Good gravy. I finally have internet! We are all moved over, as are the furry ones. They seem to like the house a lot, although the little ones were overwhelmed and shy at first. We are mostly unpacked but still have miscellaneous home repairs and painting to do. I leave for Maine in a week- ack! Pictures of the gussied up house soon, but it's too messy right now.

Another one bites the dust. Jen's engaged too :) Congratulations to the happy couple! People have been getting engaged left and right lately. Until now I've only been to 3 weddings, but I should double that by next year.

Our house is enormous. I'm not bragging- I'm complaining! There are sooooo many walls to paint, and we're doing 2 coats to get full coverage. I've been painting (or prep work for painting) for 6-7 hours for the last three days and we only have the kitchen, 2 bedrooms, and the trim in the third bedroom done. The kitchen is a pale purple, and it looks awesome. The bedrooms are all pale gray/silver, and look nice and dreamy, like sleeping in the clouds. Still on the list: finish last bedroom, living/dining room (huge), 3 bathrooms, hallway, 2 stairwells, and laundry room. And that's just the painting- we still have to move all our stuff. We've been moving things that will fit in my car with each trip over, then Ryan's dad is coming to help us with the furniture next weekend.

It's crazy to think that all the house is ours. I feel like "what did I do to deserve all this?" I finally get the nice house painted all pretty like I wished I had while growing up. It would be a very empty house with just me and Ryan, but the kitties will fill it up nicely with their frantic scurrying around. They're going to be so happy!

We has a housie! And I'm exhausted.

Neither Ryan nor I could fall back asleep this morning when the kittens woke us up at 5:30, so we got up and stayed up, which definitely has something to do with me being exhausted. The closing was at 9am, and since I'd been warned so many times to expect to sign a lot of papers, it didn't feel like that many. In fact, we were done by 10. And Brian awesomely gave us a thank you card with a $50 Home Depot gift card. We'll probably use him again when we sell in 5 years or so.

The one big annoyance was that the previous owner took the refrigerator, washer, and dryer with him, even though in the contract it said those would stay. Turns out he was confused, and he arranged to have them delivered back that day. The fridge has an icemaker, and since the door to the freezer had been off the hinges in transport, the tube for water got pretty beat up. We suspect that it will leak once we hook it up, although we haven't yet because we need to paint the kitchen.

So we went to Home Depot and spent $500 after a 10% discount on everything AND the $50 gift card. AND we purposely didn't get much of our paint (it will be on sale later this week), lawnmower, vacuum, etc. Oy. Then we came back and did painting prep. Our plan is to paint the whole kitchen and the bedrooms' trim tomorrow, plus more prep on other rooms. Pics later.

Gremlin, Choco, and Ryan say hi. Ryan's taken to calling Gremlin "Grem-Grem," whereas I prefer, "Gremlin from the Kremlin." Choco occasionally gets, "Choc-Choc," as his version of Grem-Grem. It's been 2 weeks and they are definitely much larger. Maybe 1.5 lbs instead of 1? Not much poundwise, but a big percentage. Choco is our sweetie pie. He likes to cuddle. Gremlin is always on the go and is too busy to cuddle.

We do a final walk-through of the house Thursday night, then close on Friday morning. After "basking" in the house for a little while, we'll probably jump right in to the painting prep and spend the weekend painting. We'll be back and forth between the house and the apartment for the rest of May. Can't wait!

Observations on Choco and Gremlin:
1. I can't believe how much we have to clean their 2 litterboxes!
2. I can't believe how much they eat! (see also #1)
3. I can tell at a glance that they're getting bigger.
4. Jibblies has attempted to lay the smack down a couple times because the little ones keep bugging him.
5. They are already very affectionate and meow incessantly if they want attention.
6. They purr loudly if you scratch their heads.
7. Gremlin has super-thick fur.
8. With the amount of cat hair we're going to have as they get bigger, someone should get us the Dyson from our wedding registry.
9. Three cats is too many for a 2 bedroom apartment, even if 2 of the cats are tiny.
10. They're cute!

We get the house one week from tomorrow! Yippee! Then I can go all Martha Stewart and paint, garden, and decorate. And the less fun part- move all our stuff. We bought new furniture for the guest room and it's being delivered, so at least we don't have to haul that upstairs. The guest room is going to be nicer than our room, in my opinion. But- we got a queen size for the guest room as well, so we can mix and match the beds/linens/mattresses. One comfy bed is too small for 2 adults and 3 kitties, so the remaining kitties will have a nice spot, too.

