Rewards

Even though all of our stuff is moved into the new house, there is still SO much to do.  The old house needs to be completely cleaned.  (It's amazing how many dust bunnies you can accumulate in just a year!)  TCD suggested that instead of cleaning it ourselves, we just hire a maid.  UGH!  I have issues with paying people to clean up messes that I've made, so hiring someone is completely out of the question.  What exactly does that teach my kids if they never have to clean a microwave or mop a floor?  (It is a well known fact that I, personally, have never cleaned a toilet, but my kids don't know that.  And the way I've set things up here, it's possible that I may never have to do that job.  I have no guilt about that because I do plenty of others!)

So, this morning, as I walked out the door to go Visiting Teaching and run a few errands, I left them each a list of things they needed to do at the old house before they started any other activities.   It was NOT a short list!

• Windex mirrors 
• Clean bathtubs
• Wipe down counters
• Mop bathroom floor
• Clean Toilets
• Scrub baseboards
• Wipe out drawers, cabinets and shelves
• Vacuum bedrooms
• Take down shower curtains
• Vacuum downstairs closet

They each were responsible for their own rooms and both the upstairs and downstairs bathrooms.   It's always better when I'm not here because I tend to hover.  And then I make suggestions.  And then the "workers" get frustrated.  And then nothing gets done.  So, I left the list on the counter, walked out the door and hoped for the best.


Two hours later I pulled into the garage at the old house and noticed that there were no "workers" there anymore.  That could mean one of two things...either they were already finished OR they hadn't even started their jobs!  

Guess which one it was...
HINT:  If they hadn't done a great job, there would have been yelling and crying and groundation and there would be a blog post about something entirely different...

Not only did the "workers" finish the jobs on the list, they cleaned the ENTIRE downstairs!  

And guess what they wanted as a reward...to go to the POOL.  Um, I was planning on paying them what I would have paid a cleaning person, but the POOL and ice cream afterward were great rewards, too.  (I'm still going to pay them, but there's another floor to finish, so I'll surprise them with the bigger reward when the entire job is done.)  Besides, it was a great excuse to practice using my NEW CAMERA!

I was standing at the front door when I took this and June was in the car which was parked on the curb!  So glad I got that extra lens!

TCD talked Spell Girl into standing on her hands and doing a backflip into the water.

 

Cool, huh?  They only had to do this about 65 times before I got the shot.  

(Hopefully, I'll get faster and more accurate.)

 

   Oh, how I wish I had zoomed in on this one...it's SO cute!

 

Probably when they start to hide from the photographer, it's a good time to put the camera away and go get ice cream.  

It's been a great day!  Visiting teaching is done.  50% of the old house is clean.  There were rewards.  No one was grounded.  My camera is AMAZING!  And tomorrow the cable guy is coming to connect our internet and TV in the new house so I don't have to keep sneaking over to the old house to post stuff.  

Hooray!  

The Elders Quorum

After five straight days of moving the contents of my house down the street in 100 degree weather, with no less than 6 children helping me, I've given up trying to be amazing.  We did a lot, but last night, the things that were left were HUGE, HEAVY, and AWKWARD...like the refrigerator, the two larger beds, THE PIANO, and the enormous armoire.   

 

It currently houses a TV, but the new house has a built in entertainment area, so I don't know where this is going to go, but I love it, so I'm keeping it. 

Even with ALL the neighborhood kids helping me, I couldn't have gotten that stuff down the street.  So I gave in and called the Elders Quorum President.  And this morning at 8:00, EIGHT very nice men were at my front door ready to lift stuff and haul it to the new house for me.  In ONE HOUR that small group of men did what it had taken me ALL week to do on my own.   Not one of them complained about the dust bunnies that live behind my fridge.  Not one of them made me feel stupid for not knowing how to disconnect all the things that live in that giant armoire.  Not one of them minded that they actually had to CARRY everything down the street because I didn't have a truck.  They took things apart AND put them back together on the other end.  They connected my washer and dryer AND the water line on my fridge so that we would have ice!  And when they left, they were all still smiling.  One of them even said, "Thanks for letting us help!"   I realized after that hour, that sometimes we're not supposed to do things all by ourselves.  Sometimes it's a good thing to ask for help.  


