Bad Dreams

I just had to record this because I find it hilarious and I know someday he will too...

Marshall just woke up and came out to find me. He got that really sad look, the one people get right before they let loose into a big cry, and I asked what was wrong. He sobbed, "You gooot me a Leapsteeeer Twooo!!" I asked why he was sad about that, "IIII waaaanted aaaa Leapsteeeer Threeee!" "Oh, honey, I'm so sorry. It was just a bad dream, they don't even make Leapster 3s. Let's go back to bed." "Ooookaaaay."

Oh to be five!

"Hree, Doo"

Yesterday at the pool, in order to help Coen learn to count, we tossed the ball back and forth between us counting "One, Two, Three" before we threw it. This morning for the last half hour, he has been running around the house naked yelling "HREE, DOO, HREE, DOO, HREE, DOO, HREE, DOO!!!!" I think the lesson stuck.

More Tidbits and PICTURES!!

A few more things:

We were out and about this weekend and had one more stop to make when we noticed Coen had fallen asleep. John tickled him from the front seat while I drove. When I checked the rearview mirror to see if it was working to keep him awake, I saw a smirk across his face and his eyes were closed. The little ham was fake-sleeping! It was hilarious. He has done it one other time since then!

Marshall lost his third tooth yesterday morning. Once again, the tooth fairy forgot to visit and the boy forgot to look under his pillow in the morning.

Coen has learned some new words - "no," "eye," "nose," "ff-ff" - "woof woof" for dog, "shh-shh" -for toothbrush, which is his favorite new toy and he carries an adult size one around the house with him. He is really into animals and makes extremely funny, random noises when he plays with the toy animals. I'll try to get a video of it. His "Marshall" and "mine" are also becoming more pronounced (because they are used so much).

Yesterday at Target Marshall asked for something in the checkout isle. I told him not today and he said "Okay," and put it back. The second lady behind me came up to him after and told him what an obedient and well behaved boy he was. How sweet!
Marshall was looking at an insert to one of his Leapster games that shows pictures of other games. He asked what one was but I couldn't come over to read it right that second. He said, "That's okay, I'll sound it out!" and proceeded to read "Pet Pals." I was so proud that he took initiative on his own to read it for himself and told him so!

From the drive:

This little stinker made a huge mess of his carseat! Here he is smashing crackers and putting the crumbs in between his toes.

There was plenty of this!

Happy Mothers Day to ME! Not!

Poking the jelly from his sandwich with his finger then rubbing it on his carseat straps and clothes.

Ahhh, finally a break!

Marshall taking a little break.

He was more interested in playing with his fruit leather.
{Kirsten, thank you for the snack bags, they loved them!}Trying to wear it as a bracelet.

What a goofball!

He had camera envy from too many pictures of his brother and not him.

He pulled out the tip of a magically appearing marker thing and was eating it. Sweet.

Eating pizza crust with his blanky at the hotel. Classic!


In Missouri:

I couldn't get these pictures straightened! But how cute! They are settling into their normal routine of taking all their blankets off their beds every morning and cuddling/wrestling each other in a pillow and blanket heap.

Marshall told me this is how you relax, with your arms behind your head.

Coen's new hiding spot! He likes to play under the sink in the bathroom while I get ready.

Peekaboo!

Gotta love the shinguard blaster!

Taking pride in dressing himself. Yes, I let him out like this :)

With Grammy not around I have to ask myself "What would Grammy do?" Well, she would round up $.50 for a ride!

I have a funny story to tell you...

You all know how I can be a little slow sometimes? Well this takes the cake. Read on...

I signed Marshall up for Tae Kwon Do last week and he went to his first class yesterday. Several parents stood in the lobby looking on as our kids learned to hit and kick each other. One of the parents was the father of a little boy. It happened to be his first lesson, too. I told him his son was pretty good and asked his age. Three. He asked how old Marshall was (their names were written on their belts). I told him 5 1/2. A few minutes later Coen was drawing some attention when I tried to stand him on the floor next to where I was standing. He clung to me for the whole hour, while I stood right in front of the window where the blazing hot sun was shining in. Fun times. Anyway, this dad says, "So that's Marshall and this one is Deputy?" Wondering where the heck he had picked that up as Coen's name I said "Oh, no. His name is Coen." "Uh, nevermind," said the dad. Lightbulb flickers on - "Oh! Haha, I get it." I said, feeling totally dumb for the millionth time in my life.

And now I invite you to laugh with me.

Getting Here, part 2

{scroll down and read part 1 first}

Sorry to leave you hanging. I was on John's laptop and the battery was dying. Ironically at the cliff hanger moment!

