Our house is officially ours!

(I know I'm very behind in posts, so I apologize for that. I'm going to try and catch up a little--posts might not show up in the right order, but you'll get the drift.)

After leaving Hawaii on Sept 1st, we arrived in North Carolina on Sept 2nd. Dan was pretty good on the flights, but he didn't want to go to sleep on the Honolulu to Atlanta leg. When he finally calmed down, he slept like a champ, but it took awhile to get to that point. Luckily, there was a kid in the row behind us that was even more of a disaster so no one complained about us!

We picked up my mom from the airport in Wilmington, then headed to Holly Ridge to do the final walkthrough of our new home on Wednesday afternoon. For the most part, everything was perfect--just a few little paint touchups and things like that. No deal-breakers or anything, so we signed the paperwork on Thursday morning and received the keys and are looking forward to life in small-town North Carolina!

Daniel seems to like his new digs, especially the fact that it's furniture-free and has a big echo whenever he talks loudly. Which is all the time. He crawled around everywhere and explored all the rooms. My mom took him for several walks through the neighborhood so he actually knows his way around better than Zach or I do at this point. According to the builders, there aren't a lot of other kids yet, but the ones that do live in the neighborhood are really young, like Dan. I'm looking forward to meeting our neighbors when we get back! (We already know one neighbor--the guy building the house behind us went to Zach's high school and to Vanderbilt with Zach's brother. Small world.)

My favorite thing so far about the house is the landscaping. It is beautiful! We have gorgeous roses, magnolias, azaleas, and lots of other things that I need learn the names of. And how to take care of them because I've never had a yard of my own before! We ordered plantation shutters for the whole house and I think that they're really going to complete the cottage look when they're installed. We'll be ready for visitors soon, so start making plans!

Exterior shots:

My mom counted four different types of butterflies just in the short time we were at the house:




Interior shots, starting with Dan's navy room:

The view from the master bedroom:




Where we'll be spending a lot of our time: the front porch. We just need to get some rocking chairs out there and we'll be all set.