Thanks for all the comments. I’m sorry I haven’t done very well on reading, much less commenting, on blogs for the last week or two. It’s been a little nuts.

So let’s start with the bad….

1. We miss J, P & E like crazy. It isn’t the same without them here and I can not WAIT until they come down.

2. Sleeping on the floor for a week BLOWS! I don’t know how other cultures do it. I love me my Serta Kingsize Pillowtop.

3. The flight from Detroit to Houston SUCKED. Well the flight, itself, was fantastic. Full meal, great beverage service. Continental gets my business any day. But we had to sit and wait to be de-iced before we could take off for an HOUR, without any A/C and it was HOT. The kids were cranky and Noah was waiting and waiting to go potty, to eat, to put his tray down and we hadn’t even taken off. By take-off, Addison was done sitting nicely on my lap and ready to play and also hot and cranky. The plane was PACKED so we were all crowded into a row with no space at all to spread out. OMG, it was so much hell. She writhed and fussed the entire time until she finally passed out for the last half hour or so.

4. Picking up the car SUCKED! The car lot guy dropped us off and unloaded the luggage for me and then I looked in the car and saw that hubby has packed it FULL. He had not left ANY room for car seats or KIDS! It was late at night, Noah was hysterical, Addison was asleep in the sling and I thought I would have to leave half the contents of the car in the lot. I was exhausted beyond belief and hysterical. It so sucked. I had to basically unload the entire car and reload it myself. Then I had to install Noah’s carseat which I had never done before so that was a total mess. Eventually Addison woke up and was HYSTERICAL. It was awful.

5. We had no parking ticket to give the pay booth so while Addison hysterically cried in her car seat we had to sit while the parking lot folks went through every single car entry from the previous 36 hours until they found one that matched our license plate (this was NOT a computerized process). It was H-E-L-L. She was so upset, she has NEVER cried like that in her life. I was crying, she was crying, Noah had (finally) passed out cold. Eventually they found us, we paid our $12 and were on the road where Addison FINALLY fell asleep, exhausted and freaked out.

6. While trying to maneuver the highway, the trunk unlatched and I seriously thought I was going to lose the entire contents of our car on I-45. I had to slow way down and put on my hazards until I got to an exit which was probably only a few miles out but felt like 10 miles. Thankfully I lost nothing on the highway and got the trunk to latch for the rest of the drive.

7. I got to the house, unloaded and the kids all stayed asleep. Then my best friend surprised me by dropping by to greet me and bring me supplies. OMG, was that a much needed sight!!! It was such a relief to see a familiar face after the last 12 hours of Mommy-torture. But then…..the kids woke up. They were so excited by the visitors that they woke up and I could not get them back to sleep until midnight or later. I thought I might die. Seriously. All I wanted to do was just fall into “bed” and sleep and they were wound up like a kite and ready to go ‘explore’ the new house.

The Good:

Since that initial day, things have been smooooth sailing. The movers came right on schedule, didn’t charge us a penny more than we had contracted, most things arrived unscathed and they did a great job of unloading. We still have another truck due this weekend and then we’ll have all our stuff. But the important part is that we have our washer, dryer and refrigerator. Woohoo!

We LOVE it here. I mean LOVE! Every day we fall more and more in love with it here. The people are NICE. The neighbors are NICE and NORMAL and helpful and caring. People are so eager to talk and welcoming and friendly and just NICE. The kids are NICE. There are opportunities everywhere. And TARGET! There is TARGET of which I have become a daily visitor.

The house is growing on me. There are still some things I don’t love but, for the most part, it is ok. The pool will have a bit of a learning curve. Pool people have been out every day for various maintenance and talking to them is like speaking Greek - I have no idea what they are saying and just nod along and hope to pick up enough not to break it! haha.

The weather - sorry you northerners. It is GORGEOUS. It is like perfect early summer weather in Michigan - it is cool at night and most of the day but in the afternoon it warms up to the low-mid 70’s and it is ALWAYS sunny! It is the kind of weather that lures you outside and makes you want to play and exercise and just have a blast. The other day I spent an hour drawing flowers from our gardens with Noah.

The homeschool coop - the kids LOVED it, they loved the classes, the other kids, the teachers. They both want to go back. This is saying a lot becuase Dalton has had a bad coop experience in the past and was ambivalent about ever returning but he gave it a shot and is eager to return. Yay! I didn’t stay because our movers were here but the Moms I met seem so nice and welcoming.

My Kitty - I had no idea how much I had missed my kitty the last 2 years. He ‘lived’ in our walkout basement at the old house so we never saw him. Now, without a basement, he is up all the time, sleeping on my bed, loving on Addison. It is just great. I am totally a cat person. I LOVE my kitty

The kids are adjusting. Addison was really traumatized by the whole drama from the car the other night and is still really clingy but she is doing better and the side effect is that I am starting to be her preferential parent. Until now, she has definitely been a Daddy’s girl. So that’s nice for me, even if it comes at a cost. She is doing fine at night, Noah has been doing fine at night, even sleeping in his room alone, way upstairs. Hubby and I are dropping into bed exhausted by a ridiculously early hour but we are catching up on sleep, slowly but surely.

The Ugly:

That will have to wait for my camera which is buried in a box somewhere but you should see this house! It is floor-to-ceiling boxes! Someday I want to be wealthy and then I’ll hire unpackers!!! Man, that would be the life! Part of the frustration is that the packers did a VERY thorough job which means everything is wrapped and double wrapped in paper and the boxes are mostly paper. It takes a LONG time to empty a box because it is like Christmas - opening packages. Slow work for little progress. It is very frustrating. Couple that with the fact that a large portion of our stuff is still not here so we have a situation where a rocking chair has no cushions or all of Noah’s toys are here but none of the baskets or bins. It makes unpacking essentially impossible. I’ve been trying to focus on the kitchen and main areas but I realize this is probably counterproductive because I have a false sense of how much ’stuff’ we have. I managed to fit it all in our new kitchen quite well but once we get the rest, I will probably have to reorganize the entire space.

Also I can’t remember if I mentioned it but this new house has no storage closets other than in the bedrooms. No utility closets, no pantry, no linen closets, no coat closets. Our old house had 2 coat closets, an entire laundry room, a walk-in pantry and a linen closet in both full bathrooms. So we have boxes upon boxes from those closets with nowhere to unpack them to. Thank goodness there is an IKEA here!

So that’s it. I know I keep promising photos and I’m working on it.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 8th, 2007 at 12:33 pm and is filed under House Keeping, Moving, Venting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.