It did fit. Barely. The van next to the truck has a lawn mower and a treadmill on it. And we still made a few trips with our cars.

And we packed the truck floor to ceiling. It’s official. We have too much crap.

Such a man…he wakes up in the morning, and this is how I find him.

Wrongly assuming that the tickle monster is sleeping

Awe, how can you not love this guy?! Daddy loving on Charley

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Please excuse my prolonged absence, but we have been working hard to get things in running order here.  Organize the chaos if you will.  I am happy to say that we got an enormous amount done today.  It is beginning to look like we live in a house with separate rooms instead of a giant storage building.  Our bedrooms look like we are Amish folk.  Our bedroom has a bed and a dresser.  That’s it.  We have so much more closet space (to give you an idea, the closet in the “master” bedroom at our old house…plastic hangers had to be turned at an angle so that the door would close, and it was slightly wider than my shoulders).  Many things that did not fit in the closet before now do.  Plus we have an extra bedroom with a large closet.  Scott put on three deadbolts today.  I have never lived in a house that didn’t have any deadbolts!  Only knobs with a twist lock on the inside.  A lot of good that does for the two doors that have glass windows in them.  I was a nervous wreck about Caleb too.  Terrified he was going to wake up during the night and we wouldn’t hear him.  Why he would go outside I don’t know, I’ve talked to him a million times about how important it is to NEVER go outside without us…trust me…we had that huge pond behind us at our old house and a highway in front of us…not only have we talked about it since we moved there just before he turned one, we also put up safety gates across the back doors.  The front door posed problems for most adults to open.  But you can only “talk” to a three year old so much, especially one who would live outside if we’d let him.  So I am happy to have those locks up.  Make sure no one goes in or out unnoticed.

We turned in our keys at our old house last night…wasn’t that a treat.  Some of you might remember the stove incident (here and here), well the same daughter (our landlord is very elderly, so her two daughters were handling everything) came over to look at everything.  We explained which problems were pre-existing when we moved in.  Told her about the heat pump Scott put in AT COST to replace the propane and window unit.  HUGE improvement there.  New thermostat, fixed a problem with the ice maker.  Painted.  Patched about a million nail holes.  Pressure washed the deck.  Etc, etc.  We had assumed we would need to repair the ground where our dog dug a few holes and such.  We filled in the holes what I thought was reasonably well and put down enough grass seed to cover 2000 square feet (which was WAY overkill) and a bail of hay to cover it.  Silly me, I didn’t think you were supposed to put down enough hay so that it looked like a barn stall floor and you couldn’t see the ground underneath, but that was how much the nit-picking daughter expected.  She brought her mother’s nurse along to “help look for issues.”  She started walking around the yard complaining about every little dip and cranny, asking why they were there!  Most of these were nowhere near our dog, and were there when we moved in!  Picking up rocks from the ground and asking about them!  Uuuuhhh, this lovely little planet we live on called Earth has some naturally occurring ROCK in it!  I know, who’d a thunk it, it is the latest news in from NASA.  She asked the nurse for her opinion; “All I know is when you mow an uneven yard it tears up your mowing deck.”  Really?  Well maybe you can buy me a new lawn mower, as I’ve been mowing your uneven yard for two years.  What do you want us to do, re-bury the septic system???!  So anyway, you get the point, she nit-picked every little thing.  We had to go back and fix more things before she would agree to return the deposit (money we needed for our rent here).  She is trying to rent it out to someone else unsuspecting, and when her mother passes away, she will kick the person out so she can sell everything.  We set an old dog crate out at the road and told her if it wasn’t gone in two days, we would come back and dispose of it.  So she says, “Now how does that work, will someone know it is free if you put it out there?  You think someone will just take it?  I just don’t know about that.”  The damn thing was gone in less than two hours.  Before we even had a chance to finish our second round of repairs.  I am just glad that it is over with.  I can just focus on making a new home here.  It is always such a good feeling once you no longer have “the old place” and cleanup hanging over your head.  I know this because I have moved from home for 17 years, to dorm 1, to my parents, to dorm 2, to apartment 1, to apartment 2, to apartment 3, to awful place, to previous house, to here.  I speak from experience.

I think Caleb and I will go on a walk around the neighborhood tomorrow!  I promised him today, and we forgot.  He did play outside for a bit while Scott and I moved things to the storage building.  A few more days like today, and we will be all unpacked!

