One Week In

Today marks one full week in our new house. I have my computer back, sitting on a painted and moved up from the basement desk, still surrounded by boxes, of course. But, I do have pictures uploaded from our road trip east and will get some up here soon. Tonight, I am too beat from opening boxes of books and trying to find a home for those books. I think we have too many books! We hung out here all day, while a plumber worked to replace the water heater, tub faucet, and then the kitchen sink faucet. He was just supposed to come to replace the leaking tub, but last night C smelled gas near the water heater and had the gas company come out. They shut down the appliance and told us we needed a new one. The landlords were planning to get us a new one anyway, now they just had a really good excuse to do it now! All went well with the replacing of the water heater and tub faucet and the guy headed out. When I went to turn on the water in the kitchen, nothing came out. So back he came to deal with that. Gotta love old houses! And you gotta love not actually owning this one and having great landlords!

The girls and I spent some time watching old videos of them as little baby girls on my old camcorder. I pulled it out for E as she is big into photography and movie making right now. It was not working well last I used it about four years ago, but it worked fine tonight. I want to figure out how to get the movies onto my computer and make dvds. I have my eye on some software from Adobe that can make really great movies and I would like to play with that. I'll share some here, of course. Especially ones that have E as a bitty baby girl singing Twinkle Twinkle, Little Tar! So cute!

Somehow, A got interested in learning to speak French. I can't remember what sparked it, but we talked about it a lot on the road getting here. When I found it, and we had the computer set up for it, I set up the Rosetta Stone demo disc I had picked up somewhere years ago. The whole family has had fun playing around with the different languages. A has a real apptitude for French and E was sounding darn good in Dutch. We plan to get the whole version for French and learn as a family. I took three years in Highschool and remember quite a lot, but I couldn't get by in Paris if you dropped me there today. Ok, I think I would survive, but I would sure feel pretty silly. Of course, actually going to France is a great way to learn to speak the language! It is high on our family travel plans, for sure.

Ok, one picture before I go. Guess where we went on Sunday?

E took this one. I told C I want to come back when Dr. Ron Paul is in residence!

Got Boxes?

I DO! More than anyone should ever need....
So, we have been in our house for five days now, and I have maybe, MAYBE, half of the boxes unpacked. I am sitting in a chair with my husband's laptop on my lap writing this, surrounded by boxes and stuff that has no home yet. Oh, joy. I want my computer, but I need to set up my desk first, which needs to be painted and then brought up from the basement, then furniture and boxes must be moved to make room for the desk, and more boxes must be opened to find all the pieces of my computer, then the stuff that is found alongside the computer pieces must find a temporary home because it would be too much to ask that a permanent home be ready for it all, now wouldn't it? Never mind the mountains of paper that come out of said boxes and take over the house before we get a chance to smooth it out and stack it and stash it in the attic for the next move, in the indeterminate future, which did I tell you will be our LAST? I swear an entire forest was killed to make all the paper those mover guys stuffed into all those boxes. I cannot see all that paper go into a landfill! Must. Reuse. Paper. And. Boxes.
Seriously, all is going as well as can be expected. It is just a lot slower a process than I remembered. And a lot more boxes.

We're Heeeere!

Today we arrived at our new home. And it only took 7 days of driving to get here! We stopped in AL to visit C's family for a day, in a change of our original plans to ski in CO. Mother Nature did not like that plan, and we benefitted from taking the southern route across the country. Tomorrow we prep the house for the arrival of all our stuff on Monday. And Tuesday we will spend our first night in our new home. I can't wait for my bed!! The cat was amazingly great as a road tripping feline and she is settled in the house for the night, glad not to see the cat carrier or car again. The girls were great travelers, as well, with E only complaining about being bored about 50 times. Seriously, we had a good trip. We had fun collecting keychains from the states we passed through and learning how to spell them all. A learned to spell Mississippi as we were crossing the river into Memphis! We really know how to make learning relevant! ;-)

I miss everyone we left behind and E has to call all her friends every day to tell them she misses them. I don't really want to think about how I am going to feel when I no longer have so much to do to get settled in. :-(

I'll be back with pictures and more thoughts after I get my computer set up in the house. Later alligators!