Our New House

We are buying a house in the Camryn's Crossing Subdivision in Panama City. I like our new house very much and think it is going to work well for us. Jon is ok with the house, but wanted a bigger house. This house has a lot of attributes that are going to make it right for us.

It has a nice screened in back porch and a yard that is a manageable size, unlike the giant yards at our last two houses. There is also a door to the outside in the master bedroom which will be great when Roxy has to go outside 97 times a night.

I don't like the kitchen. It is eerily similar to the kitchen in our VA house, which was not a good set up for us. We haven't figured out what we are going to do with this kitchen, but we will fix it somehow.

The floors are laminate, which is great for our dogs - their nails won't ruin them and I don't have to worry about them making the carpet dirty either! To the right of the door is a room off of the living room that isn't a bedroom but has french doors. It is going to be a fabulous playroom.

This is just another view of the living room.

Packing Fini-ing and a Sick Baby

I am not an organized person. I get by without it being apparent what a mess I am because I have a good memory and can remember where things are in the disorganized mess. I bought these Christmas colored containers for our Christmas decorations this year, and I was so proud of myself for being organized I took a picture. Later, as we were moving stuff to go on the trailer I found two more boxes of Christmas decorations that I forgot I had and are now not in the coordinating Christmas colored containers. So much for the memory helping me get by. I decided that when we get to Florida I am going to get organized.

3 yrs ago, when we moved from Idaho to Virginia by way of Florida with a then 6 month old Hailey, I learned that Jon and I approach packing up and moving (and most other things) from COMPLETELY different directions. He overplans and overanalyzes, and I wing it.

Jon and I discussed many plans for moving our belongings. We own a 7x16 trailer that can carry approx 5000lbs, and we went into this hoping to make two trips with the trailer and let the movers take whatever was left. There were many iterations, but the final plan was to load the tr

ailer with the first load in the week after Christmas and unload that stuff into our friends garage. Load the second load before the movers arrived on January 7 so that they could take whatever was left. We pretty much succeeded and the movers were left with about 3000 lbs, most of which was toys. There were several glitches along the way, but nothing drastic and the most complicated part was loading the second load after Hailey and Aubrey came down with terrible colds and high fevers.

In between the first round of packing, Jon and I had to work. My last day was January 5th and Jon's fini-flight was that week as well. I took the girls with me and Hailey was so excited to see Daddy get out of the jet. She told me she was going to run up and give him a big hug. Then she overheard the guys talking about the water they were going to spray and got upset. She didn't want her dad to be wet and cold, and she remained upset for the whole time.

Aubrey thought it was pretty funny that Hailey was screaming though.

Back to the moving episode...

My plan to load the trailer was pack everything we could into it and hope we make it to 5000lbs. The goal is to hit the weight limit so that we can maximize the amount of money the government pays us for each trip. I figured if we filled it up, we would be pretty close, and this plan worked perfectly for our Idaho/Virginia move.

Jon's plan was to tape out a square on the garage floor the size of the trailer and stage the items before actually loading them into the trailer. I know him well enough to just go along with it, even though every fiber of my being wanted to point out how much time it was taking and that we now had to lift every box/item at least twice if not 4 times. I was quiet and went along with it - for the most part it was going smoothly, and eventually he was ready to actually put the stuff on the trailer. At this point we have to unstack each stack so that the box on the bottom can STILL be the bottom item. I had already thought of that , so I had already come to terms with it and went along with minimal fussing.

I lost it when I walked outside to help with Phase 2: Load, and found him weighing each piece on the electronic bathroom scale and writing it down. Now everything was being lifted an additional time. His reasoning - we need to know if we are close to reaching 5000 lbs. My theory - it doesn't really matter, because this is what is going on the trailer, so just load it up and hope we are right.

