Well, hello there! April 28, 2008

It has been a long while again. I get so busy, I haven’t been online much, and I just don’t even think about popping in here.

Things are going fairly well. No, we still aren’t moved, but we’re getting there. Only 5 weeks to go until we move all the way – and we can’t wait! Of course, as fast as time is going, we’ll be down to the last week and rushing around to get everything done, lol. We’ve been up at the house all weekend long every weekend lately, working on stuff there. We have the walls in Princess’s room painted, just have to put wallpaper up (on one wall) and paint the trim. The color she picked out looks just beautiful on the walls. 🙂 This weekend we’ll get the wallpaper up (*fingers crossed*) and get started on Peanut’s room. If we don’t get the master bedroom painted before we move, it won’t be the end of the world, but I want to make sure the kids’ rooms are done.

We’ve also been working outside when we can. We really enjoyed last week’s beautiful weather! Hubby mowed the front yard yesterday – took him a few hours to do with the push mower. We’re really going to have to get a lawn tractor one day. I cleaned up one flower bed in the front yard, and my fingers have been itching to get started on cleaning up the landscaping/flower beds by the road, but I have to stay focused on getting the inside stuff done when I can. There will be all summer to worry about cleaning up the yard! 🙂

I don’t remember if I mentioned it before or not, but we have a pair of muskrats that live in our pond. We like to watch them swim around. Yesterday I went for a walk around the pond, and had great fun watching the pollywogs darting about in the shallows. The house is on a main road, and there is a condo complex beyond the back side of our property, but there is still a lot of nature to be found. It is so nice just to stand on the deck, and just listen. There are birds everywhere (including the mama pheasant that lives under the hedge in the side yard flower garden), and deer that have been brave enough to come right up to the house (hoof prints galore all over the yard).

We’ll all be glad to have the move over with, so we can start living life there. If not for school, we’d be finishing up the move in the next couple of days. Anyway, that’s all that’s been going on. Pretty much everything we do revolves around the new house in one way or another!

I’m off to check on dinner. I’ll be back around again sometime, hopefully sooner rather than later, but I’m not going to make any promises. 😉 ttfn!

getting there September 17, 2007

Well, we’re ever so slowly getting settled in. It’s going to take a while. I’d like to get it done faster, but I can’t afford to take another week off work to stay home and unpack!

There is lots to talk about, but I’m still not up to going over the move much – suffice it to say that things didn’t go well, we didn’t have enough help or enough time, I broke my foot, and we ended up having to leave some things behind – including something that we recently found out had been our most valuable possession. Makes me sick to my stomach, but as hubby says, we have to just get over it – we had no way of knowing, and would have been hard pressed to move the thing anyway (though if we’d known, we’d have found a way).

The new house is okay. It has a lot of problems, some of which are rather large, and will make the winter interesting, but the kitchen sink is fixed, and we have a sink in the bathroom, which is more than we had when we moved in, so that’s progress. We love the space here. That will be the thing that we will miss the most if/when we move again. We lived in an apartment for 10 years, then a very small house for the last year – and have nearly 2200 square feet here. Wow! I know that’s not the biggest thing out there, but to us, it is practically palatial. Most of the acreage is given over to thistles and burdock at the moment. If we decide to stay on, we’ll make an effort to reclaim some of that, but for now, we’ll just worry about maintaining the primary yard.

The kids really like their new school. Princess has already made a friend or two, and Peanut is very much enjoying kindergarten. She is disgusted every weekend when she “has to have two days off school,” lol. I don’t suppose that attitude will last forever, though, so I’ll enjoy it while I can. Speaking of Peanut – she’s going to be FIVE on Thursday. Holy Toledo, time is zooming right on by! I can’t believe she’s that old already – and she’s growing like a weed. She’s shot up several inches in the last little while. We’re taking her to this Chinese restaurant she likes – it has an outdoor garden and koi pond, which I know is the big draw. Then, Sunday, we’ll have her Tinkerbell party at mil’s house. Not many people will be there – half my family will be up north for my Grandma’s birthday, but there is no point rescheduling. It’s difficult to get everyone together anymore, even on the major holidays.

Oh – hubby and I went to see the latest Die Hard movie over the weekend (Live Free or Die Hard). Liked it very much, not, I suppose, that that is a big surprise. When it comes to movies, we’re pretty easy. 🙂

Anyway, I guess that’s all for now. I need to figure out what I’m going to fix for dinner, and check on the girls (probably not in that order. They’re being awfully quiet upstairs…). Have a good one. I’m glad to be back – I’ve missed all of you!

Moving… slowly… August 26, 2007

We didn’t get much of anything for the move accomplished yesterday. We made two (both vehicles each time) trips to pick up some things that were being donated to my workplace. We benefit from that, in that we get a free couch and loveseat (not my style, really, but as we need them, and have no money, beggars can’t be choosers, and they’ll be fine for now). Those haven’t gone out to the farmhouse yet – we left them at work for the time being, because the farmhouse stinks so bad yet I don’t want any fabric-covered furniture or clothing there. When hubby gets home from church, we’re going to take over the (empty) cedar chest, the wooden rocking chairs, the vanity, and a couple of fans. We’re going to take the plastic off all the windows, and see what we can open up, to try to air the place out. It just reeks. Three guys have lived there for two years, with everything shut up, chain smoking. On top of that, the dog was in the house all the time, shedding terribly. It’s disgusting. We also found a “present” for us in our bedroom, as the last night the dog was there, no one was there to let him out. Lovely. *rolls eyes*

After that, it will be back home, to continue packing, etc. We’ve got a long way to go, as far as moving things goes. Much of it will have to be done the last couple of days, once we get some cleaning done over there, and the stink out of the air as much as we can.