I am so grateful that we have organizations like The Elders Quorum in our Church to assist at a moment's notice.  I could not have finished this move without them.  I will be making LOTS of cookies this weekend...or as soon as I find the cookie sheets. 

Update:  When the Scoutmaster came home this afternoon, he was thrilled and surprised and as grateful as I am that everything is finished.   We're all totally looking forward to sleeping in our new house tonight!    

Unattainable Goals

Isn't this the sexiest thing you've ever seen!!??? 

Well, guess what!  In a few minutes it gets to come home with me!!  I've been walking into Best Buy for the past 2 months just so I can pick up this beautiful thing and hold it.  I'm starting to creep out the employees in the camera department, I think.  But guess what!  Sometimes when you want a thing a LOT...like A REALLY SUPER LOT, you actually get it.  (I totally believe that, by the way.)   Our old camera has been dying a slow death for awhile, but yesterday, The Scoutmaster texted me and said that he jumped into the lake to help rescue a stray boat, and he accidentally forgot that the camera was in his pocket.  It is now officially, totally and completely dead.  Which means...I can get my camera!...because what has been a WANT just turned unto a NEED.  Girls Camp, Jubilee, summer vacations, 75th birthdays, baptisms...how can that stuff happen without an adequate camera?  It can't...


I'm so happy that from today on, the pictures on this blog will be better than the ones my Droid has been taking.  (Sorry, BFF, I LOVE everything else about you, but I need better quality pictures.) 

And I'm so happy that sometimes the things we think are unattainable goals ARE actually attainable.  You just have to be patient.

Be Good.  Be Patient.  Don't Forget.

Update:  

It even looks sexy when I'm holding it!!

10,000

Do you know what makes me infinitely happy?  AMAZING FRIENDS...not just the ones who are next door or in my ward, but the ones who I can feel even though I can't talk to you or see you right now.

It's a good thing I wrote yesterday's post early in the afternoon, because the day unraveled quickly after that.  Activity Days, Jubilee practice, 2 birthday parties, forgotten swimsuits, unbearable heat and humidity, impromptu teenagers coming over to play and eat instead of move things.  The kids have all lost interest in this move since their rooms are now mostly finished.  Unfortunately there are still lots of boring things and heavy things and things that none of us know what to do with that still need to be moved, and two more days until RELIEF comes home from Scout Camp.  (I can't decide whether I want to be amazing and have this all finished before he gets home, or if I want to just stop now, take the kids to the pool, and save the rest for him.)   I'm exhausted and unbalanced and ready to just live there already.


But then, in the mornings, when I take a minute to have a decent breakfast and check this blog, I notice that a handful of people have visited since I've been gone.  Everyday there are people reading this.  Some of you comment and some of you don't.  Some come back everyday and some only visit once.  Either way, I love it!  It lifts me and encourages me to do something good during the day so that I have something to say later that night. 

Several weeks ago, I happened to notice that the number of people who have read this blog was over 10,000!  That's unbelievable.  I had no idea in November when I started this, that anyone would find it, or like it, or keep coming back to read it, but 7 months and 10,000 visits later, I'm so grateful everyday that at least a few people have.  I'm grateful for my small handful of friends and family who come regularly and leave sweet little notes for me.  I can feel you there everyday, and I love all of you so much...even the ones who don't ever comment.  


Thank you so much for still maintaining an undeniable connection with me even though miles and years and circumstances have separated some of us.  Thank you so much for keeping me afloat during weeks like this when I feel like I'm swimming upstream all by myself.  Thank you for reminding me that I'm never by myself or forgotten.  Thank you for reminding me that even on the crappiest days, there is always, ALWAYS something to be grateful for.  If I could, I would throw my arms around you and tell you in person how much I LOVE YOU!
 

