Moo Part 2

Ok, ok, I know it's been way past the 10th so you all are probably thinking, "It's about darn time she gets up her new post!"

Before I forget again, the Moo a noise I hear around here freequently. Usually at night when I am puting the kids to bed we can her the cows (and occationally smell them:P) from the 2 stock yards near us - one is a block away in one direction and the other is about a mile away in the other direction. So either way the wind blows we can smell them. It's actully not so bad that you can't handle it, just a little whif to remind us that we aren't in Chicago anymore! :) Yeah!

So the big move went well. It was very draining for me, both physically and emotionally. Who would have ever thought we had so much stuff! I didn't think it was all going to fit, and we had the biggest truck from Penske! I came to the realization that my kids are no longer babies. They worked HARD! I honestly don't know what I would have done without them. They brought as many boxes each up the stairs and out to the truck as I did easily. I am so proud of them and at the same time it makes me wish for their younger years, they seem to be growing up too fast! Maybe in a couple of years we could think about another one....yeah, right!

The first night we had the truck we packed until around 8 or so. My mom had taken the kids to church to say goodbye to their friends on their last Wednesday night service so Bob and I were there alone. We had just picked everything up and closed the back of the truck when we decided to run to the gas station to get a soda. We had hurried to get everything done because the sky was looking menacing and we didn't want to get wet. The gas station isn't far, maybe a mile but by the time we were half way there we encountered rain, hail, and wind that was unbelievable! A tree fell on the other side of the street as we were driving by and when we got to the gas station we were soaked to the skin from the 10 feet between the car and the building. We had just gotten to the cases where the soda is and the electricity went out! So there we stood in the gas station freezing and wet in the dark wondering what to do. The girl at the check out said she couldn't sell anything because the register wouldn't even open for the lack of electricity so we decided to just go home and drink what was there...tap water. :P Things got even crazier as we were on our way home so I called my mom and told her to keep my kids in the church where it was safe until we could find a way home and let her know the situation. It took us almost an hour to get home because every road we turned into had trees down across them. We went by bent and twisted sign posts and puddles that were more the size of small ponds - one of which we stalled the car right in the middle of! Luckily we got it started again and finally found a street that was clear literally to the driveway. A tree from across the street had a huge branch down in the driveway so we had to drive across part of the lawn to get into the yard. Bob and I worked together to move the big branch in the driveway and soon had everyone in the neighborhood coming down the street as it was the only way in and out. The storm calmed somewhat after that and my mom brought the kids home - they were pretty excited about such a big storm and thought it was pretty cool but neither one of them were willing to sleep in the dark basement! So they ended up on the floor and the couch in the living room that night. After the storm calmed down there was still a lot of rain so Bob and John went and borrowed the generator from the church to hook up to the sump pump in the basement. It was a good thing we had it! They were out of electricity for 3 days there and the pump ran literally every minute for the first day or so! We called Penske and they graciously gave us 3 extra days on the truck because the next day we couldn't even get the thing out of the yard because of all the downed trees. They were using a snow plow to push the trees off the roads until they could get to chopping them up and hauling them away.

After all that we were a day late getting out of there but once we got on the road things went smoothly. My mom and John came along to help us unpack because we didn't have anyone here that we knew to help out. It was really nice to have them here those first couple of days. They helped out a lot!

We got here on a Saturday morning after spending the night with Bob's brother and unpacked the truck for the rest of the day. Sunday my mom and I unpacked my kitchen (I still haven't found my salt and pepper shakers and sugar bowl that match my set, grrr...) and Bob and John took the truck back. Monday my mom and John left to go home and Bob, the kids and I went to new student orientation at school. The kids were exhausted and were amazingly pretty good - I think they were more like zombies than kids that day! They both fell asleep in the desks while Bob's instructor was telling us about the school and classes and such. It was quite funny! The other guys in the class couldn't get over how funny it was and how much they wanted to do the same thing! LOL

Tuesday morning Bob started his classes and that's pretty much where we are at.

We don't have any living room furniture because we sold it all when we moved from Michigan but we don't really have room for it yet anyway. Our living/dining room is really rather small and once we got the table and chairs, bakers rack/microwave table, china cabinet, computer desk and TV in here we don't have much for anything else. MAYBE a small couch or love seat would fit but we would have to get rid of a few boxes and rearrange some stuff a little.

We had to get rid of a lot of stuff! Bob took 2 car loads to the Sal*vation Ar*my and 1 load of books, CD's, DVD's and VHS movies to the library. And we STILL have to get rid of more stuff. There just isn't room for it! This is the smallest place we have ever lived and we've always had a garage before for storage. It's not such a bad thing because it forces us to reevaluate what we have and what we really need but it's been difficult deciding what to keep and what to get rid of - more for Bob than for me though! The way I have been looking at is that I haven't used most of it in 2 years, why do I need to keep it? Most of it is replaceable so if we need it again in the future we can get a new one. Hopefully we won't need to move so much junk when we move again!

So that's it for our moving adventure. I will post more later on what we have been up to since then.