A day in the life

Kaela is really enjoying His House Preschool with Miss Sheena at the local Nazarene church. It's only MWF, but goes from 8am-2pm and she gets to bring her very own lunch - a huge deal in her world. It costs a fortune if you ask me (all preschools apparently do out here) but worth every penny to see her so happy again. This girl LOVES school and LOVES to be independent. We pulled in the other day after her second time at school and she said, "I wish I could go to this school for forever". Aaaahhhh, that was music to my ears. She was so happy she immediately flittered around the house putting on all of her pretty things and even some of mine after school and was cracking me up.

Emmy has discovered her very own way of getting around. She is all about the army crawl. I'm just thankful she didn't figure it out until we moved in and got settled. It freaks me out a little that she can disappear so quickly and pretty much get anywhere she wants.

Luke has rediscovered his Buzz Light Year costume and wants it on at all times. I think he wishes he had wings just like Buzz. He just keeps me smiling.

Making Lemonade

Wow, I feel like life isn't just giving us lemons, it is chucking them right into our faces while we are trying to settle in.

First and foremost I must say, I love our house. It feels so much more spacious and I couldn't have asked for a more delicious kitchen! I think we are all really loving it. Once we get the house in order, Kaela settled in school, the weather warms up, and we meet more people, I'm sure it will feel even better.

To make this ever so long move-in saga somewhat short, I will attempt it in bullet points:

• The truck didn't arrive until day 3 of the move. We actually ended up leaving Appleton with some of our stuff in the driveway still needing to be loaded.

• The day before New Years we found out we might not be able to even get into our house for a week or two. I mean, our stuff is in transit and they want us to wait! This was all because of mold found in the master closet due to a leak in the air conditioner. They had a company fix the leak, rip up the carpet, tear out the dry wall, spray antimicrobial stuff everywhere and so on but had yet to get it tested to make sure the mold was all gone. After hours on the phone, Joey finally worked it out and we were able to move in when we planned on Monday, phew.
  

• We arrived in Arkansas on the eve of the biggest snow storm they'd seen since 1980 something and woke up Monday to a ghost town - everything was shut down and everyone stayed home. We got a good laugh out of it because here we are from Appleton, WI where 16 inches doesn't shut much down and 2 inches was a whole different reality here. Miraculously we were able to close that evening and get into our house Tuesday with Joey working nonstop to make it happen.

• Day 2 after the move in, when the packers finished unpacking our stuff and placing it around the house, the power went out. I didn't discover this until just before 5pm and it was too late to get a hold of the electric company. This, of course, was going to be one of the coldest nights on record here. With flashlights in hand and blankets piled high, we nestled in until it was finally turned back on at 10pm. I must admit it was kind of nice not to have to put anything else away for the rest of the night and just enjoy being together and getting some rest.
  

• The morning of day 3 in our new home Joey set off the house alarm, which was extremely loud, and which we had no idea how to disarm. Thankfully the police were not contacted and it flipped off after 5 minutes. Eventually Joey figured it out and reprogrammed it. Later that afternoon I went to throw my first load of laundry into the dryer to discover a huge puddle of water on the floor. A few hours and a new hose later, the washing machine was ready to rumble and we were finally going to have some clean clothes!
  

• Day 4 I remind Joey that the upstairs Jack and Jill bathroom has no running water. He assumes it is frozen pipes and after some Googling, gets to work trying to thaw them out with heaters and my hairdryer. While he was using my dryer to warm them up from a crawl space behind the bathroom, one of the pipes burst before his eyes. MIRACLE! Definitely a huge blessing. The two "master plumbers" that came at 2am to fix the pipe told Joey he is the luckiest person they have ever met. If it had burst after thawing on its own, it would have flooded and/or ruined a good portion of our home and cost us thousands to fix. Way to go Joey - who has been everyone's hero in this madness.

• And to top it all off, we have all come down with nasty colds.

But don't worry about us, we're over here just plugging along, trying our best to make lemonade from all these fabulous lemons and realize how blessed we are. And even though so much has gone wrong, a lot has and is going right for us.

I have to say that the highlight of the move so far was spending New Year's with Joey's brother, Jessen, his wife, Linda, and their four darling kids. A huge shout out to them for their hospitality and for the good times!