Crafting With Strangers

When you move to a faraway land of strangers, I have learned from experience that the absolute best thing you can possibly do is jump in, feet first and with the gusto of someone who is planning to live in said location permanently.

So today I went to a ladies coffee/Bible study/craft morning at the church that we checked out last Sunday.  It is amazing how lovely it can be to sip, read and craft with a group of complete strangers.  Then again, I think this is something special that the family of God has going.

John 13:34 - 35

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.  By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.

It was wonderful.  And my kids were in good hands too.  A sweet lady even rocked my little Bug to sleep for me.  All I've wanted to do since I got home is decorate flip flops and make cake pops, but I played with my kids (something I want to be better about doing), dabbled in the art of housecleaning, finished setting up Bug's crib (in the girls' room!), and read stories on the couch with Princess and Smooch until Smooch turned her head and closed her eyes.   It was both sweet and funny to have her fall asleep on me during story time.  I suppose it was past her usual nap time by about an hour.

In other news, Bug has been sleeping like a CHAMP at night all of a sudden.  She's been on and off with sleeping through since about 3 months old, but she's really been hanging on to 2 a.m. for the past month or so.  Not good.  Two nights ago, she started rolling over to sleep on her stomach and she's been sleeping until 6 or 7 a.m.  I feel like a new woman.   And it's only been two days.  If she keeps this up, I may conquer the world by the end of next week. 

Also, Bug got her first tooth immediately after we moved to California.  Then a second tooth about a week after that.  See in the above picture? My baby is growing up.  We even started her on solid food the other night. :-)

Behold, a video with terrible lighting, but a very cute baby nonetheless. 

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Happy almost weekend.  My hubby's birthday is this weekend and we're having guests.  For this reason, I will get off the computer and go do something more productive.  And also I need to make dinner. :-)

 

Californians and All That

It's been so long since I've fallen off the blog bandwagon that I don't even know where to begin.  I guess I'll go with the most obvious update:  we moved to the grand state of California.  Just nine short months after we moved to Albuquerque.  Yes, just like a pregnancy.  Only not.  You don't want to get me started about all the things I do not love about yet another move, so I will try to focus on the things I do love about it. 

I love our new house.  And I mean way more than "like."

We are close enough to Disneyland to take a day trip.

Likewise, we are not too terribly far from the coast!  (for me, for the first time in over a decade)

We are much closer to our Phoenix family than before.

It is a little fun (satisfying?) to set up house and purge a bunch of stuff we don't need. 

With our new move, and with being decidedly less pregnant than I was for our last move (as in not), and with being officially out of the life with a newborn phase for awhile, I am determined to be good little blogger again.  I hope to chronicle our family's journey a little better than before, but if I'm honest I will probably just write about whatever I feel like, as always. :-)  Soo here's hoping I feel like jotting down some fun memories of life with the kids and such!  I really do love to blog for a lot of reasons.

I like to record memories that I can revisit.

I love having my own little corner of the internet.

I enjoy using the blog to keep family and friends near and far up to date on our lives.

I have a lot more to say than my Facebook status can handle.

And now...I don't have any friends. ;-)  Nearby ones anyway.

Seeing as how I've been such a non-blogger that my growing anonymous readership has disappeared, I'm pretty tempted to ditch the blog nicknames and move into reality.  But I lean toward the paranoid end of the spectrum when it comes to such things, so I think I'll keep the fake names and see if I can't finally come up with one for our youngest.

Off to update everything!

(Happy AUGUST!  Yikes.)

Moving Is Not for the Faint of Heart

We moved.  Over two weeks ago.   Moving day was one of the worst, most stressful days ever during which I shed more tears than I care to admit.  Due to certain cicumstances (read: lots of things going terribly wrong), I had to put on my big girl pants and drive the moving truck all by my lonesome.  Without directions (again, lots of things, terribly wrong).

And it ended like this: 

For the record, I was not getting gas.  For the record, I just needed a place to turn around (I was lost & had just figured out where I needed to go) and this not-yet-open-to-the-public gas station looked like my best bet.  I suck at turning moving trucks around.  Apparently.  For the record, several contractors were angry with me.  For the record, my husband is a contractor so I understood completely how I was "setting them back" and was in no need of guilt trips.  But bawling your eyes out in front of a superintendent apparently disarms him.  (I despise crying in front of people, a fact that made me cry all the harder.) And for the record, no, I still don't know if our insurance is covering it.

So this is one of the many reasons you haven't heard from me lately.  It's been a long, slow road.  And to be really honest, I haven't felt like "talking" about it on here.  Looking at that photo still makes my stomach do flip-flops.  Suffice it to say that it was a very, very bad day.  Someday, when it strikes me as more humorous, I might sit down and chronicle our moving misadventure...but today is not that day.

Unlike Princess, Smooch wasn't adjusting well to the move either.  Thankfully she has since moved past the tantrums, scratching, hitting, screaming, and whining and is back to her cheery self.  But for days, we looked something like this, perhaps minus my smile:

We're as unpacked as I dare to be considering we're likely moving again in the Spring.  (Lord, help us.)  All remaining boxes & their contents have been shoved into the garage for condensing, selling, donating, etc.  We have too much stuff.  How do I tell people I want coal in my stocking this year? 

(28 weeks)

Things have since settled down, and we've been able to enjoy a little bit of exploring in our new city.  I now know where to buy grass-fed beef, the location of our nearest Starbucks and the ever-important Hobby Lobby.  We also discovered a free pumpkin patch (of the non-farm variety) down the road a few miles from our house.     

We also have a little tree in our front yard with bright red Autumn leaves, in front of which we took my 30-week belly shot.   Because sometimes, especially when it feels like everything is falling apart, it's all about the joy you can glean from the smallest details in life, clinging to an attitude of gratefulness.  

Some of the many things I have been grateful for these past couple of weeks, are visits from family and unexpected phone calls from friends just wanting to check in on us.   Also, ill-fitting princess dresses and butterfly costumes, a husband who has shown an exceptional amount of compassion, unexpected toddler kisses, and the will to put my feet on the ground and start all over building our lives in a new place...again...when sometimes I'd rather conquer tasks at home and feel lonely because it's easier.
 

Wish me luck.  It's time to put on my big girl pants again: my first MOPS meeting is tomorrow, and I don't like social butterfly stuff. ;-)