Music

I think this is the 100th post that I've written about music, but I kinda like music, and today, it's been as helpful with this move as my neighbors were yesterday.

I haven't listened to any music in the past 48 hours and I think that was making me grumpy...some kind of crazy withdrawals, I'm sure.  I needed something peppy, but not too distracting, to motivate me to get my closet organized.

So this morning, I dragged my laptop over to the new house with some speakers and plugged everything in while I worked on my closet...which, btw, was a bigger job than the kitchen.  I have WAY too many clothes and shoes! 


It's amazing how the right music can motivate you to do amazing things.  


I turned on Pandora and started working and all of a sudden it was an hour later and my closet was done!

I've moved on to other parts of the house, and my music has once again taken a backseat to Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez blaring from the rooms upstairs.  I don't actually mind, though...they're pretty peppy, too!  In a minute, when the kids are finished with their lunch break, and they head out to their afternoon swimming dates, I'll turn mine back on. 

Moving Day #2

I have seriously LOVED this day..

• This morning at 8:00, my neighbor texted and asked if she could come over and help move things.  (I had already been up for a couple of hours dreading her text...not because I don't desperately NEED the help, but because I don't have a PLAN.  Lots of people in the ward and in the neighborhood have asked if they can help, but I keep saying no because I don't want them coming over and getting frustrated that nothing's ready.)  But this neighbor is the perfect solution to that challenge...she just did it anyway.  She jumped right into the dining room and started carrying things one by one across the street!  And then another neighbor came over and did the same thing...two hours later, my kitchen, dining room, and piano room were not only completely empty in this house, but PUT AWAY in the new house!  

• Somehow, all the dishes from my kitchen miraculously fit into the new kitchen cabinets!  (That is equivalent to one of those fishes and loaves experiences for me.  Really...I still don't know how we pulled that off!)

• One of the little girls on the street who is typically Spell Girl's friend came over early to help move things.  (Spell Girl goes in phases with people...sometimes she thrives in the company of others, and sometimes...like today...she would like to curl up in her little turtle shell and be quiet.)  So this cute little girl moved on to June.  She and June have spent the day moving June's ENTIRE room...the dresser, the desk, the shelves, the stuffed animals, the boxes...seriously, they've been like determined little ants carrying things down the street ALL DAY LONG and all by themselves!  (And they were thrilled with the Sonic slushies that I brought home for them!)

• After moving things all morning, one of Mack's friends invited him over to swim, and then when his parents found out the girls were all home, they invited them, too! There is nothing better than spending the afternoon in the pool during the heat of the day!  (I might have to do a whole post on Neighbors With POOLS.)   It was nice to be alone and quiet for a minute while the kids were all swimming.  

• Another neighbor invited my kids to have dinner at her house tonight. (That's been my biggest challenge...remembering to feed everyone.  I'm fine just grazing all day long...a smoothie, an apple, some goldfish...but the kids don't really graze effectively.  If left on their own, they would just eat chips and cookies all day long.  So I'm very, very grateful that they will have a decent dinner tonight.)

And the very best thing about today...

• I called StarTex Power to ask them if there was ANY way they could get the power turned on any sooner than Thursday, and guess what!!...they said YES!  It is now a blissfully cool 75 degrees, I can open the garage door, and the lights work, which means my moving day has been extended by a few hours!!  Hooray!  

What an awesome Father's Day present to have the whole house moved while my husband is at Scout Camp...hmmm, I wonder if I can pull that off???  Maybe I should take the grill over there, too, and have some amazing grilled thing waiting for him for dinner...
Nevermind, trying to be amazing never really works out the way I think it will.  And I don't actually know how to grill.  Maybe I'll just stick with getting the furniture over there. 

