Moved In

I've said it once and I'm saying it again.  Moving stinks!  Of course I might not feel this way if we ever had the chance to simply move down the street or to the other side of town.  All our moves have been across the country or an ocean, so no big deal, right?  Even though we lived in WA three years ago, it's still a big move, just not as daunting.  I remember when we moved to RI and I was supposed to take the boys to school to meet their teachers and we got lost and stuck in traffic and had to reschedule the whole thing. We went home with tears in our eyes wondering how we'd ever feel at home in such an unfamiliar place.  It's been so much easier moving to a place we know!  I'm not lost every time I leave my house.  I've been able to call friends to take my kids so I could actually get some unpacking done which has been a wonderfully strange experience.   We are still sorting through the mess from boxes being dumped out on every surface available and when there wasn't an open spot, the boxes were emptied onto the floor.  We seriously had to clear pathways down the hall and into rooms because stuff was everywhere.  It looked like our house had been ransacked by burlgars.  Unfortunately this was also when we had family after family stop by to say hi.  I'm still embarrassed thinking about how many people have seen us at our absolute worst as they toured our new home.  I feel like I need to invite everyone back to walk through it again now that we've got everything mostly put away.  Oh well.

Now for a little update on how this house came to be ours.  The housing market here is crazy hot with houses selling within hours of going on the market and bidding wars making the prices skyrocket.  We knew it would take a miracle for us to find a house from the other side of the country but a miracle happened.  A friend told us this house was going on the market and put us in touch with the owners whom Randy met when he happened to be out here looking for jobs.  The home had previously been owned by some good friends of ours so we'd been inside several times which meant we weren't buying it site unseen.  Long story short, we bought the house without a realtor and without it being placed on the market, so we've moved back to the same area we were in before and even in the same ward.  We love the house although it is old.  I'm thrilled it has air conditioning, unlike most homes in the area, and we love the huge yard (which is slowly coming back to life as we water it in the dryest of summers). The boys have spent hours exploring all the different paths and steps, and swinging on the rope swing.  I can picture us growing old here and hope this is our forever home.

The boys seeing the house for the first time at the walk-through

Marcus was a little excited

There are TONS of built ins.  We don't have enough books and knick knacks to fill them

The tree house and rope swing that swings so high it took me a week to work up the courage to try it out

Marcus cleaning out the pond

The basketball hoop goes low enough that my boys actually feel tall when they play

Marcus loves his shower with all the {unnecessary} gadgets

The moving truck was too big to get up our steep driveway so they had to unload everything into a smaller truck and then drive that truck up and unload it which means everything was moved twice!

The 2nd truck

Taking a walk through the preserve across the street from our house

I love our street!  It's even prettier when the grass is green.

Birthday Buds

Parker turned three! Landon turned six!
Summer birthdays stink.  It seems like there is always lots going on that makes celebrating a summer birthday a total pain.  This year I seriously contemplated celebrating the boys' double birthday a week later, just for the sake of convenience but then I figured the grandparents would be calling to wish the boys a happy birthday and ruin the whole thing so we toughed it out and celebrated on the actual day.  Ironically both sets of grandparents forgot to call on their birthdays which is further proof that summer birthdays stink!  So it turns out I could've rescheduled their birthday to a day that was actually convenient.
Despite our house being in total disarray {thanks to the movers who literally dumped out boxes of our stuff onto the floor} and having four boys hanging around with not much to do, we made the day fun.  Miraculously I came across a package of balloons so I was able to stick with our tradition of decorating their bedroom door with balloons and birthday signs.  The boys hung out in the toy aisle at Target with Marcus supervising while I grabbed a few gifts when they weren't looking, paid for them, and loaded them in the van.  It was so last-minute.  Thanks to Amazon Prime, the rest of their gifts arrived while we were at the store.  
My Grandma, {known as Grandma Great to the boys} saved the day by giving them a very generous gift card to Red Robin so we could take the boys out for a nice dinner.  My Aunt Lisa pitched in with a gift card for dessert and I seriously wanted to with weep tears of gratitude as we ate our delicious food that I didn't have to cook, at a table that wasn't surround by moving boxes and clutter.  It was heaven!
After dinner we took the boys miniature golfing and both boys LOVED it!  The last time we mini-golfed I was 9 months pregnant with Parker so a lot can change in a few years.
So, happy birthday to my little birthday buddies!  Hopefully next year life will be boring and mundane so we can party hard.  But I wouldn't count on it!

Parker playing in the toy aisle while I bought his presents

The best birthday dinner courtesy of Aunt Lisa and Grandma Great

We LOVE onion rings!

My serious golfers

back home to open presents and the fact that I found the wrapping paper (from Christmas) was another miracle

he's so cute!

Landon trying out his new wheels

We are here!

Home sweet home in Washington!  We drove across the country, traveling through fourteen States, and arrived in Sammamish, WA yesterday at noon, leaving a trail of personal belongings at every hotel we stopped at along the way. 
Our first day started out bad.  Two hours behind schedule thanks to the slow and delayed closing on our house, and then lots of traffic and construction which turned our 8-hour drive into a 12-hour drive.  We stopped at Niagara Falls which was cool, but crowded.  The boys hit the jackpot in the parking lot as they searched for a license plate from every State.  We successfully found all 50 plates by the time we got to Montana.  North Dakota and Delaware were the last ones we found.
We stopped in Erie, PA and scored a sweet hotel with a huge indoor water park we enjoyed for a few hours, and then it was on to Rockford, IL just outside of Chicago.  We drove up through part of Wisconsin and then into Minnesota where we stayed with the Beus family, our good friends from our Boston days.  We took a whole day off from driving and enjoyed boating and hanging out while the 7 boys played and played and played.  It was so much fun and was the perfect break before hitting the road hard for the next two days.
We left Minnesota early in the morning in such a heavy rainstorm some of the roads were flooded over so it was slow going.  We stopped at Mt. Rushmore where the boys climbed around on every boulder imaginable.  Mt Rushmore is pretty awe-inspiring for being something man-made.  I'm glad we went but now that I've seen it I have no plans of ever going back!
We drove to our hotel in Wyoming and an hour from our destination pulled over at a gas station with a completely flat tire.  Naturally we had to unload the entire back of the van to get to the spare tire which woke up sleeping Parker and he cried through the whole thing.  We slowly drove the final hour to our hotel and Randy got up early the next morning and got a new tire (I had just replaced all 4 tires on the van before the drive.  Grrrrrr!) We started each morning with a prayer for safety and protection and are so relieved the only mishap was a flat tire.  It could've been so much worse!
The next day was long as we drove through Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, and into Eastern Washington.  Each day our incentive was to get through the drive so the boys could swim in the hotel pool.  By the end of each day they were like caged animals with so much pent up energy we're lucky we never got kicked out of the hotel.  Randy drove almost the entire time.  He decided listening to his audiobooks with his earbuds cranked loud enough to drown out the noise from the back was a better alternative than sitting in the back with the boys.  Lucky me.  I watched more lame movies, built more Lego creations, searched for lost Legos, and picked up the same mess over and over again that the whole thing is kind of a blur.
But it was fun.  Long but fun.  And hopefully a memory that will last a lifetime. 
We closed on our house here so tonight is the last night in a hotel (Hooray!) and the truck is bringing our stuff tomorrow.  Randy starts work on Monday so we are hitting the ground running.

Not Enough Time!

Our stuff is being packed up right now.  The reality of our move has hit.  We said goodbye to most of our ward family today and it makes me so sad.  Goodbyes are always hard and even harder as a parent when you see your kids crying as they say their goodbyes.  We've moved enough to know that not all goodbyes are final but the friendship is never quite the same.   I always tell people we always come back and I mean it!  I'm counting on Randy to qualify for the Boston Marathon to give us an excuse to come back to New England in the spring.
The computer is getting packed up tomorrow so here's a little update on our plans.  We close on this house Friday morning and drive out of here heading to Niagara Falls and then on to Erie, PA where I found a sweet hotel with an indoor water park.  Our next big stop will be in Minnesota where we are staying with good friends from our dental school days. They have 3 boys so I only feel a little bit bad about imposing on them with my wild bunch.  After Minnesota we are headed to Mt. Rushmore and lots of driving with nothing to break it up until we reach Coeur D'Alene, Idaho.  Assuming we haven't lost huge amounts of time due to our van breaking down on us we should have time to play there for the day before the homestretch that gets us to Seattle.  I'm so nervous as to how this week-long road trip is going to last.  Typically the boys can't drive for more than 15 minutes before there's a full out brawl in the back seat.  I'm not exaggerating.  I stocked up on $5 movies (no time to mess with Red Box rentals), road trip games from the $5 Store, and audio books.  Fingers crossed we survive the road trip with both our van and sanity in tact!

Marcus earned a bunch of merit badges and a couple rank advancements and the whole family got in on the picture

Randy's "other family"....his scouts

Our friends surprised Randy with a farewell cake at the last pack meeting

Even the Activity Day girls made him a cake.  So cute!

We got a new tramp!  We've only had it for 3 weeks but it was totally worth putting it up just to take it back down.

We played capture the flag with Nerf guns.  The boys were in heaven!

Landon dashed off to get the flag and was inches away from getting it before he got hit.  Then he cried.

We went raspberry picking and made delicious homemade ice cream with it because there's no time for making jam.

Raspberry picking with the Ferrell's.  Another family we hate to say goodbye to.

We rode our bikes into town for donuts and were shocked to see the donut shop had closed.  But the little bakery next door was pretty awesome. 

We discovered Trustom Pond.  Huge frogs, huge tadpoles, and the boys can't get enough of it.

Walking around Trustom Pond with the Cub Scouts

And the Stress Continues

We put our house on the market yesterday.  I can't even begin to tell you what a relief it is to finally have it ready to show.  I've cleaned, scrubbed, and de-cluttered just about every surface of the entire house and actually wore out a huge hole in my cleaning gloves last night.  Hopefully our hard work pays off.  It's only been listed for 24 hours and we already had our first showing today. 

Here's a link with all the info in case you know someone who wants to move to Rhode Island.  Ha! 
 I know it's unrealistic but I'm hoping the house sells in record time because keeping my house spotless is stressing me out so I've made a few changes to help maintain a higher level of clean than what we are used to.  For example, the boys are no longer allowed to stand up when they use the bathroom because I don't want to clean up their mess from their bad aim {which they always blame on someone else because they think their aim is perfect.  Yeah, right.}  We put about half the boys' belongings in storage so their toys are easily contained in the toy box and a few cupboards where they are out of sight.  The Legos are now in Parker's closet which means the boys have pretty much forgotten about them so now I don't have to pick up the endless amounts of Legos that manage to spread throughout the house each day.  This all sounds like my kids are big slobs and I should teach them to clean up after themselves.  Yes, like most kids they are messy but they do clean.  Just not good enough for showcasing a house.  If it were an option, I'd move out to Utah for a couple months so my perfectly clean house could be maintained with no effort on my part.  Sigh.