I realized he was going past me as I got off the freeway. It was rainy and the visibility was low. Not knowing when he would realize it and turn back, I headed on to the apartment office to get our keys before they closed. Otherwise we would have nowhere to spend the night and the people coming from the ward to help us unload the truck would have to reschedule for tomorrow.

I pulled into the office parking lot at 5 minutes to 6:00! Whew! I quickly signed all 10 pages of the lease agreement (details of which I'll go into later - they're interesting). I waited around for John but then decided to go up, take a look, and let the boys out of the car. As I was getting out, a car pulled up and asked if I was the new family. Good, help was there! He offered to keep an eye out for John as I unpacked the car and shuffled the kids up to the apartment. Twenty minutes went by and I still hadn't seen John. So I went downstairs and asked the guy if he had a cell phone I could use, since John had mine in the truck. I called a few times and he didn't answer. I assumed he was on the other line with the EQ pres or someone getting directions back to the apartment.

By 7:00 he still hadn't shown up and I was getting worried! The one guy was in the process of getting some other people there to help. Finally John showed up with a little more mud on his shoes. Haha. He had to turn around at the end of a street and was stuck in the mud again! This time he was able to unhitch the car and get out without assistance, luckily.

Four men from the EQ showed up to help us unload and it took about an hour and a half. We were finally in!

The first few days were really crazy, not being able to find what we needed. We kept having to go to different stores to buy things like a shower curtain, before we could shower or garbage cans, or a pantry cabinet, or a wall mount for said pantry. Trip after trip, we kept ending up in the same little shopping center!

Everyday we unload a few more boxes, but a week later there are still many to go. At first I was going mad, but I'm adjusting to the boxes everywhere. It's getting better and every day I make more progress. At least at this point all the critical items are unpacked. It's hard getting settled when you have unpacking, John jumping right into work, kids ripping into their toy boxes, phone calls to make, furniture to assemble, bills and subscriptions to switch over, and tons of errands to run!!! Every day there are 10 more things than the day before! But my panic over it all has stopped, so that's good.

The second night the bishop came over with the missionaries to see if we needed anything. On Friday after John got off work we attempted a run to the nearest Costco, a whopping 25 minutes away and in the downtown ghetto! The place was dead. I've never seen a Costco so empty before!! I think next time we'll go to the one in Kansas, 45 minutes away, and see what else is nearby that we can turn into a day trip.

The whole week has been super rainy, and we're told that it's rarely like that this time of year. But, it is tornado season (eek) and the bishop informed me that we're also on one of the biggest fault lines in the country (double eek). My next project is putting together our 72 hour kits!

Sunday was our first day in our new ward. It seems great! The ward house is about 20 minutes away and church is at 9:00. Surprisingly, we made it on time!

Here are a few more tidbits about what's happened in the last week...

The second day we were here Coen had followed John into the master bathroom. He wandered out and a few minutes later decided to go back in, only he was so lost he didn't know where to go. It was hilarious watching him run from room to room looking for his daddy! You could almost sense his relief upon finding John.

In quickly glancing over the lease I noticed that you can have no more than 2 kids while living here. That sort of puts a damper on any future plans we had. (Don't worry, we'll find a way when the time is right.)

We had our first noise complaint against us yesterday. At about 11am John called from work to tell me the office had called and our downstairs neighbor had complained about stomping going on. I was totally shocked! I could not for the life of me think of any unusual "stomping" or particularly loud noises in the last 2 hours. So I called the office to get more information. I told them sorry and that I had 2 kids and was a stay at home mom. What was I supposed to do? I didn't want to be kicked out within the first month! (3 complaints warrants an eviction!!!) Furthermore (though I didn't point this out to them) there is a dog downstairs who barks at us all. day. long. Plus it's not like we're throwing keggers at 2am, you know? Hmph. So after John got home from work we went downstairs to introduce ourselves and see if something couldn't be worked out. (Which by the way, the lease says to work it out on your own before contacting them!) The tenants 3 (yes 3!!) kids answered and said she wasn't home. I gave them the message, I'd love to chat and work something out. I'm really hoping she just had an off day. Marshall seemed to get louder and hated being told to quiet down after I explained the situation. And there is just no reasoning with a one and a half year old! Sigh. It was 11am!? I don't get it.

Another funny one- I called before we moved here to get all the utilities set up, including internet (of course!). When the man came to install it last Tuesday he took one look around and said, you guys moved from a much bigger place, didn't you? "Uh, no." I said. We had just come in the night before and the helpers put everything in the living room because it was raining and we didn't want dirty carpets this soon into the game. That wasn't the funny part. The funny part is that we left our desk in Salt Lake so didn't have a place to set up our computer. So we have been using John's laptop from work. The night we got set up, John went about setting up the wireless connection. He renamed it "Diet Cokers" (the new family name Marshall gave us - LOL!) and changed the password. A few days later I went to set up the wireless from the desktop and it wouldn't work. That night I asked John if he would do it again from the other computer. When he couldn't get it figured out I called Time-Warner Cable and asked for technical support. "You don't have a wireless router" they told me. OoooooOOOh. John had used someone else's open connection and changed it! To "Diet-Cokers" of all things! Ahahaha! We both had a good laugh over that one!