 

Moving

OK, LOVE might be a strong word for the way I feel about moving.  It's hard work, and two moves within one year is a lot...even for me.  But this is the 8th time we've moved since we've been married and I think I've gotten pretty good at it.  There are some things I definitely love about moving...

I LOVE decorating a new space.
I LOVE finding new purposes for old stuff.
I LOVE starting over with clean/organized cabinets and shelves that are exactly the way I want them.. 

This move is different than any of the others, though, because we're not going that far...just across the street...well, technically it's across the street and 3 houses to the left, but way shorter than any of our past moves, for sure!  After 24 hours of the actual "moving across the street" process, though, it's possible that this could be the most tedious move we've ever made.

It's been a really, really, really LONG day!  The kids and I have made no less than 65 trips to the new house.  They have pulled wagon-loads of STUFF over there.  We've carried things.  Emma tried to get a "bucket brigade" going with some of the neighbor kids, but it didn't quite work...there was frustration and yelling and crying for a little while, but it passed quickly and they're all best friends again.  We've loaded and unloaded Craig's car at least 17 times...but somehow it still doesn't look like we've done very much.

There have been some challenging things about this move...

• Craig left this morning (with the van) at 4am for Scout Camp and he won't be home until Saturday (and neither will my van.)  Then he leaves for a business trip to HOU the following Monday. (hmmm...it's possible we could have timed this better...)

• It's 100 degrees outside and the electricity in the new house won't be turned on until Thursday.

• I have eight sets of dishes and fewer cabinets in the new kitchen than I have in the current one.   

But, even though today has been exhausting, there's still a lot to be grateful for...

• Every single time that wagon has been pulled down the street, some very thoughtful neighbor child has followed it to the house, helped my kids lift it up over the curb and then stayed to unload the contents.  Some have even come back for a second load.

• Neighbor children are happy to be paid in popsicles or Sonic slushies!

• It's a short walk back to our air conditioned house where there is unlimited ice in the freezer and gallons and gallons of water to drink!

• We have two WHOLE weeks to trickle things across the street as slowly as we want to.

• I think 65 trips across the street with boxes of heavy stuff counts as some kind of exercise, don't you?

• I think I got the better end of the deal with that Scout Camp thing.

Tomorrow is Moving Day #2...with all of the Mia Maids coming over to help!  I wonder if they be as satisfied with popsicles and slushies??  
 

    

Elevation

Last week, I posted this for Emma's birthday and let her read it.  And in the days since, I have been shocked at the changes in her.  She's a good girl all the time, but she's 11, so she has her moody days and her frustrating days and some days when she just doesn't get along with anyone...just like the rest of us.   But since reading that post, she has had some noticeably different days. 

In that post, I listed ELEVEN things I LOVE about her...and this week she has gone out of her way to magnify those things.

On Friday night, I was feeling really crappy...dizzy, sore from walking all week long, tired, dehydrated...so I curled up in my chair and closed my eyes for a minute.  When I opened them, June was standing there next to me putting a blanket over me asking if I wanted some water or some crackers.  (crackers??)  When she came back a minute later and asked me if I wanted her to brush my hair, I realized that she was trying to reenact our experience when she was three and I was pregnant and sick.  In that blog post, I said she was the BEST helper when she was 3, and so she tried to be the BEST helper again. 

Last night, we decided at 6:30pm to have dinner at the pool.  Children were frantically trying to get bathing suits, towels, goggles, and swim toys together (somehow one of our diving rings ended up IN THE TREE in our front yard!), and I was left to make 6 sandwiches (all special ordered, of course...2 veggie, one with no mustard, one with no mayo, two with no tomatoes, one PB&J...ugh!)  We had invited another family to meet us at the pool, so I was slightly frazzled trying to assemble our impromptu picnic quickly so we wouldn't be too far behind them.  And then, all of a sudden, Emma appeared in the kitchen and volunteered to make McKay's PB&J!  After she finished, she opened up cans, spread mayo, cut up cucumbers, and wrote everyone's names on their sandwich baggies.  She was helpful x100!!!  It would have taken me twice as long to get everything together had she not jumped in the way she did.  In my post, I said she was "ALWAYS my sous chef" so she just stepped right up to be my sous chef on Saturday.  