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I enjoy a good rainy day every now and then, but when I lose count of how many days it has been raining…while I’m trying to move…it starts to get me down.  Having a rambunctious three year old couped up for days on end in a house with unsteady towers of boxes twice his height is no fun.  I know he doesn’t understand everything that is going on.  I know.  But he keeps demanding/whining that we find one single obscure toy right that second.  It is hard not to get frustrated.  I am ready for the rain to go away.  It is the last little straw making me feel like I am about to lose it.  I do have to thank God for on demand TV though.  We pretty much only watch the preschool kids TV channel, Noggin.  Plus Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and Little Einsteins occasionally.  I noticed there was a preschool kids on demand channel on our brochure.  They have Sprout, Noggin, and a few other channels listed, and you can find the shows from those channels on demand.  We officially have a new Bob the Builder fan.  He had never seen it before.  There are approximately eight episodes available on demand, he has watched all of them several times and can sing the theme song already.  He goes to bed thinking about Bob and wakes up in the morning thinking about Bob.

On a funny note…we have two cats, a girl and a boy.  The girl  kitty is due to be a mommy around the end of May.  Our boy kitty missed the boat when she was in heat, he didn’t know what to do, but he has apparently decided he would like to practice some more.  On a “7 months” pregnant cat.  I figure that is about the equivalent to where she is in human pregnancy terms.  And all us ladies know how we’re feeling around the bottom of the seventh.  Like the broad side of a barn.  I plopped down on the couch today and the cats were cuddled up together right outside the window.  I thought, oh isn’t that sweet.  Then he started bathing himself.  Then he started licking her head.  I thought, aaawe, he’s taking care of her!  Then he bit her head, then her neck and climbed on top!  I wish I could have taken a picture of her reaction.  She sprang up and wailed on his head six or seven times, just batting it back and forth between her front paws.  Then the look she gave him…the glare she had on her face…if looks could kill, oh my goodness.  She looked at him like “Oh no you didn’t EVEN just try that.”  She gave him the classic “get off me” move by turning over and laying down a different way.  Every time he moved toward her, she’d shoot that glare over her shoulder.  If he got within striking distance, she’d stand up as if to say, don’t even think about it.  He eventually laid down beside her again ever so carefully.  After a few minutes, she got up in a huff and left.  Animals can be so funny sometimes.

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bye for now

Apr 25

Posted by: Rachel in: blog

Hey y’all movin? Nope. Just like to pack our stuff up once or twice a week. See how many boxes it takes. Here’s your sign.

Biggest moving truck ever. As Scott says, if we can’t get it in this, we don’t need to be moving.

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I am sitting on the floor in our new house. We have no furniture here, no refrigerator, food, or soap. But we have internet! I’m all impressed with our new TV service. It has been two years since I’ve had cable. We are a mile outside city limits where we currently live. ONE MILE. And we have to get DirecTV. Time Warner only comes to the first few houses on our road. Just the ones that could spit and hit the city limits sign. As for the rest of us who could ride our bikes to spit on the sign…we’re stuck with dumb old satellite that goes out every time a bird craps in the southern skies. I have joined the 21st century with a DVR. How much do I love this thing? Just go ahead and ask me. I love it. I LOVE it. Seriously. I had no idea I could just hit rewind when I missed that important part on a show.  What’d he say?  Oh let me just rewind my TV.  How much do I wish we had this when Caleb was a baby? We nearly had wars over who had to go check on him while The Shield was on, since he woke up every fifteen minutes until he was 2.5. Okay not really, but close.  And no, I wasn’t neglectful.  Is one hour a week asking too much?

I went to the bathroom earlier. Hey there’s something you wanted to hear, right? You knew you came here to read my blog for some reason! Anyway, it was only after I had gone that I realized that there was no TP in that bathroom. Since my loyal companion was by my side, I asked him to go in the other bathroom and get me some toilet paper. He came running back with a balled up piece the size of a Kleenex. “Mommy’s going to need a little bit more, this isn’t even enough to wipe your tiny little heiny.” It seems toddlers do not understand implied sarcasm. I asked for a ‘little bit‘ more, and that’s just what I got.  Half a piece of 1/8th ply toilet paper the size of his fingernail when crumpled in the fluffiest manner possible. Previously, I hadn’t wanted to ask for a lot because I figured I would have been brought half a football field’s length. “Okay, a lot more, I need a lot more,” I said. Apparently, these are the magic words that get you just the right amount, as he returned from his third trip with a nice fluffy pile, yet not enough to stop up the toilet.  (I am thinking of my friend Lauren as I’m typing this…she has two toddlers…boys…and she has lots of fun potty stories ;) )

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Has anyone actually ever died from a cuteness attack? I was going through Caleb’s closet this morning packing things up when I found a few boxes of old shoes. Now I think baby feet are right up there with puppies, kittens and all things adorable. So imagine my reaction to these teeny tiny little shoes! He wore these when he was about three months old!

They were boxed with his Chuck Taylors he had when he was about 9 months old.  Pretty cute themselves, but the little New Balance shoes take the cake.

Of course he wanted to wear them.

First time trying them on, at 15 weeks old

Look at those chipmunk cheeks, my God!

