Trials and Tribulations of Moving

It's done! The house is officially ours and we're all moved in. We've still got a lot of unpacking to do, but the important stuff is all put away. We already love several things about our new house. The street we live on is really quiet. Not much traffic, because the road doesn't go anywhere, it just loops around the the same street that it starts on, sort of like a cul-de-sac. We've met several of the neighbors and they all seem very nice. We love having the extra space. And the extra storage, as we have an abundance of closets in our new house. Also, I love love love my new washer and dryer that we had to buy, my new Dyson vacuum cleaner (housewarming gift from my parents), and our new Keurig (housewarming gift from the in-laws). Oh what fun!

But there is still much to be done. First of all, our basement has no furniture. It will be that way for a while, probably, although we do have grandiose plans for it. Also, lots of painting needs to be done. We're starting today with our pink bedroom. Next will probably be the kitchen/dining room, then the living room, and then the boys' rooms. After that I will tackle the wall paper in the basement. This is all going to take quite a while. Oh, and I'd like to also paint the upstairs bathroom sometime. Wow, that sounds like a lot more when I type it all out. I'm going to paint at my leisure, though. It's not something that needs to be done immediately. Also, we're in the process of trying to find a kitchen table. We have one that the owners left for us, but it's WAY too big, and the top is all scratched up and not in great shape. We want a different one right away. (UPDATE: Literally 10 minutes after posting this, I bought a table from the GF Facebook Garage Sale site for a steal! And it's exactly what we were looking for! Yippee!)

On the agenda for next summer is new windows. Not sure if we'll be doing all of them, or just some of them, but it needs to be done. Now that I know how wonderful new windows are, I'm spoiled and want them ASAP.

I feel very stressed and frazzled lately. James and I are trying to do about 1000 things all at once. We're trying to unpack, make small repairs and improvements, organize, as well as do normal things, like, tend to two small children, work, cooking, dishes, laundry, grocery shopping, etc. I am also taking a tax class so that I'll be able to prepare taxes this year. That's two nights a week for eight weeks, two hours each night, and it includes homework. Also, this week, I have another class for work (I need so many training hours every year). Life has been hectic lately, to say the least. We go to bed completely exhausted every night.

But it's worth all the hassle. Soon, we'll be unpacked, organized, painted, etc. and life will be back to normal. We look forward to that.

Moving Day and Tomato Soup

Moving progress: My parents watched the kids for several hours on Saturday so that James and I could pack. Although, we spent most of the time hauling garbage to the trash. We had lots of leftover supplies from various home improvement projects that we needed to dispose of. Instead of taking it to the dump (which is way out there and costs money), we hauled it to a couple of apartment building dumpsters (much closer and free). I don't know if you're supposed to do that or not, but we did. Then we went home and packed up just about the entire kitchen and some miscellaneous stuff. Last night I did some more packing while James kept an eye on the kids. I packed up their clothes and our towels and some of my clothes. The kids only have enough outfits left unpacked to last until Friday, and we only have two sets of towels left to use until then. Also, we sold our kitchen table yesterday, so the kitchen looks very bare.

Today we get to start moving stuff into the garage at our new house. We can't move anything into the house yet for liability reasons, but at least we can get stuff moved out of our current house. We close on our current house at 9am on Friday and we close on our new house at 10am, so there is an hour where we will be homeless. Everything needs to be out of our house by 9am that day.

On Thursday morning, James' parents are coming to town to help us move. His dad has a truck and a trailer, so that will help a lot. That's probably when we will move most of the bigger stuff.

In other news (since all I've been talking about lately is moving), I'm going to try my hand at home-made tomato soup tonight! My friend, Erica, and I went to Boardwalk Bar and Grill one time earlier this year and had grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup. Ever since then, I've wanted to make my own. My dad had a bunch of tomatoes set aside for me to use last week, but when I brought all the ingredients over to my parents' house (I have to make it there because my whole kitchen is in boxes in the garage), we found that the tomatoes had gone bad. :( So then on Saturday, the teacher who I work with, Mrs. Z, called me and said she had just picked some tomatoes from her brother's garden, and had extra that she would bring to school on Monday. Yay! I got a second chance! That was so nice of her! She knew I was planning on making it last week, but the tomatoes were bad. So sweet! I'm so lucky to have had such great teachers to work with. :)

So anyway, it's moving week! This is the last Monday we will be spending in this house. Bittersweet.