Whatever. It was an extremely stressful week and we are not even half way through with the entire process. We had to be out of our house by Jan 10 so the family who is renting it from us could move in. We can't move in to our new house in FL until Feb 2, so that leaves us a lit

tle bit homeless for 3 weeks. Originally we planned to head to Panama City and live in the TLF's, but then decided our time would be better spent visiting our families. We drove to Jon's parents house on Jan 10 and have been here turning their lives upside down for a week. Fortunately they have a huge house with more than enough room for us, and Nana and Papa have had plenty of time to play with the girls and spoil our dogs.

Making everything more interesting was Aubrey's mysterious fever. It started when both girls came down with bad colds, so we used Tylenol and Motrin to keep it under control. The colds passed and she was fever free the day we left Hampton. By the next morning she was running fevers between 102 - 103 and pretty miserable, but no other symptoms. I was hoping it was just the end of her cold, but it stuck around and we eventually had to take her to the ER to figure out what was going on.

Of course, she didn't act sick at all while we were at the hospital and the staff probably thought we were nuts as our happy smiley baby laughed and cooed at them. It was a good thing we went though, as she had a UTI.

And now some pictures of the fun we have been having at Nana and Papa's

Lots of board games. Hailey is a gamer and wants to play a game first thing when she wakes up and all day long. I have played so much Uno Moo and The Ladybug Game...

After Aubrey felt better we went to Hershey, PA and visited ChocolateTown

Hailey was a big fan of ChocolateTown

Uncle Chris visited too, and we showed him how much fun 7AM can be

Christmas Catch-Up

When I am not working, I do not have nearly as much time to update my blog. Hmmm.

Since adding our own children to our lives, Jon and I learned that we prefer to be in our own house for Christmas morning. We spent Hailey's first Christmas at my sisters house because Jon was in the Tx course at Tyndall and we lived in the TLF's. I love being with my sister, but it is way easier to have Santa find you when you are sleeping in your own beds!

Hailey's 2nd and 3rd Christmases were both celebrated at our house in Virginia and Jon's family traveled to be with us. We planned for the same this Christmas, but our impending move required us to change it up AND operate on a compressed schedule. On Dec 23rd we drove to Jon's parents house in New Oxford PA and visited with them and Uncle Chris and Silly-Crazy-Aunt Ruth. We left the next morning to drive 6 more hours across Pennsylvania to my sisters house in Erie, PA so that Santa could find us there. The drive from Jon's hometown to mine is a beautiful drive and always reminds us how beautiful - and big- Pennsylvania is. The route we drive takes us through Statecollege PA so we can reminisce about our days at our beloved Penn State. We wanted to stop and visit PSU, but the two little screamers in the truck really just wanted to get to Aunt Casa's house and get ready for Santa. It probably wouldn't have been the same with them in tow, anyway, but it really is a shame that Hailey is almost 4 years old and doesn't have a picture at the lion shrine!

The amount of presents for my daughters and my niece and nephew were a little bit overkill, and it was a little bit chaos, but a lot-o-fun.

A big part of the reason why we re-arranged our Christmas plans was so that we could attend my friend Kelly's engagement party, which was in Erie on Dec 26th. Kelly is getting married in August in San Diego (which is where she lives) and I am going to be in the wedding (yay!) For my faithful blog-followers who have no idea who Kelly is, she was one of my roommates at Penn State, but more importantly she has been my friend all my life since the first grade.

Kelly invited us back the following day so that we could spend some quality time and so that she could see my girls. In an attempt to give my very pregnant sister a break, and because we are a little crazy, Jon and I decided to borrow my sisters minivan and take my 4 yr old nephew and 2 yr old niece along with us. We also took them all to Build - a -Bear and McDonalds.

We can totally handle four kids and a minivan!

Somewhere in between all of that we also celebrated with my dad and stepmom, my Aunt Diane, my mom, and my Aunt Helen and cousins Ann and Brynn - all of whom came with MORE presents. Aubrey officially has every toy ever made for 6 mo olds, and we can probably give Hailey some of her presents for her birthday, because by the time we get done unpacking in February, she won't remember what she has :)