Settling In...

So, I hate blogspot and it’s making this post very difficult
right now. This is why I don’t
blog. It should not be so
complicated! I can’t figure out how to
get this underlining off either, so this is how it’s gonna be. I wrote a little catch up about how our time
here in Kentucky is going, but it ended up at the end and I can’t move it, so
you can catch that at the end. And it
wouldn’t let me put this text first, so there’s a random picture first. So here are a few pictures from some events
over the last few months that I have neglected blogging about. We’ve had a lot of birthdays around
here. Ryan’s was the most recent. It was really weird, cause it’s the first
birthday we’ve ever done on our own. I
have to say I was a pretty terrible wife about it. Things were just so crazy with the move and
everything, so I never got him a present.
He says he’s okay with it, cause he couldn’t think of anything he really
wanted anyway, but I still feel terrible.
But his birthday was on a Saturday, so we spent it together as a
family. We ran a couple errands, went to
lunch at Olive Garden, and then went a saw a movie. We saw The Muppets, so the kids would be entertained
too. Then we stopped at the grocery
store to get stuff for this receipt for filet mignon that Ryan’s mom
makes. I told him his birthday present
was a special dinner! When we got home,
we weren’t really hungry for dinner after our big lunch and lots of
popcorn! So we saved the filet for
Sunday. It would’ve been a perfect, fun
family day if it hadn’t been for Evan.
He was completely in pieces the ENTIRE day! It was awful.
But I did my best to keep him away from Ryan as much as I could and I
tried to be really patient with him. The
poor kid was so sleep deprived from the move and everything. On Sunday, I made Ryan’s special dinner and a
cake, and we sang happy birthday to him.
I think it ended up being a pretty good birthday for him, just a little
weird doing it all by ourselves. Oh, it
also was his big 3-0, so I felt bad that we didn’t do more for it. But I think it was honestly making Ryan feel
old, so maybe it’s best that it wasn’t a big affair!
Ryan's mom had her birthday just after Christmas. We had a Rapunzel party for Bella's birthday back in October (pictures coming). At that, Ryan's mom mentioned that she never had a princess party growing up. So Ryan and I and some of his siblings got together and decided it would be really fun/funny to throw her a princess party for her birthday this year. With her birthday right after Christmas, it seems like it's never really acknowledged much, so we thought it would be good to do. Ryan's dad took her out shopping for a while so we could decorate and everything. Then we got pizza and had cupcakes and stuff. I've been wanting to try making one of these princess cakes...for quite some time, and I think my first one turned out pretty well! It was so cute and Ann loved it so much, it sat on the counter for like a week and a half! We never actually ate it, just looked. I think I will be making another one in the future. It was fun! Lara got a tiara for Ann, and little tiaras for the other girls, so here are all the "princesses" posing!

Christmas was a fun and difficult time this year. It was hard knowing that it was our last big hoorah with our families. So we tried to suck in all the time we could! Here's all the grandkids on my side that were around in grandma's christmas pjs!

Bella was very excited about Christmas. She kept digging through all the presents to find more that were hers!Here's Bella in the Christmas pjs I made her. She's been wanting a "sleep dress" forever, so I finally sat down and made it for Christmas. She loves it!Evan got Buzz Lightyear pajama pants. Buzz is always a big hit around here, in whatever form!So here's all the way back to Halloween. Bella decided months before that she wanted to be Rapunzel. I thought it would be fun to attempt a Rapunzel dress! Fun is not exactly the word I would use to describe the experience, but she did love it! I made her a crown and a yarn wig to go with it, and she felt like a million bucks on Halloween! It's still a very popular dress up dress! I figured this could be the last year that Evan doesn't have an opinion about what he dressed up as, so I made him a little costumer to be Flynn Rider. He hated it! But I think he would've hated any costume I tried to put on him! And they were just super cute together!We celebrated Evan's 2nd birthday in November. The kid is obssessed with sports, like you wouldn't believe!! So I made him a football cake, which he loved! I also found him that awesome football hat at Zurcher's and had to buy it! He still loves to walk around with it on. He got a couple of footballs for his birthday, which are totally favorite toys. My mom also gave him a Buzz Lightyear which has been very popular.And lastly, Bella's birthday was in October. We ended up celebrating it almost 3 weeks early because she wanted Uncle Paul to be here for her birthday party, and that's when he was in town! We were going to have a birthday party with some of her friends, but sort of at the last minute, I decided it was going to be too much for me at the time. I had already promised the Rapunzel party, so I went forward with that with the family. I made a tower cake, which I got a tutorial for online and it turned out totally awesome! I loved it! I finished her Rapunzel wig in time for her party and she still loves wearing that thing around everywhere!

