Can you see all three through the clutter?
Author Archives: Jen
Hanging out in Owen’s room.
I have no idea how this all fit before.
My vanity is easily 5x the size it was before but I’m having problems figuring out where to put everything. It’s overwhelming to have more storage!! It will get figured out in time.
A margarita in a real margarita glass!
Because look at this hot mess kitchen…lots yet to be unpacked and put away but the margarita glasses are already at home in the bar. I’ve always said I have a lot of kitchen stuff and it’s no joke. I’ve been unpacking the kitchen for DAYS.
It’s time for a little normalcy…
Watching an episode of Little House on the Prairie…
To Bella it’s like we never even moved.
Picking up our plants from the sitter!
Anna and David watched our buckets o’ plants while we were moving so we wouldn’t have to remember to water them! So tonight was the night we finally went and picked them up!!
My first new neighborhood friend!
Brianna was the first one to come over and we chatted social-distance style at the bar!
Invitation to the pool!
The kids got invited to a friend’s pool (technically the neighbor’s parent’s pool) so they had a grand time while we were unpacking the house and all that fun stuff.
I might have gotten a little bit emotional because the same neighbors who invited the kids over today (so we could work on the house in peace) were the same neighbors who took the kids the first day we moved in three years so (so we could unpack in peace). Kind of bookending our time at that house. (In fact I’m even getting choked up a bit writing it now.)
Tom blew up the furnace.
Kind of.
He had to switch out our Nest and so he had been smart and took a picture of the wire setup…but for whatever reason his phone screwed up and he didn’t actually get the picture… So he was watching YouTube and winging it and it wasn’t working and the next thing he tells me is that something blew up (?!) or was burned or something in the basement.
WHAAAA—?!?!
I guess it could have been completely random but the timing was too perfect. So we had to call someone to come check it. So the poor cleaning lady had no AC for most of the time so it was probably 85° in the house (though it could have been much worse considering how hot it was). Thankfully the guy could come in two hours and it was just a $70 blown transformer and a $70 service call.
Good times.
Yes, I placed an ad for friends!!!
So I might have just posted a “We just moved in! Who wants to be our new neighborhood friends?!” get-to-know-us post on Nextdoor and Facebook (in a local Mom’s group). YIKES! A TOTALLY Jen thing to do though, right?! I had no idea what to expect… but (fast forward) it has been amazing!
Well it went over smashingly! By the time I was able to check back in I had four Facebook messages waiting for me and a bunch of comments saying what a great idea it was and they wished they’d thought of it, etc.
I think I added at least 10 new Facebook friends today. We have a socially distant park game planned for Sunday night with two families and someone is coming over for a driveway drink tomorrow.
A FEW DAYS LATER…
I was TOTALLY blown away by the responses. They just kept coming and coming. I think I’ve friended about 20 people now and have met probably 10 people in person thus far!! This might have been one of the best things I’ve ever done! We’ve felt so welcomed in this neighborhood it’s been amazing!!
Our first night in our new home!
The kitchen (and the whole house!) might look like this…
But at least I found bedding so we could sleep in this…
Katie’s keeping my makeup safe!
During one of our endless trips to empty all the small leftover bits out of the rental, I handed Katie part of my makeup organizers to put in the car. This is what she did with it.
Sooooo… the few things about the new house that I don’t love.
Yes I know these are totally first world problems. And compared to things about our last houses we didn’t like, these are NOTHIN’. But I figured I might as well tell you everything.
The dishwasher is TINY. Like ridiculously tiny. Like I’d be happy to sell it and get a new one tiny. Yes it’s newer and fancy (it’s practically silent) but what good is that if nothing fits in it? Tom is like F@$& THAT IT’S A BOSCH AND IT’S NEW. And while I get that, it’s also an appliance we use daily and if it’s annoying me it’s going to be a constant source of frustration. So we’ll see what happens.
Our shower. It’s gorgeous and totally fancy, but not great in application. There are no towel bars or hooks in a place to easily grab a towel from inside the shower. We can’t put our showerhead on it because of the style…and it seems to be at a weird angle and consequently the bench doesn’t seem to be in the best place (I kept backing into it during my first shower—I’m sure I’ll get more used to it but right now it’s not love). There are also only two tiny shelves and no good room to put a shower rack (and I don’t want to clutter up the bench). And it’s quite disconcerting to be able to see yourself in the mirror while showering!
It takes awhile to get hot water anywhere. We are actually used to that from the rental but we were sure it would be better anywhere else. That said, there’s plenty of hot water! (Ack! No good things posted in this post!!)
There are also a bunch of little things that we can fix eventually…like no hand towel racks in the kids’ bath, Katie’s blinds are missing the rod to tilt them, none of the ceiling fans have lights but there are no lights in the rooms (so it’s still lamps for us), I can’t find which outlet the guest bedroom light switch goes to, and Katie’s carpet has a stain that goes away and magically reappears every time.