I realized after those two experiences, and many more subtle ones with Emma this week, that she is trying to BE all those things that I said she was in that blog post.  


"We BECOME what we want to BE by consistently BEING what we want to BECOME each day."  Richard G. Scott The Transforming Power of Faith and Character

Isn't it amazing how looking at ourselves through the eyes of someone else can sometimes lift us to be better than we thought we were?  I have had that experience before.  There have been people in my life who I love and respect and admire, and who are totally out of my league, but who saw things in me that I didn't ever see in myself.  And because they saw those things, it made me want to BE what they saw. 

I think about those people all the time...the ones who see things far beyond what we think we're capable of...the ones who drive us to be better than we ever would be on our own...the ones who continue to elevate us even when they're not standing in front of us...

It's amazing what a few encouraging conversations (or a blog post) can do to motivate a person to look past what they've always done, and try to do something better. 

I am eternally grateful to the people who have done that for me, and I'm grateful to have just realized that I have the power to do that in my own home.    







 

Optometrists

DISCLAIMER:  My brother-in-law is NOT going to be happy that I've written an "Optometrists" post before a "Dentists" post.  But I don't actually LOVE dentists.   (I like my brother-in-law just fine, but I'm not going to visit him at his office anytime soon.)  And I do have that post about DENTAL CONTAINERS...that counts, right?  Sorry, Dan...


Apparently this week is our official "catch up on doctor visits" week...

Today, TCD and my husband had appointments with the Optometrist.  They both needed annual renewals for their contact prescriptions and somehow I got talked into a vision test, too.  I have no idea why, because my vision is just fine...except occasionally when I'm driving at night...and when I'm trying to read those ridiculously small scriptures...and when I watch TV downstairs, but that's just because the words on the menu are WHITE on a BLUE background and that's impossible for anyone to read.  In every other situation, my vision is JUST FINE!  

But I agreed to humor them and take the test.


I'm not sure how my phone was unattended long enough for TCD to take pictures of this experience, but I'm posting them because I want her to know that I'm totally comfortable looking like a dork.  

The official diagnosis was that my vision isn't bad enough to prevent me from driving a car.  (see!!  I told them it was just fine!)  But it's not perfect either.  So the doctor left the decision up to me.  If I want to see the world more clearly, I now have a prescription for glasses; if not, then I don't have to use it!  Hooray!  That officially puts her on the list of people I LOVE today.  (Other people in my family were slightly unhappy with that decision and they think I cheated on the test.  How can you cheat on a vision test???)   

I haven't decided whether I'm giving in to the glasses or not.  With all these choices, I can't even decide on frames!!!

What do you think?

 

Our NEW House!!

Wanna see what we bought this morning!?!?

 

Entryway

Piano Room

Kitchen

Living Room

Upstairs Living Room

Spell Girl's Room

TCD's Room (because it has the biggest closet)

Mack's Room

Backyard

I am overwhelmed and totally grateful that when we were looking for rental homes last summer, the only three available happened to be within the same ward boundaries.  And that when we finally decided on one, we were fortunate enough to end up in a great neighborhood, with great schools.  And I'm especially grateful that, unlike our last move, this one isn't across the country...it's just across the street!

Everyday, it becomes more and more clear to me that there are no accidents.  We didn't just get lucky when we picked this house and this street and this ward.  I'm convinced that there is a very specific reason for us to be here, in this place, at this time.  We have been unbelievably blessed in the short time we've been here and I look forward to the next indefinite number of years in this new home and the blessings yet to come.    


(These pictures were taken during the inspection.  I'll post some updated ones with OUR furniture as we move it all in.  My plan is to have everything moved and unpacked, rooms painted and decorated, and stuff on the walls by the end of the month!)