Grandma Collette got her these 2 Barbie cars, which are still a total hit!

Ryan and I made her a dollhouse. This whole ordeal is a LONG story that I won't get into, but I will say that I was not very pleased with it! It certainly did not turn out the way I wanted it to and I was just wishing the whole time that we had just bought her one. But it's ended up being a really good thing. She loves playing in it, which is the most important part, and she decorates in however she wants and I don't even care! She loves putting her own pictures and stuff in it, so she's had a blast with it. I guess if she ends up happy that's all I will be concerned about!

The tower cake...So that does it for that. We are starting week 3 here in Kentucky, and I think I can be a little brighter than my last post! We're starting to settle in a bit. I certainly don't break down crying so much. I think the last time I cried was Friday night, and it was very brief. Ryan and I were getting the kids to bed and kind of talking about what we wanted to do once they were down. Really the only options are to watch TV or a movie. Which, don't get me wrong, we love to do, but that's what we had been doing every night all week. Naturally, we could not come up with anything new. I cried because I was frustrated by that. Frustrated that we have spent our whole marriage depending on other people for our entertainment. Even if we were just upstairs or across the street and nobody was paying attention to us, it was somewhere to be. I don't want this to sound like we don't enjoy each other's company. Because we do, immensely. We're just so used to a way of life. Our entire married life has been spent very near both of our families and having that as a default place to go when we got a little bored. So that has been an adjustment. I kept asking him all night, What do normal people do??? And we've decided that this is about it! While this was on the pros list when it came to moving away (spending more time with each other), it's been a weird adjustment. But life is moving on. I've been invited to several girl's nights and playdates with other moms and their kids. We just went this morning to a place called ZaBoing. They have all these big bouncy blow up toys out and the kids can just run around and play. It was awesome. And even more awesome was finding a place where they finally just charge the kids, not the parents! I hate paying for myself to watch my kids play. They had a blast and I'm sure we'll be going back again.

Ryan is settling in to the new job well. He's been enjoying it so far. He says things are still a little slow for him, but he's still really optimistic about the career choice. And he's taking an exam in May, so he's had lots of time to study, which is always good. The homesickness finally hit him. He doesn't bawl his eyes out like I do, just gets kind of quiet and somber. So we snuggle up on the couch most nights with hot chocolate and try to quietly support each other!

The apartment doesn't really smell any better. They put us in such an awful position because they offered re-carpeting, which I think I could really get them to do. But I'm very pregnant, and can't really move all my furniture around for re-carpeting. It's something they should have done before we moved in. And we would just say fine, you guys broke your end of the lease with this, we're out of here, but again, I'm very pregnant. House hunting and buying and packing and moving again is not something I can do right now. So I think we've decided our plan is to try to find a house over the next 6 weeks or so, and then move around May or June. Maybe April. We'll see how fast we can get it all done! We did some casual house hunting over the weekend and it got me really excited. I think I could handle this all a lot better with a house of my own that doesn't smell! We've gotten it tamed enough that I can sit in here all day and not be bothered by it, but I'm constantly worried when I go places that I smell like the apartment. I make sure everyone knows that I'm not a crazy cat lady, I just have a smelly apartment! So, we still miss our families like crazy, but we keep reminding ourselves of all the good things about this move. We've met some really nice people and we're starting to have a really good time. I think if we could get into a house within the next 6 months, things would really be great.

So, there's the current scoop. We're doing our best to be positive and happy and enjoy our new adventure! So long from Kentucky!

A quick check-in...