So overall pretty damn awesome. Stay tuned for the list of amazing things about this house…
Because why not add an emergency eye appointment for Owen to the mix?
He’s fine but has a scratched cornea. Always wear safety goggles, kids.
After Anna dropped the kids off from their overnight stay, Owen started complaining that his eye was bothering him. I figured he had an eyelash or something in his eye so told him to let it water and flush itself out. Nope, still there. I looked, nothing. I then tried to rinse it out—a challenge considering everything was obviously packed and I couldn’t find my saline, squirt bottles, or eye drops. (I might not have been in the best frame of mind, either. After another long day with the movers, now I’m having to deal with this at 3pm.)
So then it became the challenge of him letting me actually get his eye rinsed out. First he wouldn’t even let me get near his eye. Then he kept shutting his eye. Then he couldn’t tip his head back. Good times. I finally got some water in and he said it really hurt. Hmmm, that’s not good. So then I had to decide whether to see if we could get in to his doctor, go to urgent care, the ER, or try his eye doctor. I picked eye doctor and of course they had no appointments locally (they are five minutes from us) but a sister office 30 minutes away had an opening…so off we went. One quick look with some eye drops and yep, two small scratches. We were in and out within about 15 minutes.
And you can believe we had a big conversation about preventing things like this because the simple act of not wearing goggles meant we had to pay $70 for the appointment, $15 for the meds, and then another $70 for the follow up appointment. I told him we’d obviously always take care of these things, but that money could have gone to…a whole year of Netflix. Or about six trips to Culver’s. Or half of an Xbox. You should have seen the look on his face when he learned that. So hopefully that sunk in.
So how did this happen? The boys were (apparently) sanding wood blocks with a block and sandpaper—no power tools involved because David had wisely put the kibosh on that. I asked why he didn’t wear goggles and he said there was only one pair and one of the boys was smashing something into pieces so he wore them. Owen said he would sand and tried to keep blowing the dust away from him…?!
The movers are amazing.
Aside from the fact that they bust their asses all day every day, they can do magical things like make this huge cabinet …
Fit into spaces you wouldn’t imagine.
Needless to say we tipped them well after this.
Soooo much junk left.
Just two of Katie’s walls after her room was emptied. Unbelievable.
I’m exhausted and I haven’t even really done that much today.
I can’t imagine how tired our movers are because they’ve been busting their asses since 8am. (Normally they load in one day and then unload the next day but the boss wanted it all done today!)
A huge thank you to Anna—my saving grace—taking the dog AND kids out of my hair ALL DAY. We’re also sleeping there tonight since the plans have changed about right times today and it will just be easier to stay there.
There is a tiny bit left for tomorrow so I’ll be back at it at 8am…and Tom will be back at work after his half day today (which was soooo nice).
Our kids are pigs.
This was under EVERY section of couch.
This was the total haul.
There was even a school library book in there (that he lost and had to pay for way back when).
We haven’t had a moving truck this small in 20 years!
So we obviously aren’t used to a smaller truck but we’re doing it a bit different today—loading some then taking it over and unloading, repeating until done. Since it’s not a multi-state move they don’t need to load absolutely everything at once.
I’m a bit anxious doing something totally different this time around but they said it should go quicker and we should have everything in our new house today. Normally it’s a two day process.
Here we go!
Why not look good on day three of moving?
I washed my hair today and tried a bun again and it looked horrible. I guess a bun only works for me on days-old hair…?! We’ll see what happens as the day wears on.
Anyhoo. Guess what? Sandstone Pearl Shimmer and….Sunbaked Shimmer today. And it’s glorious. But no lipstick today because I don’t even want to think about it.
A breakfast note for Maggie.
When bedding gets packed…
Moving boxes galore!
I want to get rid of HALF this crap, but we just didn’t have time before we needed to leave. Who can help me be strong and actually go through with it?
The kids’ PTO calendar submissions
I finally got the kids to make pictures for the annual calendar contest…I loved both of them but unfortunately they didn’t get selected.
Today’s moving breakfast of champions.
It’s just missing a homemade dill pickle.
This is what I’ve been thinking and trying to put into words.
Clear thoughts (a snippet of a longer post) from my friend Tanya.
Hopefully this will end up a blip on their radar. A “remember those crazy two years” kind of thing during their long life span.
Yes I might want to throat punch my kids during eLearning but I’d much rather they be around and annoying than dead.
Looking good for moving day two.
LET’S DO THIS! Another day of moving, another five-minute face with Sandstone Pearl Shimmer and one of my all-time favorites Mauve Shimmer!
I kind of lost it today.
I was being so good planning what to keep out, which food was here and there, and packing some pans and plates and stuff for the new house…
Totally forgot about here.
I kept plates but nothing else. I was thinking the dishwasher had clean dishes in it…but I forgot we unloaded it. So it’s been a scramble…and we went to Anna’s for dinner.
We have two spoons and bowls for the kids’ breakfast, we’ll order food for lunch (we always do for workers), and then Chinese take out for dinner.
I found Katie’s wishlist.