P.S. Stay tuned, because I plan to blog about the tomato soup!

More Moving Talk

Well, moving day is fast approaching. 12 days, to be exact, but who's counting? ;)

On Friday, our realtor texted me to let me know that the sellers are okay with us moving stuff into the garage the week of closing. So that means, starting on Monday, October 17th, we'll be moving lots and lots of stuff into the garage, so that on moving day (which is the 21st) we won't have that much left to move, and can focus on getting it all in the house and unpacking. Yay!

I don't want to jinx myself, but this has gone SO smoothly. It's unbelievable. I truly feel that we were meant to have this house. All the stars aligned so perfectly for us.

Yet another reason why we are so very blessed!

And I'm planning a trip to the Cities to visit my good friend, Gina, in November! I'm super excited to (a) see Gina, and (b) go shopping! Ikea and Container Store, here I come! It's gonna be so fun! I am pumped!

Torticollis

Why is it that my kids always get flat heads? Isaac had to wear a helmet for a few months and it killed me. I don't want to go down that road again, but here we are.

At Alex's two month doctor visit, I told his pediatrician that I noticed he always liked to turn his head to the right side. She checked him out and diagnosed him with Torticollis, which is Latin for "twisted neck". She said that the ligaments (or something) on one side of his neck are shorter than on the other side, causing him to favor one side, making that side flatter than the other and pushing that ear forward. I'm not sure if this is what caused Isaac's flat head. It's hard to tell because we didn't notice Isaac's until he was about 6 months old. The doctor said it's good we caught it early, and gave us some neck stretching exercises to do after every diaper change. She said if the stretches don't help, we'll need to bring him to physical therapy, and if that doesn't help, he'll need a helmet.

So is it working? I don't know. I want to think it is, and sometimes I feel like it is, but other times he goes right back to sleeping on his right side. I think I'm going to schedule a doctors appointment for the near future so she can look at it again, and if it's not satisfactory, go forward with the physical therapy.

I seriously loathe the thought of another one of my babies wearing a helmet. Please say a prayer for him.

This is Madness

WHAT were we thinking, trying to move with a little baby and a toddler?! I know it will be worth all of the work, but man is it difficult to get anything packed. First of all, when we actually have some spare time (ha!) to pack a few boxes, it's hard to figure out what to pack. We need most of the stuff in our house. I've been doing a lot of organizing/purging lately. It helps to know what I can pack, and what I can't. I've organized our kitchen, the boys' bedroom closet, and the upstairs. On my "to organize" list is our bedroom closet and the bookcase in the boys' room (which has become a bit of a catch-all). The week before our move is when we're really going to be hardcore packing and living bare bones from that time on. We're talking paper plates, plastic ware, only a few kids' toys, sleeping on the mattress on the floor type living. Should be a good time.

In other news, I went back to work today. I was slightly looking forward to it, but only slightly. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, except for one small thing. When I got to work this morning, the teacher (Mrs. Z) greeted me at the door and told me that she needed to go home because she had some sort of stomach bug. Grrreeeaaat. So it was me and a substitute teacher all day, and neither of us really had any idea what was going on. It was... interesting. Hopefully Mrs. Z is feeling better tomorrow.

It was hard for me to leave my sweet little Alex at daycare today. :( I don't remember it being this hard with Isaac, but that's probably because when Isaac went to daycare for the first time, I was in the hospital hoping that they didn't have to send me to Minneapolis for more procedures because of my gallblader surgery. I was a bit preoccupied. But Alex did fine, of course, and so did I.

So that's what's been going on in our household lately. It's been a crazy ride, but we're so excited to get settled into our new house! Only 2.5 more weeks! Woohoo!