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green week: earth day

Apr 22

Posted by: Rachel in: blog

Want to make a simple yet major change in your daily life that could have a huge impact on the environment? So no to paper or plastic. Instead, bring your own bags. Think about how many plastic bags you end up with in your home. I do very little shopping other than groceries, and within six months of collecting plastic bags to recycle, I had a construction sized black trash bag FULL of them! Like the same sized bag that they use for the plastic bag recycle bin in front of the grocery store. I had enough bags to fill that thing on my own. I wanted to make some bags of my own, but alas, my sewing skills are nonexistent. Just at the right moment, a Walmart brochure floated my way, entirely dedicated to Walmart’s Earth Friendly products. Reusable shopping bags…for a dollar! To me, this is hard to refuse. I tried one, then stocked up on them. If you fold them in half with the straps on top, stack them and place them in one unfolded bag, they fit perfectly, and are easy for the bag boys, or you, to grab as needed. I use them for everything now. Any store where I might end up with a plastic bag, I take them in. I have found that they fit significantly more groceries per bag, so you end up with less bags to tote when all is said and done.

Need more convincing? Look at the numbers:

500 Billion to 1 Trillion: the estimated number of bags consumed in the world during one year. This comes out to over one million bags per minute. The US accounts for approximately one to three billion of that consumption.

1460: The number of bags consumed by an average family of four per year.

12 Million: The barrels of oil used to make the plastic bags consumed by the US in a year.

1000 Years: How long it can take each bag to decompose.

Less than 1%: the percentage of bags that are recycled

$4 Billion: The annual cost to US retailers alone.

Several countries have now banned plastic bags, and Ireland enacted a highly successful PlasTax in 2002, taxing $0.20 per plastic bag. Their plastic bag consumption rate, estimated to be 1.2 billion in 2001, dropped 90%, eliminating about one billion bags.

“Please don’t use plastic or I’ll just cry!”

I had this adorable  picture envisioned of this smiling treehugging kid, alas, it didn’t work out.  Pictured next to him is a Walmart bag that I talked about above.  Looking for a way to save gas?  Just read his shirt for a tip… “Save Gas: Toot in a jar!”  Made from transitional cotton (harvested from a field already using organic practices but not yet certified organic).  They only had big kid sizes, but we had to have it!  Sitting on his heavy duty hauler wooden truck.  This did NOT come from Walmart.  They haven’t come that far.  My grandchildren will be playing with that truck one day.

Facts on the Walmart bag:

-100% recyclable
-is made from 85% recycled matierials
-is made from approximately 4 plastic soda bottles
-can replace 50 plastic shopping bags
-can carry the same weight as 2-3 plastic shopping bags

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As I spend the week talking about reduce, reuse, recycle and all things green…

Do you see anything wrong with this picture?

I think I have an obsession.

I have one of these:

I’ve had seven of these

And we have WAY too many of these.

But at least this proves I have been busy packing.  That counts for something.

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You want me to spend how much for a lightbulb??

That was my first thought when I looked into compact fluorescent bulbs (or CFLs for short). I am known to only buy the Great Value lightbulbs that come four to a pack. For one dollar. I read about CFLs online a good bit and they do seem to save quite a bit of energy (translating to environmental savings, as well as economic savings on the power bill) all while lasting much longer than the traditional incandescent bulb, so I decided to make the switch when moving. After all, living in an older house (for five more days), we have a few lights around here that blow bulbs like they’re going out of style. Old wiring I guess. Now is the perfect time to buy them for a good price too. There are several awesome sales going on with Earth Day being in April (tomorrow actually). If you’re not convinced enough to spend the money, or cannot find a disposal near you, you can can always try to be more conservative. I rarely use lights during the day, as part of my morning routine consists of raising all the blinds during the cool months. During the summer, I turn them partway so they let light in, but block some of the heat from the sun.

If you decide to change over to CFLs make sure you locate and properly dispose of the bulbs when the time comes, as they do contain mercury. Use this site to find a disposal near you.

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Earth Day is on Tuesday. I’ve been working towards a greener lifestyle lately. It’s funny, my mom has always been fairly environmentally conscious, and I know she thought none of it rubbed off. I guess it didn’t really. I’ve been pretty wasteful up until recently becoming interested in “living green.” Hey, I like green! It seemed to be the big buzz around the internet, so I began reading. I’ve made several simple changes over the last six to twelve months. I say the most major is recycling. I was amazed at how much our trash output decreased when I first started. And I’m all for taking the bag out less often. Our local recycle centers do not even ask you to separate your items! The website said that they have so many things misplaced, that they had to sort through it anyway, so it was easier to just have one bin.

I certainly make no claims on a green lifestyle at this point, but every little bit helps, right? I still buy disposable diapers (planning to potty train when we get moved and settled). That’s probably my biggest negative contribution. Baby steps.

By the way, there’s a new poll up on the sidebar about recycling.

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