First Full Day!

We have survived and fully enjoyed our first full day in our new town! The day began early with a trip to Central Market. Just Dennis (Greg's dad) and I went so that Greg could stay in the townhome and wait for the internet guy to arrive. It was so fun to be at Central Market actually shopping for my own food that I could take home and eat. If you haven't read my earlier post re: CM, this is not the HEB Central Market in Texas. This is America's oldest farmer's market building. It started in the 1730's. We loaded up on home-grown basil, garlic, onion, tomato, and red leaf lettuce. We bought pita bread from the Middle Eastern food stand, fresh baked french bread, and Amish Sharp Cheddar cheese from another stand. We also got Greg milk in a glass bottle. He said it tasted amazing. They have you pay an initial deposit for the glass bottle and then you can bring the cleaned bottle back and get a new bottled milk for the regular price and never have to pay for the glass again. And it didn't cost any more than what we'd been paying for a half gallon at HEB! Whoop for one type of food that's not exhorbitantly expensive!

After that Dennis and I came back to the townhome to wait for the Comcast guy with Greg. They of course did not arrive in their scheduled window, but they did finally make it and got our internet set up (thus the blog post finally getting done). They would only hook up the modem since we are supplying our own router and we can't get the router to work. We have Greg's dad here with us a few more days and he's very computer savvy, so we are really hoping it gets set up by then.

We also had the maintenance man for the complex come by so that we could give him our "punch list." That's construction company lingo for "here's all the stuff we need fixed asap so we can feel at home in our new home." It feels weird to be on the customer side of the punch list this time! Luckily not too many things need to be done. One closet door adjustment, better weatherstripping on the front door, and some toggling with our a/c thermostat seemed to be the only kinda big things. Not bad! We also decided to give in and let them use their painting contractor to paint our 2 accent walls tomorrow. The fee includes them coming in when we move and painting the walls back to their original white color. It's definitely an extra cost to us doing it ourselves, but w/ Buddy being in the way, the odors getting to our allergy prone family, and the risk of ruining the carpet, we thought we'd just let them do it. So we'll have a couple green walls in here tomorrow!

A few other things we've accomplished so far: set up our credit union account, shopped at Lowe's, shopped at Weis Grocery Store (too expensive and very boring!), shopped at Stauffers of Kissell Hill Grocery Store (a little more expensive but much more exciting!) made it to downtown and back without a map, left Buddy at home for 20 minutes alone and came back to no accidents or wall scratches, and scheduled a meeting w/ a local State Farm agent for Thursday.

Tomorrow/Thursday we plan to: go shopping for clothes at the outlet malls (yes, two of them!), go to a baseball game (we have a minor league team called the Lancaster Barnstormers), continue to unpack the few boxes of stuff we brought with us, and keep exploring.

My mom is coming Friday through Sunday!! I can't wait for her to see the townhome and take her around town. I know it has always made such a difference to me to see where my family members are living. AND, Praise the Lord, we think our stuff might arrive on Saturday now. Which sounds awfully late, but the alternative we've been living with the last few days has been a delivery date of next Monday. If it comes Saturday, Mom will be able to see the furniture placed in the house and we can start to unpack. I am so thankful that it will probably get here in time for that (and that we'll be sleeping in our bed instead of an air mattress by then!)

Will update more tomorrow. Sorry I haven't taken pictures yet. Will do that tomorrow, too!