Apartment vs. house

As our move-in date is right around the corner, I'm getting a little sentimental about this apartment. Here are the things I'll miss about this place:

1) Passing the maintenance buck - When the water heater overflowed onto our kitchen floor during the Thanksgiving weekend, we didn't have to ask around to find a good plumber. We just filled out the maintenance request form and someone was there that day to fix it.

2) Community living - Although there are some odd characters in the complex, most of the people are very friendly. I know Lucas will miss being so close to lots of older kids who play in the courtyard. Someone plays the saxophone in the late afternoon sometimes and it is very relaxing. It's reminiscent of living in SF, pre dot-com when people took time to do things like play music.

3) Multiple loads of laundry - Mostly I just do one load at a time in our laundry room here. But on several occasions, I've loaded up 2-3 washers at the same time.

4) Nearby tennis courts - Lucas, Maggie, and I have had a lot of fun, just walking across the way to play on the city tennis courts. Especially on rainy days, it's a fun, semi-clean way to tire out all of us.On the other hand, I'm so excited to move back to our house. It will be bigger with the addition, and with refinished floors and new paint on the old parts of the house, it will seem totally new.

Here are the top reasons why I'm looking forward to moving back in:

1) Sleeping in a bed - When we rented this place, we thought we could just sleep on the floor, on blankets of course. I'm really looking forward to sleeping on our ultra-comfy mattress again. Although, I don't know what 10 months of storage will do to our latex mattress. We shall see.

2) More privacy - Not that I don't LOVE to be around Lucas and Kevin, but sometimes it's nice to escape for a few moments all to myself within the walls of my own home.

3) Lounging - So we don't have a bed, we also don't have our couches here either. I think lack of other seating has contributed to my reader's block. I used to read two books a month and I haven't been able to finish a book since we moved to the apartment.

4) Easy outdoor access for Maggie - Maggie has been such a trooper in this apartment. But she's spent a lot of time at my mom's. She misses being outside on sunny days. Because frankly, that's all she does during the day, lounges around outside, and pees and poops at her leisure.

5) A normal kitchen - The kitchen here is really suited to a single person, or a couple who doesn't do much cooking. There is just enough working space to dry our dishes and house our toaster oven, leaving no room for cooking or baking. We never brought over our dishes or flatware, so we have Lucas' plastic bowls and plates, a couple pieces of kid's flatware from IKEA and very limited cooking and bakeware. Plus, we will be moving back to a brand-new kitchen with a dishwasher!!!