There are obvious vast differences between our new house and the rental townhouse that we occupied for the last three months. The biggest difference is the size. I want to be completely honest here, so I have to tell you, size matters. I'm not saying it to make anyone feel inferior or that they have less. In most cases, I'm a firm believer in the idiom "less is more". But when it comes to home size, well, more is more.

Our townhouse, as I've described previously, was very small and we were sleeping on mats on the floor. I've lived in smaller spaces; my college dorm for example. But when I think back about the last three months, I frankly cannot believe that it was only for three months. It seemed never ending. Maybe because there was never a possibility of being alone. And I treasure my alone time.

I've never lived in anyplace grandiose. In fact, our last home in Illinois was the largest home that I've ever lived in. With three bedrooms, two and a half baths, and a basement, it wasn't huge, but it was quite comfortable. It was modest in size with a great yard and wonderful neighbors. As I said, it was bigger than anyplace I have ever lived before and I never imagined needing or even wanting more. I really could have lived there for the rest of my life and been happy. But our new house is bigger. It's bigger by almost 1,000 square feet.

Now I could use all kinds of fancy words to describe our new house such as Herculean, monstrous, gargantuan, or cavernous, but that would just be over-stating and bragging. I'm a simple girl from simple beginnings, so I'll just stick with the word "big". I stuck with this word so much the first day that we unpacked that Chris finally said to me, "Yes! I get it! It's bigger! It's bigger than anyplace you've ever lived! I know! I get it!"

Well, if you had lived in a teensy-weensy townhouse for the last three months, you would be impressed with the fact that after unpacking all of your kitchen wares, you still had two whole unused cabinets too. Even after unpacking all of the things that I rarely used and previously kept stored in our old basement, I still had two whole unused cabinets available.

We made jokes for the first couple of days by mock-echoing everything that we said to each other because we felt so far apart from each other even though we were in the same room. "CHRIS...chris...issss.  Will you please HELP...help...elppp...me with THIS...this...issss?" (Aren't we a hoot?) At one point, he was in the basement and I was on the top floor. I called for him but he couldn't hear me, so I sent him a text message instead. I didn't want to walk that far to talk to him; laziness acquired from living in a small space.

So here's a description of our new house. It's a split level, four bedrooms, two and a half baths, and a basement. It has a fireplace and a wet bar in the family room. It has a laundry room off of the garage and a balcony off of the master bedroom. (I have some funny pictures planned using the balcony.) And it is bigger. But it's also in a low key, down to earth neighborhood. We looked at other houses in more elite neighborhoods that were bigger and that I would use those fancy words to describe, but they would just be too much to clean and this neighborhood and house felt much more comfortable to us. If felt just like home. But bigger.

Of course there are some issues with this house and there have been some unpacking escapades. For one thing, the yard needs a lot of work. It's a wooded lot and the ground is mostly weeds and empty patches with a few blades of grass here and there. At least the weeds are green, so unless you're actually walking on it, you can't tell they are weeds from a distance. Being that I never lived anywhere with my own yard until I married Chris, I don't have much of a green thumb and I've never mowed a lawn in my life, so the yard is sure to be a long term project.

The day after we moved in, the shower knob in the master bath broke and the sink in the master bath has never worked. I bought the parts and I know how to fix it, but I haven't had a chance yet. So although it's a two and a half bath house, we're currently only using one and a half.

The pantry in the kitchen didn't have any shelves, but it had blocks set up to rest shelves on. My first project was buying shelves from Home Depot. I measured the space and, like a good carpenter, I measured again. But I only measure one side of the pantry, not both. Of course, the side I measured was the bigger side, so when I got the shelves home, they didn't fit in the other side. I dug around in the garage and found a saw. I cut small rectangles out of each shelf with the saw and made each shelf fit perfectly. I put in the shelves and loaded them up with all of our food. Feeling proud of myself for my handy work and problem solving skills, I took the saw back to the garage. Guess what I found leaned up against the wall of the garage buried behind all of our boxes. That's right. The original shelves. Oh well. I'm sure that I'll find the perfect use that they'll be a half inch too short for.

While I'm talking about the kitchen, I'd like to add that whoever invented the side-by-side refrigerator-freezer is a moron. If neither side can fit a pizza the right way, what's the point? I'm also not a fan of the built in water dispenser. Is it really too inconvenient to walk a few steps to the sink for water? It takes up too much valuable freezer space. Luckily, we have an extra freezer which we moved from our old house and put in the new basement. The previous owner also left us an extra refrigerator with top freezer in the basement. He told us that it was from Malaysia and asked if we wanted him to leave it for us. We were very appreciative and kept it. What he didn't tell us is that because it's from Malaysia, it has a completely different electrical system and doesn't currently work here. We could do some electrical reconfiguring and make it work, but I'm skeptical about the efficiency and safety. So basically, it's just for decoration.

One last complaint about the appliances: the dishwasher. The bottom basket has a piece broken off. I can order the part, but even with it, I don't like the layout of the baskets. They just don't seem to provide the most efficient use of space for all of the dishes. Maybe it's just not what I'm used to. As for its cleaning ability, it works great, so I should probably stop my complaining and be thankful for the beautiful roof over my head.

We're having fun getting to know our new neighbors and there are plenty of kids to go around. I attempted my first McBeach party the other night. The kids had fun and all of the adults are very friendly, but it takes time to develop that comfortable friendship feeling. The kids from three other families were all here playing in our yard and driveway. The neighborhood parents have nick-named Jaye "The Cruise Director" because of how she took charge of the girls in a friendly way and set up a tea party for all of her new friends. The boys all played baseball and basketball pretty much all day long. And then there were the occasional boys chase the girls, girls chase the boys games. I'm so happy that they are having fun and making friends and I'm looking forward to developing friendships too.