and one of the best parts are the trails just down the street. We can walk for about 45 minutes through the trails. Axel loves it, and Leia gets to run free, it's exactly what we love to do, and to have it just steps away is such a luxury for us. It's also so quiet, and feels so safe. It really just feels like home.

(Nia and Suzanne, close your ears) Our neighbors have all been so welcoming and wonderful to us. One brought over some amazing cranberry almond bread. Some others have just come over and introduced themselves. They all seem so nice. There is definitely a contrast of people who have lived here for the past 30 years, and young families with kids. It seems the people here are either or. Which I think is wonderful because I love having families in our demographic to hang out with, but I also love having an older generation around. Axel was so close to our old Greek neighbor, Helen, who is probably in her 80's. He'd call her "Yaya", which is "Grandma" in Greek. There will never be a replacement for Yaya, but there are some really nice older neighbors who we hopefully will get to know better. Suzanne, our crazy fireball artsy fartsy by day stand up comedian by night neighbor, there will never EVER be a replacement for you. It just doesn't exist.

Overall, we feel so extremely blessed and fortunate to be here. Three months ago when we sold our house and were looking for a new one, we were so disheartened at the options in San Diego. We never thought we'd find a house that we felt was nice, in a good neighborhood, and that we could afford. Well, there is still some work left to do on this one, but for the most part, it's been updated. Our contractor Josh is amazing and made the house even nicer than our original vision. I totally recommend him to anyone who needs a contractor! Anyways, here are the before and after photos. It's hard to even imagine what this house used to look like. Josh (JJH Construction, yo!) and his guys did an incredible job. Now we just need some new furniture!