Okay, I have promised people that I will blog more now that I have moved away. Half the people didn't know much about my daily life anyway, but oh well. I'm going to try to start anew! Besides, I'm feeling very volatile right now, so it's good that I'll get a way to get some of this stuff out. So I wanted to just check in. We left for Kentucky last Wednesday. My sister, Terra, came with us cause she had nothing else to do, so she wanted in on the fun. We drove to Ogallala, NE that day and stayed the night. We drove to Columbia, MO the next day, and then finished up the trip on Friday. My parents, the lovely lovely people that they are, solved a HUGE problem for us and volunteered to drive our moving truck out. They left Wednesday afternoon and made it by Friday night. We went kind of slow and made long stops for the kids and me. It's funny, this pregnancy thing. If I'm too active and push it too far, I swell up. But, if I take it too easy, I also swell up. My poor calves were so big and I totally had cankles by the end of the trip. But all in all, it went really well. The kids were amazing for being stuck in the car for 3 days straight. They were really quiet and content for pretty much the whole trip. We were very lucky! The weather was also amazing. We were so dreading another move in January, especially one through Parley's canyon and Wyoming, but there was not even a drop of rain. It was pretty awesome. We felt very blessed. The universe bended to accommodate us!

We stopped by our apartment on Friday night, just to check it out. We had planned to stay in a hotel that night and then unload the truck Saturday morning. We opened the door, and just about got bowled over by the smell coming from the place. It was HORRIBLE!! My immediate thought was cat. And not just cat, but old cat lady that never took care of her cats or house trained them or anything. It was just awful. And the kitchen was pretty dirty, along with the bathrooms. Now, anyone who knows me very well knows that I am a clean freak. It's a disease. I'm fully willing to admit to this, that I am completely OCD about things being clean. But that doesn't make it any easier to deal with a place that is not clean. So late that night, after my parents got to experience the pleasant smell, we ran to the store and picked up 4 boxes of Arm & Hammer carpet deodorizer, oust, and 2 bottles of febreeze. We sprinkled it down and sprayed and sprayed that night. When we came back the next morning, it was a little better. We vacuumed that up, sprinkled down some more, and started unloading. We got everything in in pretty good time, but it was hard to unpack when the place was so dirty. Most of us spent the day deodorizing, sanitizing, and scrubbing. I have never lived in an actual apartment complex, but this just seems unacceptable to me. Nobody, especially pregnant with young children, should be expected to move into a place in that condition. I am not impressed! I didn't think it would be a big deal to not actually see the unit we were moving into. But now I've learned my lesson! So now I just feel like these people are crooks and they'll lie about as much as they can and just hope you don't say anything. But I said something. I told them how disgusting it was and how disappointed I was in the condition of the apartment. I'm sure they don't care, but I got it out anyway!

So now here we are. I can't sit in my apartment without feeling itchy. I'm pretty sure it's all psychological, but still. I'm trying to convince myself that I can handle this. I've spent a lot of time in tears. Neither Ryan or I have ever doubted the decision, it's just been extremely hard. I bawled all day on Sunday and most the day Monday after my parents left. Terra left today, and I've spent the day bawling over that. I know that I just need to meet people and get into the swing of life here, but right now I'm struggling. I attribute about 50% of the emotion (at least) to pregnancy. Bad idea to make that kind of move pregnant. I'm just an emotional mess! But I'm hopeful that things will get better. I'm determined to pull out of this before I have this baby so that I don't fall into some serious post-partum depression! But good news is, my mom will be here for that, so I get to see her again soon! And then I'll go through all the bawling all over again when she leaves me again!

On a positive note, the kids are very happy. Bella gets to have her own room and she's very happy about that. Evan has only asked to go upstairs to see grandma once. They seem to be aware that we're not so close anymore. I think it will hit them, I just don't know when. Ryan is enjoying the new job. He's happy about the move, hasn't shed one tear. I think part of it is because he gets to go to work! But we're close to a lot of stuff too, which is nice. There are 2 Walmarts pretty close, and that's always an essential! I found a really fun park today, and we're going to go check out the library tomorrow. We're gonna try to get moving again and get out of this sobbing-all-the-time funk!

So that's a summary of the last week. There were a few pictures taken, I'll post those later. My mom and I have not called each other yet, because I'm pretty sure that neither of us could get through the conversation. So we just text for now! Apparently my dad has been quite upset as well. We feel so blessed to have lived so close to our families for so long. We formed relationships in a unique way that we never would have otherwise. But I'm kind of cursing the last 3 years right now because I think that has just made this all the harder. We were a part of both of our parent's daily lives, and they were a part of ours. And now it's all gone. It's gonna take some getting used to. So, for those of you who have left your mommies and daddies, tell me, how long did it take you to get over it???