Oh – getting back to yesterday. After we made the pickup trips, we came home and had lunch – leftovers from the nice meal I’d made the night before – probably the last of the real big cooking I’ll do in this house, aside from the pot of homemade spaghetti sauce I have going at the moment with fresh tomatoes from the garden. (Friday night I made turkey breast, homemade smashed potatoes, corn on the cob, and something akin to ratatouille with tomatoes, summer squash, green peppers and zucchini.)

After lunch, we headed to the hospital to see our new niece/cousin. She was born some time after 8pm Friday night, via an emergency c-section. 7 pounds, 13 ounces, and 21 inches long. She is, of course, absolutely beautiful. Tiny and perfect, with a thick thatch of hair – she looks like she’s been to her mommy’s salon already. She’s got dark brown hair, tipped with blonde highlights! We didn’t get home from the hospital until early evening, and by then, we were all pretty much exhausted, and I was frustrated and upset by the whole move thing (I was at a place where I couldn’t figure out what to do next, my brain just couldn’t wrap around it anymore), so not much got accomplished, not even dinner. We used our last free pizza coupon, and were going to watch a movie, but by 10pm, hubby and I could barely keep our eyes open. We gave it up shortly thereafter and went to bed. Sad, sad, sad.

The other thing that happened Friday is that my hometown got hit by a tornado. It hit literally across the street from the park my brother lives in, then moved south to the historic downtown. Much of that area was destroyed, with damage in between. The town has been shut down. No one other than residents are supposed to go in or out. There are lots of trees and power lines down. My folks, fortunately, live just south of town, so they can come and go, but are without power, as is the rest of the area. I talked to my mom last night. The latest they’d been told, it would be at least Monday for the power to be back on downtown, and in outlying areas, it could be five to seven days. They’re trying to get their freezer emptied out so they didn’t lose all of the meat. I never heard back from her, so I’m guessing my baby brother ended up having enough room at his place. They’re on a well there, too, so dad has been hauling water in big drums, so there is enough for the animals as well as them.

The tornado is part of why I didn’t get much rest Friday night. My parents had left the hospital at 8:30pm (normally about a 45 minute drive home for them), and by 11pm, were still not home. My baby brother called me to see if I’d heard from them. I hadn’t. Neither were answering their cell phones, and because the power was out, their home phone wasn’t working. We waited another half hour, and when they still didn’t answer, he told me he was going to the house to check on them. They weren’t there when he got there. He finally got mom to answer her phone – they were still 30 minutes away, the drive had been awful. At least they were safe, and once I knew that, I was able to get a bit of rest.

ANYway, I really need to get to work. I know this post rambles and skips around from place to place, but I don’t feel like taking the time to edit. Sorry.

taco night August 23, 2007

I’m making something easy for dinner tonight. I even have fresh veggies from the garden to go with (hubby and I usually make taco salad). We’re going to make one trip to the farmhouse tonight, both vehicles loaded. And I’m going to do my level best not to let the place get to me tonight like it did last night. No point – what’s done is done, we’ve just got to make the best of it, and no one says we have to stay there in the long run. Maybe in a couple of years we’ll be able to afford to get something better. As long as I’ve got a patch for my garden, and the kids have some room to play, that’s all we need. I don’t want to be a farmgirl if it means I have to live in a money pit forever and ever! Anyway, one day hubby might inherit his family’s 40 acres, who knows!

Enough of that for now. Something nice happened at work today. We got a big donation of food and kitchen stuff, whoo-hoo! Canned goods, including 5 1/2 cases of tuna, and some things for the freezer, along with some salad fixings, aluminum foil sheets (which I haven’t been able to order in a long time because they’re too expensive), potatoes, shredded cheese, and lots of organic milk. It was good timing, because I spent the balance of our food budget for the month on groceries this week, and wasn’t sure what we were going to do for next week… now I don’t have to worry *quite* as much. This is the second time that has happened – I know somewhere, someone is looking out for us.

Oh – in other news, I had a call from the new maintenance guy on my way home – the last one didn’t want to do the water heater job, so the landlord called someone else in. He stopped by yesterday morning to “have a look” and is planning to return Monday morning to replace the thing. When he told me that, I just started laughing. Looks like we’ll have hot water to clean with, after all. I looked at some of the links some friends left me, and you’re all right – we do have legal grounds. Hubby and I talked it over last night, and instead of reporting him now with a week to go, we’re going to try to use it as leverage to make sure we get our security deposit back.

I’m very tired – I didn’t sleep much, have been up since 5 this morning, and did a lot of physical work at work today, taking care of all the donations. I have to keep some energy, at least enough to make tonight’s trip to the farmhouse. Anyway, that’s that for now. I’ll be back at some point to update.