Upheaval

That is the story of our life. Tonight I am going to vent and maybe even whine about our circumstances. But first on a positive note... we have our house!! We're not actually living in it, but we moved all our miscellaneous belongings from the garage here into the garage over there... So we're making progress.

But now to my laundry list. First of all, my girls are not good with change (can't imagine where they get that from!) I have heard crying and whining practically nonstop the last couple days. Having Sarah attached to my hip has not made things easy. Put on top of that Sarah and Katie teething (figured out Katie is by chance this afternoon), it has not been a very fun party around here. Then to add to it all, Sarah has been waking up multiple times at night and Ellie has wet her bed the last three nights in a row. I suppose all kids have a hard time with change, it's just that my girls have experienced a TON of change the last two months. I am certainly ready for consistency!

Something funny- Steve and I are having a really hard time in that new house. It is the exact mirror opposite of our last house on post, so we keep getting mixed up. It is going to take awhile to figure out who belongs in which room and get used to moving in the right direction in that house.

Tiff's Housing Update

Alone… we are finally alone. I thought I would feel a lot more relief today, as CarmaLee and her family left for their vacation. I think the problem is that we’re still here. Until we’re in our own home with our own things I won’t be completely at ease. And here’s the update about all that:

We sign for our house tomorrow. Yay!!! The girls and I walked over yesterday and saw that the cleaning crew was there getting it ready to be moved into, which is nice. We checked out the back yard and the girls were getting excited about having their own home and their own space. But, there’s a catch to that backyard. Right before we left on leave the guy that lived there before, Mark, offered to have us buy the fence that covered the back yard. It was adjoining the neighbor’s fence. This was ideal, as our house sits on the corner of two busy roads. I thought it was great! We paid quite a bit for it, but since we’ll probably resell it when we leave, it really seemed like a great thing. I like feeling a little safer about letting the girls outside! Then we got home from leave and as we were driving past the house Steve noticed something that wasn’t quite right. We pulled over and he took a walk into the back yard only to discover something very sad… we now only had a three-sided fence. Yeah- when the neighbors moved out, the fence company they rented from took all four of their sides, leaving only three for us. Mark assured us that he owned all four sides, but alas- not a full fence. It is currently being disputed and hopefully the fencing company will cave in and put our fourth side of the fence back up. nothing can be easy, right?

So we sign for the house tomorrow. Then we were able to schedule to have our belongings from the storage unit picked up and delivered by the military, which means I don’t need to be as concerned about the Elder’s Quorum ruining my things :) Unfortunately the first date we could get is Tuesday, so it looks like we’ll be staying at CarmaLee’s until then. My only consolation is that we are here alone now and I don’t have to cook for, clean up after or babysit her kids now. I really don’t know how I survived these last two weeks. Heavenly Father blessed me with some amazing patience and perseverance. Trust me, there were days… Two families with two very different lifestyles under the same roof just doesn’t work so well long-term. I am grateful that CarmaLee let us stay here. I’m just glad the end is in sight.

And there you have it!

Friday the 13th

Friday the thirteenth… there are movies made about that day! Well, thankfully I don’t put a lot of stock into superstition, so nothing could touch me! If only that were true. We decided that since Steve had the day off we would go over to Topeka to get a few things from Sam’s that we needed. We thought the girls would sleep during the hour-long drive there. Of course not! So then we decided to have lunch at Olive Garden, figuring the girls would be happy eating breadsticks until the food arrived. Ha! Not a chance. They squirmed and screamed and ran and did anything and everything to make that meal absolutely miserable. We were both ready to give the girls away by the end of the meal. The only positive thing was that the food did taste really good. From there we made a couple quick stops at Target, Kohl’s (this one I did alone and had quick fun at the children’s clearance racks) and finally Sam’s. The girls were miserable in Sam’s Club as well. We still managed to spend an amazing amount of money and escape with our sanity. The girls stayed awake on the way home from Topeka as well. We made a stop at Coldstone for a yummy ice cream cake for my birthday (yummm) and got home to feed the girls. Ellie had a meltdown at the dinner table because she didn’t want what we were having. Katie was overtired and just wanted to go to bed. Sarah was just hungry and felt better once she was fed. We got the two little ones to bed by 6:45 and told Ellie that we were going to a movie and Carma Lee would put her to bed. She did not appreciate that. We left anyway! :)

So we got to the movie theater only to find out that they changed the order of showings within the last 2 days and we didn’t know it (this on-post theater only shows one movie a night). Instead of showing the chick flick we wanted to see, it was “Speed Racer.” Yeah- been there, done that- definitely not interested in going there again! I about cried. My only consolation was that I got to come home and read “Eclipse”, the third book in the “Twilight” series that had arrived in the mail that afternoon (I was introduced to this series in Idaho and had read the first two books earlier in the week... which is why I don't read books very often- I get addicted!).

As I put this to paper (well, cyberspace) it doesn't seem as terrible as it did then. But trust me, it was a long day! Happy Birthday to me?