If you’re wondering, unpacking is proceeding slowly, and will grind to a halt tomorrow while we go up to my aunt’s house for a family get-together. But my mom is coming back down with us for a couple days’ visit before she flies home, so maybe we’ll zip through the boxes while she’s here to help.

To all of you who commented or emailed something along the lines of, “Woohoo, you got a house! I was thinking of you/praying for you/hoping you’d gotten one by now,” thank you so very much! I haven’t had great access to the internet and haven’t been able to respond individually like I want to, but please know we appreciate all of those prayers and thoughts and good wishes.

We are quite pleased with the house we have rented. The owners are kind and conscientious. The house itself is larger than what we expected to get for our money, and it’s in excellent repair. We are looking forward to the arrival of the moving truck so we can start to arrange furniture and unpack and make it our home.

But the best—and funniest—thing about this house is its location. It happens to be in the same neighborhood we lived in a decade ago, just a few blocks from our old house. So we already know all the good restaurants, where the library is, the best route to get downtown. We looked at houses all over the city and just lucked into a great house in an area we already knew and loved.

There are more photos than you could possibly want to see in the set New house! on Flickr. You can view this set as a slideshow, which is kinda cool. Just be sure to click on the “Options” link down in the bottom right and check the box for ‘Always show title and description’ if you want to read my explanations.

True, 7 Days actually ended five days ago and I am just now getting around to posting my last photo. What can I say, we were busy finding a place to live and stuff.

While at my aunt’s house, we spent a day in a neighboring town with friends, two of whom are fellow bloggers and one of whom also happened to be participating in 7 Days. When I realized that it was Day 7 and we could take our self-portraits together, it was too good an opportunity to pass up. (If you want to see more photos they’re in my Internet meet real life photoset on Flickr.)

I am slightly amazed I managed to complete this 7 Days run, what with the packing up and moving across the country and house-hunting and all. But in a way, it was nice to have an automatic theme for the week. Thanks once again to Sarah & Lauren for starting the whole thing, and thanks to Heather, Brenda, BabyBug, Heather, Rapunzel and SuperChic for their special guest appearances in my 7 Days photos.