The last few months have been a blur. Chandler and living in the Stone Oaks apartments feels like a million years ago with how action packed the last 10 weeks have been. We have finally fully unpacked. About half of the rooms are properly set up, but there is still a lot to do.
For instance, we took a week off at the start of May and spent half the time going back and forth to Lowes to buy and install handles on our 59 cabinets and drawers. We have been talking to pool companies about backyard landscaping. We have been buying and assembling (mostly non-distressed) furniture since we showed up with frankly very little since where we lived was much smaller than where we are now.
As we are now much closer to the desert proper being up in the mountains and right on a desert wash, we have also had to reckon with a lot more of nature than we did in Chandler. For instance, our cats found this little fellow for us:
On a warmer, fuzzier note, Chris has finally fulfilled a life long dream of getting a giant telly now that we have a big enough house to justify it. It’s a 75″ Sony Bravia and we are really enjoying watching Netflix in 4K on it:
The desert has been blooming:
We have also been trying out some cool new tech. In particular, I love our little vacuum/sweeper robot. We have actually only used a normal vacuum twice for two very particular occasions in the new house. We set it going in the main area of the house (living room/kitchen/hallways) every night at 11 PM. This has kept the main living area very clean without any effort. I let it loose in the carpeted bedroom areas once a week and that seems to be enough. I can highly recommend it.
We also tried out a robot window cleaner. This isn’t quite as easy since a lot more set up is involved in each use. It is actually no longer available on Amazon, but the brand is Gecko.
Here’s the video of the various interactions with the nature of the Sonaran desert that we’ve had, plus some cute cat stuff: