Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Moving


What a busy month! We've been in Utah for a week now and things are starting to settle down a little. Since we decided we were moving at the beginning of January we've been going non-stop to get ready for our move. Every night Robert and I would send the kids to bed and stay up until midnight packing and sorting what to sell, trash, or pack. It felt pretty nice to get rid of a whole bunch of stuff, including a lot of things that we have just been hanging onto and never use. 

So we had a yard sale one weekend. A friend took Julia and Micah. Camden hung out with us. We were happy with how it went and everything left over got donated to the Salvation Army the next week. 


We also tried to get all our dentist and eye exams done before we switch insurance and move to a new area. Micah had his first dentist visit. Julia sat next to him in the chair, but he still cried. The dental hygienist said that was probably a good thing though because it means he has to open his mouth :). 

Micah has not been slowed down any and managed to find a marker one day while we were preoccupied for a few minutes. Luckily he only wanted to color on the toy bins, so not too big a deal.

We had some last playdates with friends. We are going to miss all our friends and family in Southern California!

 Julia had her last day of preschool. I came a little early on her last day to take a picture of her with her teacher, Mrs. Duron. She gave Julia a stuffed animal as a going away gift and told her to always remember not to say "I can't" and to always try. Hmm, I guess Julia was having trouble with that? Does sound like her.

I had to throw this in. I cleaned my burners in preparation of selling the house with a technique I saw on Pinterest. They turned out A-mazing, much better than when we moved in, they looked brand new. They used to be completely covered in gunk, so much that I didn't even know they were suppose to be shiny.

The day before we loaded up the truck they brought the trailer out and left it on the street for us. Here the kids watch as it gets dropped off. The next day we hired proffesional movers to come load the truck for us, and the next evening the trucking company came back and took the trailer away. Now all our things are in storage with the trucking company and we won't see it again until we have a house to move into!

The kids watch as the movers load up the trailer. They did pretty good while the movers were there. I did have to remind Julia every five minutes to make sure to stay out of their way. I was so busy keeping Micah and Camden busy that Julia pretty much just did her own thing. Mostly she stood out by the truck and watched them load, but she did stay out of the way.
We got In N' Out for lunch and ate it on the lawn while the movers finished up.

The last of the stuff gets packed in and Julia and Micah were allowed one time up the ramp to check it out. The trucking company will fill up the rest of the trailer with their freight so we only get charged for the space we used in the truck.

It was pretty challenging to clean with all the kids around. I did get lots of offers to help watch the kids while we cleaned, but unfortunately a few days earlier Julia and Micah were sick with what I think was Hand, Foot, and Mouth disease (what an awful name for a sickness) so I didn't want to expose anyone else to them since it's pretty contagious, especially within the first week. So we spent the rest of the day cleaning with the kids around and although it was slow going I felt like we had a good start on it for the next day. We stayed at a hotel nearby and got back to the house by 8:30 am the next day. But we didn't hardly get any cleaning done before noon because of packing up all the stuff in our car we were going to be taking with us and doing last minute errands around town, not to mention taking care of kids.

Micah loooves to vacuum. It was pretty challenging doing anything because he just wanted to vacuum, and I needed to be there to make sure he didn't vacuum anything up!


Video of the vacuuming. Careful, the sound is loud.

The boys in front of the house. It was a good first home for us, we will miss it. I thought it was super cute and had a lot of character. Also, all my kids were babies there, so it's got a lot of memories. So sad to see it go, but hoping to get rid of it soon after it goes on the market in a couple weeks! (Remember the infamous bathroom remodel? Yeah, that's still going on, so the house doesn't go on the market until the contractor who is working on the bathroom now finishes it. So sad I never got my brand new bathroom!)


We were planning on leaving for St. George after we had dinner, around 5:30 or 6:00, to get a head start on the driving and break it up into two days. But we still had lots of stuff left to do by our departure time, so we fed the kids some snack food we had around and kept going. There were a couple things we didn't get done by 8:00 pm that we were thinking of doing, but by then we just decided it was probably good enough.

 So we packed up and said our last goodbye's to our house and headed to Mcdonalds drive in before starting off. We only made it to Las Vegas, but the kids all fell asleep ten minutes after we got on the freeway and slept the ENTIRE drive to Vegas, so we were happy with the head start. And the next day they all did great on the rest of the drive to Utah! It was an exhausting week!

"Walking"

On the first weekday solo with just the kiddos and I in Utah we went for a walk and ended up playing in the snow, even though we still need to get Micah snow boots. His poor little feet were freezing afterwards. Hopefully we'll be getting him some today or tommorrow.

Monday, January 06, 2014

A New Chapter

We are starting a new chapter in our lives, we are moving to Utah! Robert will be starting a new job in Murray, Utah on January 27. We are really going to miss all of our friends and family here in Southern California! This week we have especially been thinking that we will be missing the beautiful weather that we always get here.  But we are excited for new adventures in Utah! Julia is especially excited to be closer to grandparents and to play in the snow.

Since we won't have too much time to find a new place to live we will be living with my parents in Saratoga Springs until we can sell our house here in Claremont and find a new one in Utah. Any Utah friend up for a playdate next month?

And did I mention we will miss the weather? Like playing outside in t-shirts in the middle of winter?

Thursday, January 02, 2014

Last weekend

Last weekend we went up to San Francisco to watch the BYU bowl game and then headed over to Sacramento to see Robert's Grandma and his Aunt Debbie and their family. The kids had a lot of fun with so many other kids around, and we had a lot of fun visiting and playing games with the adults. Micah was especially good natured because he had so much to entertain him and he even stayed up until 11:00 p.m. one night because the adults were up playing games and he wasn't being grumpy, so I just let him stay up with us.

Here are some pictures from our trip

Wednesday, January 01, 2014

Year In Review


If you have the Google+ App you are able to back up all the pictures and videos on your phone onto your Google account. This year the Google team automatically made little year in review videos for everyone with your backed up files. I really liked mine so I would like to share it with everyone, even those without Google+, but sadly I haven't figured out how to. So here is a link to the video for those who have a Google account, and if you don't have an account, maybe you should get one!


Update: Looks like if  you don't have Google + the link takes you to my Google+ page, you'll have to find it on the page.

Update II: Kevin showed me how to embed the Google+ post. Enjoy!