Unpacking...

 We have internet and phone... finally! They said it might take 7-10 business days, and it took 7. Which meant I was without internet (unless I went to the library) for 8 days. That doesn't seem like a lot, considering. But, HOLY COW! It was so hard to be without access to my online banking while I spent SO MUCH MONEY!  

Enough about money, who really wants to discuss how much money it takes to set up in a new house?! ON to the 'fun' part: what it looked like when all our stuff was brought in...

Look at all those boxes! Unfortunately they aren't all unpacked yet, but those that are get tossed in here:

This one with Eric was taken after 4 days of unpacking...

This one was taken today... Eight days of unpacking later (and a trip to get mandarin oranges and flour from a case lot sale...) Ok and a new vacuum box and a computer desk box later...

For all those of you who want updated contact information, please feel free to email me (or message me on facebook). I will not be posting it here.

And yes, I'll be giving you a tour once everything is a bit more settled and the pile of empty boxes is a bit bigger...

And on another note... I'm not excited to be unpacking anymore! I just want it to be done without me having to do it...

Packing and Moving...

Honestly, this picture was taken June 30, 2009. Two and a half months later we packed up all this stuff and moved from Wisconsin to Utah... now we're packing all our stuff to move into our house. I can't believe I'm actually saying, Our House! It is exciting. We'll be closing on Monday and moving on Tuesday. Luckily we'll have more room to put stuff when we move into the house! In fact I have one room dedicated to keeping all the unpacked stuff until I can organize it... YEY for having space. I'm sure it will get filled, as tends to happen when there is empty space! 

I'm glad about the space though - It will make it easier as Eric is a TON more mobile and would be getting into everything...

This will be the 6th time I've moved in the last 6 years (although one of those moves was a double move - we spent 3 weeks at my parents before going to grad school as our housing contract ended and our grad school housing wasn't available.) I've actually lived at 13 different addresses in the past 10 years... two different times at my parents house (although 5 of those were in the mission field.)

I'm looking forward to NOT moving for a long time! Packing has become less and less exciting... more and more annoying! Not that I'd ever procrastinate packing to write a blog post! I am REALLY excited about having my own house and NOT living in my parent's basement. Off I go to find more boxes to pack stuff in. 


One last note... I am excited to unpack - some of these boxes haven't been opened in 2 years, it will be like Christmas!

Lunchtime

I realized that having a camera is one of those things you don't realize how much you use it until you don't have one for a while... we got a new (inexpensive - or close thereto) point and shoot camera. I really want to get an SLR, but it will have to wait until after we get some things we need for our house, after we close. So it'll be a while. However, I'm loving having a camera... today was a perfect example.

I made a PB&J sandwich for Eric for lunch. I left the room for a minute and when I came back, this is what I found:

 Eric eating his sandwich...

 He has the strangest way of eating these!

Wait for it....

 Don't you just love his messy face?

 He's just so happy with himself (Okay so he was really posing for the camera!)

July AND August

Daniel started his job at the end of June, so we were still getting into a routine at the beginning of July. He had the 4th off and we decided to go birdwatching at the wildlife refuge where we went on our first date... However, the weather had other plans - we'd been getting so much rain and then the snow run-off from the mountains caused flooding...

In fact the normal place where we saw all the birds was blocked off due to the road flooding.

In fact one of the entrances is in the first picture (of the Ibis) - completely under water! We saw a few birds that day... Ibis, Horned Lark, Black-necked Stilt, and yellow headed black bird (are a few we got pictures of.)

 We also got to see this Pronghorn. It posed for a picture before it went running off.

 We wore long sleeves to help keep bugs away... this is a road that actually ends in a lake that is close to the refuge. We went to see more birds there (where we actually saw the Stilt and the yellow headed black bird.)

 July also brought our church congregation's waterslide activity: Eric loved it!

 This is us going down the slide...

at the end, trying to fight our way out of the currents...

and Eric was more interested in looking at the water than the camera.

This picture was actually taken in August... Eric LOVES eating popcorn. He was just super cute with it all over his tummy!

Back to the updates... our camera button broke on our adventure with the birdwatching and I'd been using a bobby pin to actually take pictures, which worked until just a few days ago, but wasn't too conducive for wanting to take them. We are actually going to be buying a small point and shoot tomorrow (Labor Day sales, here we come!) I wrote a post about our camera on my food blog if you want more details... and pictures.

Daniel was hired to replace a woman who is going to become a stay at home mom in October. She quit earlier than she thought she would so Daniel is now the GIS administrator (instead of technician) and is keeping super busy at work. He usually gets a few hours of overtime every week (luckily he's hourly and not salaried!)

Also in July and August we were looking for a place to live... for some reason we just want to be out of my parent's basement! We finally found a house and are just waiting for the loan to go through... hopefully we will be closing the week of the 12-16. So July and August were taken up by a lot of trips to the town we'll be living in (Daniel commutes the 30ish miles every day!) to meet with the bank, look at houses and meet with the Realtor for the offer/counter-counteroffer. We were really grateful that the sellers accepted our counter-counter offer as it was really the higher limit that we wanted to go with ($15,000 less than they listed but only $5,000 less than it appraised for).

We've started doing a food (produce) co-op (Bountiful Baskets) and have enjoyed getting lower cost produce lately. It has also shifted my menu planning to a focus on produce and it has been great for my diet! Speaking of which I've lost 17 lbs this year - my total goal is 15-25 more to lose, but I am loving the amount I've lost so far.

In Eric tales... he is now calling everything with stripes Alligator. I'm not sure if it has to do with a pair of pajamas he has (we call them his alligator pajamas) - the shirt has an alligator and the pants are striped. But all his striped shirts are now alligator shirts!

Eric has also decided he LOVES watching Lightening McQueen... his uncle loves it because he gets to watch Cars a lot more.

About mid-August Eric decided to play in his room after his nap (there are two rooms in my parents house that we let Eric spend his time, the rest just isn't toddler proofed), and so we let him, He was opening and closing his dresser drawers when I heard a crash and he started crying, so I ran down the half flight of stairs to see the dresser pulled over. He had caught his fingers (middle and ring on his right hand) in between two drawers. They had a good bit of skin scrapped off and after bandaging them, he didn't move his hand very much. I took him to urgent care the next day (he did it on Sunday) and they x-rayed it. He had a very tiny fracture in one finger. They also gave us some burn cream to help heal the gouge on his finger. Luckily we only had to bandage it to another finger for a week. 

I think that's pretty much our lives for the past two months! I combined the two because I thought it would be short... but there was more going on than I remembered...