OK so I'm a pretty sentimental person in general. In my life, there is a period of mourning for sold cars, favorite jeans that have fallen apart, even a good blow dryer that bites the dust (you know the kind that dries your hair fast, but doesn't fry the ends, and has a quiet motor. Yeah, hard to replace.) So leaving our first apartment together was difficult for me. While Mike is feeling a little homesick for his family, I am missing our apartment and the routine we were in there. It's where we started the habit of reading scriptures and praying together every day, where we cooked Sunday dinners (the smoke alarm going off every time and not because anything was burning), where we lived next door to a 30 year old published author with 2 small (girly) dogs. I had a hard time packing the boxes to leave. I look forward to having a house and raising children, but for now each place we live in will be our home. No matter how many times we move, I'll do my best to make our apartment/bungalow/house, a home/comfortable haven. We'll have memories associated with each and I'm sure I'll get misty-eyed each time we pack up. Here are some pics of our 1st apartment the day before moving in.
Some memories:
We got the keys to the place on December 31st so our New Year's Eve was spent watching Iron Man 2 in the new place. All we had in the apartment was the TV, Xbox, a couple blankets, a bottle of Martinelli's and two 2011 champagne glasses. We fell asleep on the floor watching the movie, missed the clock striking 12 and went home after we woke up around 12:30am. Exciting start to 2011.
On January 1st we moved all my stuff into the apartment and I lived there until the wedding day. It was below zero the day I moved in. Ugh. Bless the poor souls with good hearts who helped us in that endeavor. The next day after church, Mike and I went back to the apartment to make lunch and watch a movie. Boxes were everywhere, nothing put away yet. We were stopped by the maintenance guy in the courtyard who asked if we had water damage in our place. I'm sure our confused faces answered the question. We had no idea what he was talking about. He informed us that a pipe had burst in the apartment above us and that there was damage to that one as well as the apartment below us. As we walked up the stairs I felt almost certain we'd find water everywhere, but we didn't! The maintenance guy concluded that the water must have run straight down the wall to the first floor and skipped us miraculously. I was feeling pretty lucky/blessed as we talked and made lunch. We blessed the food and that's when I started hearing the drip, drip, drip. It was quiet and Mike didn't hear it at first. I kept hearing it so I scoped it out and sure enough ... drips from the ceiling into my box of shoes. No damage. It had just started so I moved the box, grabbed a bowl to catch the water and we went out to find our maintenance man. Soon, in another location, started another drip. Then another. Then another. We had a straight line of bowls on the floor and table catching the many drips. The maintenance guy came, grabbed his forehead and swore. He came back with a bucket, but not before the ceiling gave way and dumped about 30 gallons of water onto our floor and table. We heard it start to go so we jumped up and Mike started hurling boxes to me over the couch trying to get them out of the way. We were in shock. Mr. Fix It came in with his trusty bucket and started poking around another section of the ceiling. About 20 more gallons fell from the sky. My first thought was, "And now begin the Reintjes' adventures." Long story short, he had to cut a 3 foot by 4 foot hole in the ceiling, patch it over the course of the next week, have the carpet cleaners come twice and we had to run an industrial sized fan for about 3 days. And the "scar"/terrible patch job was always there to remind us. Good beginnings :)
