Everything Since We Moved...

Really the title should be, Everything Since I Blogged Last, but oh well. I thought for a half second about trying to make several different posts for catching up, but lets face it, the last two weeks are pretty much a big blur as far as what happened when. I feel like I'm doing good getting down the things I do remember, so here it is. In no particular order. :)

Suzy did preschool two weeks ago. She talked to the kids about how in the Spring baby animals are born. She read them some stories about animals. Then they each got to pick a different animal mask. They took turns hiding their masks so the others could go on a hunt to find them. They practiced their animal sounds, and sang some really cute songs too.

This picture does a really good job of describing my feelings as a mother sometimes...the old ball and chain...it's a good thing they're so cute. I literally dragged Ivan around the house while he was holding onto my leg, so I could get the much needed packing done. My poor neglected children...

Here's another great shot of Ivan. Aaron and I thought he looked so adorable in his bath towel, but he was not very happy to have his picture taken, or in general for that matter. One defining characteristic of this move, my children have been staying up WAY too late, and not getting the ideal amount of nap time in. We've been pretty cranky around here. And it doesn't help that I've been running around like a chicken with my head cut off, trying to get everything ready to move, and then trying to get everything unpacked so we can get back to our normal lives...whatever that is, right?

Things went reasonably smoothly with the move, although there was the constant confusion of when exactly we were going to be allowed to move in. The original date we'd talked about was the 26th, the last Saturday in March. We wanted this day because we had to be out of our place by the 31st and we wanted a Sat. to move so that Aaron didn't have to take a day off of work to do it. They called us on Tuesday night and told us we were good to go for Saturday, all we needed to do was come and do a walk through with them. The husband said his wife would call back to schedule the walk through. She called back Wed. night and was majorly stressed out talking 400 miles per hour to Aaron about how there was no possible way she'd be able to have the house ready by Saturday because of a million things that hadn't gone the way she thought they would, on and on. Aaron asked if we might be able to just have the garage to put our big stuff, since we had people coming to help on Sat. That was questionable. In the end, she decided she was majorly stressed and that she'd sleep on it, and look at the situation again in the morning and let us know when we could move.

Thursday night she called and said they'd been up all night working on the house, and had called the ward and gotten help, and that we could move in Sat. Relief. We went to do a walk through Thursday night. The lady was super high strung and up-tight, I'm sure from stress, but it didn't make things any easier. They made some (what Aaron and I thought were very minor changes) to the contract, but acted like they were a super big deal. Then she mentioned that she'd probably be in and out on Saturday finishing a few things, but that she hoped to be out by noon so we wouldn't have to see her. Aaron said we'd planned on getting as early of a start as possible, and we'd probably be bringing the first load in by noon. Another high stress situation, she explained that no, we were not allowed to be in before noon. We were paying starting at noon, and we'd have until noon to be out the last day, whenever we decided to move. Huh? That didn't make any sense at all to us, but she was very adamant that that was how it was going to be.

Anyways, Saturday morning we had lots of great help from friends and family. We got to Springville slightly before noon, and sat in the church parking lot for about 8 minutes just to make sure we didn't show up until we were supposed to. *Roll eyes* But things went really smoothly after that. We found a note on the counter with a bottle of Martinellie's welcoming us, and giving us a few last instructions. Which makes me think, that (hopefully) our land lords really are nice, down to earth people, but that they just don't cope well under stress and that they hadn't planned their time very well for how long it was going to take them to move, and that's why they were so stressed. I think we're going to give them a break, but we'll probably walk on egg shells the first little while just to make sure all is well.

Aaron's twin brother Kelly and his wife Esther, had their beautiful little baby boy Asher (LOVE the name by the way), a week before we moved. So a lot of Aaron's family ended up planning to be in town the week right after our move so they could see the baby. We are always happy to see Aaron's family, and we'll take them absolutely whenever we can get them, but I'll admit I was a little stressed out to be having house guests with my house still in boxes. Mostly because I like having house guests, and always want everything to be as perfect and comfortable as possible, and I didn't feel like I could give it my best shot with most everything I own still in some unidentified box somewhere.  The result was a three-day mad-dash to get, at least the down stairs of my house, into some sort of live-able state. I feel like we ish-succeeded.

Lisa's family stayed first. They are on their way down south to look at houses. Lincoln was positively delighted to have his cousins (a concept he's just starting to understand) staying at his house. He idolized Lisa's kids. And they were so good with him, and Ivan and Adelia too.

Saturday morning, Lisa and I took her two oldest boys to the morning session of conference. It was a lot of fun. Her two youngest and all our kids, stayed home with Aaron. They had fun playing in the sandbox, and with the Mag-Neatos and Wedgits. Thank you Spencer for rekindling my kids love for their Mag-Neatos. They'd gotten a little bored with them, but Spencer taught them some new things to do with them, and now they are all the rage again. :)

Sunday morning we were surprised to wake up and see four inches of snow in our yard! Very first thing, even before breakfast, the kids all went out to play. They had a great time. Then we made blueberry waffles, and listened to conference as best we could. (We didn't have Internet at that point, and we don't have a TV. We tried to borrow an Internet code from a neighbor, but the connection was pretty slow so only the audio was working.)

Sunday night we went to birthday dinner and Uncle Richard's and Aunt Debbie's. Then Stacey and Rob and family came to stay the night. In the morning Bennett "taught" Lincoln how to play chess/checkers. They had such a good time. It was fun to see Ivan and Jeremiah interact, since they are the same age. They got along pretty well for both being two year olds. :) And Audrey was so good to play with Adelia, and hold her, and kiss her good night. I wish everyone lived closer so we got to see each other more often.

Monday afternoon my Mom came down with Bryan and Emily's little girl Penny. Bryan and Emily had come to town quickly for a funeral, and my mom was watching Penny. We were glad to see them, even if for only a couple minutes. Lincoln passed on his newly acquired checkers knowledge to Penny, who was happy to learn. They were so cute.

And ya, that's what we've been up to the last two weeks. We're looking forward to spending some time with Aaron's mom here in the next couple days, and going to a few baby blessings. Good times. Some day, I'll finish unpacking my house and try to get our life back in order...and when I do, I'll post some pictures of the house. :)