Goodbye Des Moines, Hello Philadelphia!

Moving is a lot of work! There was so much to do and so little time. Fortunately we have awesome friends in Des Moines that were soooooo helpful. So many people offered to watch our kids, make us dinner, help us clean, and come pack up our truck. Justin's parents also came out to help us pack and drive the truck and van out to Philly. We would have never been able to get everything done without out all of the help! 

Saying goodbye was so hard. I still miss Des Moines and the people we knew there a lot, but I feel blessed for the time we had there. We made sure to spend as much time with our friends as we could before we left.

 

Kobe and Lily adjusted to the move just fine and have made plenty of new friends, but they still talk about their best friends they left behind.

The drive to Philadelphia was only supposed to take 18 hours according to google maps but in the end, due to construction and traffic, it took well over 20 very LONG hours. But in the end we made it and there were even people here waiting to help us unload the truck. What a welcome sight!

This is our house, the gray one on the left. Some people in the ward were trying to sell it, but hadn't been successful. They had moved 3 weeks before and had decided to rent instead of sell.

  

The view, from our front door:

To the left.

To the right.

I'm not going to lie, I felt so claustrophobic at first with the amount of neighbors we have. Those pictures only show the front. In back of our house is a small alley and then the back of as many houses are directly behind us. All the streets in our neighborhood are like this. Also in the pictures you see the cars parked on both sides of the road. These pictures were taken at 10am when everyone is at work. At night you are lucky to be able to find a place to park on either side of the street. Like I said, claustrophobic!

The entryway from the front door:

The entryway from the living room:

The view from the entryway into the rest of the main floor. Everything is straight back, the living room, dining room, then the kitchen in the very back.

Living room to the right:

 Living room to the left:

The corner:

The shelves:

The dining room to the right:

The dining room to the Left (i.e. the "office")

 Kitchen straight on from doorway:

Kitchen to right:

 Upstairs is the bathroom and two bedrooms. I didn't take a picture of the bedrooms because they are not decorated. We decided not to hang any pics or decorations so we didn't have to patch any walls up there next summer when we move. So here's an ever-so-exciting picture of the bathroom:

A view looking down the treacherous stairs to the basement:

And down in the basement is the washer and dryer, a storage closet, and the toy room, which looks just as is should MESSY!

And that is our new home.  We really love it! Although I have decided it takes a while to get used to a new flow that comes with moving into a new space. So far, we really like it in Philadelphia and have enjoyed getting to know new people and finding out the fun things to do in the city! 

More posts to come on things we've done since we've been here!