We've locked in the wedding date: May 31, 2008! I am seriously considering having Wegmans do our flowers. There's a full service floral department in our store and I loooove the arrangements they have every time we get groceries. In fact, that's where I first fell in love with all the spiky flowers. I practically have the entire wedding planned already. Although it hasn't all been ordered, I know where it's coming from and what it's going to look like. Now that we've got the date for sure, our save the dates will be in the mail soon. With them going out over a year in advance, people are going to think we're crazy, but we want to increase everyone's chances of being able to attend. And Ryan's a planner, plus uncertainty makes me nervous.

More kitty pics are up on Flickr. These ones Jen took. She had much more success getting the little ones to look at the camera. Plus an amazing action shot of Jibblies.

So I took them to the vet yesterday. Turn out that our little bundles of cuteness are also little bundles of FLEAS! Nothing that some Advantage can't take care of, but it cost us a little extra $. Otherwise they're in good health. Like I suspected, Gremlin is a girl and Choco is a boy. She was just under a pound (15 oz.) and he was just over (16.1 oz.). The vet estimated their age at 5 weeks.

3 kitties is quite a lot to keep track of. Maybe Ryan's right that we shouldn't get any more after this. Although once the kittens are more autonomous they won't need such vigilant supervision...

I ordered my dress yesterday! Now if Ryan leaves me I have something to wear when I'm an old lady and have hundreds of kitties roaming my house. It's the one I had my eye on since my first bridal magazine:

























I definitely knew when I tried it on. No hemming and hawing. Ryan went with me to the store, so he's seen me in it. I'm not superstitious like that.

Kittens make me soooooo happy :D They're much less skittish and more adventurous as time goes on. We've even let Jibblies mingle with them while we're around to supervise. Jibblies is a scaredy cat and is very timid around them. I think he's just confused as to where they came from and is getting used to the idea of sharing me and Ryan with other cats. We're not allowing unsupervised mingling yet, just to be on the safe side. I can't say that Jibblies wouldn't hurt a fly because he's been known to eat flies and other bugs :)

Jen visited yesterday on her way to Atlantic City. We had lunch, played with the kitties, looked at wedding magazines, went to try on wedding dresses (well, they only let me since she didn't have a separate appointment), and went to dinner. It was fun to hang out and do the girl talk thing.

Of the dresses yesterday, the one that stood out was this dress. I would definitely get it in white rather than ivory/off-white. I mainly like the plunging back- it was dramatic. The front was very flattering, and I liked that it was a more lightweight fabric. While I do like it a lot, I still haven't had a visceral reaction to any dresses. The only concerning thing is that there's a sale this weekend where I'd get $150 off if I ordered it then. I have an appointment at a different shop tonight (one that carries the va-va-voom dress I showed earlier), and if nothing there strikes a chord then I'll probably bring Ryan to see the above dress this weekend and possibly get it.

Being done with finals, even though they weren't very stressful, has improved my happiness level too. And we close on the house 2 weeks from tomorrow! Life is pretty darn good if my main problem is picking the best dress.

Fantastically wonderful news!!!!!!

The H0ffman-Dickers0n household got a tiny bit bigger last night.

Tiny times two!

Introducing Choco:















And Gremlin:














A couple less blurry pics:


























Ordinarily we'd have adopted adults from the shelter, since kittens at shelters usually have no trouble finding homes. But, I got a mass email from someone at school last night saying that there were cute stray kittens under their porch that needed homes. The rest is history! I'm not 100% sure what their sexes are, but they look different, so I think there's one of each. Probably Gremlin is a she and Choco is a he, but I could be wrong. Choco is short for Chocolate. S/he's a severe cutie with a striped little belly. Gremlin has a weird gray-orange mottled coat with white paws and a white belly. S/he's the "ugly" one but has the more outgoing personality.

They've done some cute pouncing on each other, but for the most part have just been eating and getting settled in. We're keeping them separate from Jibblies for now... when we first brought the cat carrier with them inside, Jibblies peeked in the front and Gremlin got so scared that s/he vomited! And then Choco ate it! That's some combo of gross and cute, which equals funny.

I'm estimating that they're about a month old, but then again I could be wrong. They're going to the vet in a couple days for shots and an exam. Then I'll have a better estimate of the age and a definitive answer on the sexes.