Marshall was full of questions at the hotel. Do people live here? Why isn't there a kitchen? Do people live here? Why is the fridge so small? Why isn't there a living room? Do people live here? Where is the kitchen? Is this an apartment? Do people live here? I think it took him 45 minutes of explanations to fully understand it. Cute.

And, for those of you watching the washer/dryer drama unfold on facebook, the set here isn't terrible. But they're not anything close to mine! I just wish they were front-loading. I can already tell a difference in my clothes, and it's not a good one :(

I would also like to say I am very sad and lost without my regular coupon blogs and stores. I did manage a Target deal today on swim diapers and a Leapster game for Marshall. Mostly I miss getting the paper from my in-laws and mom each week. I need to find a good deal on the paper here. Without those coupons I can't do much and have had to pay full price for groceries - horrendous!!! Especially because I basically had to start from scratch with anything frozen or refrigerated.

My aunt told me to keep a journal and look back at it. So that's what I'm doing. Just recording my adjustment.

I keep adding things to this post...

A few minor complaints about the apartment (for the record) and then the things I love. The carpet is very lightly colored and older. There is carpet in the dining room!! (I am convinced whoever designed it to be that way has never fed children spaghetti. Or even seen a kid). We found ants crawling on our bed this morning. It's weird, on a second story, in a room that has seen no food! I'm calling maintenance ASAP. The office is way smaller than we thought it would be and thus will not also be a playroom. Luckily, the boys' room is much larger and can house their toys!

It is so weird to have things work in our apartment! Like outlets that don't spark, light switches that work the first time, the ceiling fans are great!!, the drawers in the kitchen are all there AND even work. It's great! We have a fireplace that will be super cozy this winter. We love going out on the deck in the evenings and looking at the birds, or watching people walk their dogs. We are loving the 2 bathrooms, Sunday morning ran a lot smoother. The pool and A/C will be fabulous this summer. We love being out of the basement, but that may mean dealing with crabby downstairs neighbors :/ Marshall loves having paved walkways to practice riding his bike on and we've been taking opportunities for walks during the intermittent clear skies.

So far I love, love, love it here!

Getting Here, part 1

The last couple months have been a whirlwind. We pretty much knew that as soon as we got home from California, John would have a job offer in Missouri. So we immediately began purging and packing. We flew out to look for a place to live about 10 days after California and got home with only 3 weeks left in Salt Lake.

Between boxing up our stuff and a million goodbye parties, life was pretty crazy and chaotic. I had one last bookclub, two GNOs with different groups, I had a 30th birthday surprise party for John, my mom planned a swim party for Marshall, John's parents had a going away Sunday dinner, and my dad and Pippa planned a paella party for the Marshall side and all our friends. Am I forgetting anything?!

For the entire week before we left the boys practically lived at my mom's house. She went into work for only a couple hours each morning then came to get Marshall and Coen after breakfast. It was hard not to have her help packing, but better that the boys were out of the way. It was hard for them (and me) because the living room was full of boxes and hard to navigate through and all their toys were getting packed up. We were all going crazy!

The night before we were supposed to pack the moving truck, I ran out of boxes at about 4am. I had a total meltdown and John made me go to bed. I couldn't sleep, there was so much left to do! I tossed and turned then rolled out of bed at 5:30 to keep working. At 7:00 John went to get more boxes from U-Haul. What was left seemed totally daunting until my sisters and mother in law showed up to help pack (I couldn't have done it without you, Thank YOU!) while the guys carried box after box out to the truck. Right before everyone came I had a tearful goodbye with my beloved washer and dryer. The couple that bought them seem really great and I quickly gave her "Nicole's Unofficial Bosch Tutorial." I didn't have long to mourn their loss before my thoughts turned to fitting all our stuff into the truck.

I tried to sort out what would go and what would stay in my head. I decided that John couldn't possibly NEED all 500 unread books he had packed, so those could stay. Oh but wait, John had already ensured their safe passage by loading them into his car. Of course! So what else could stay in their stead? My brother's bright blue desk, Coen's changing table...

and here I take a moment to digress from my story to rant for a moment. All we have been able to afford our entire marriage has been cheap, crappy furniture that falls apart with the drop of a button. Can I just list all the things that are/have broken...2 tables and 6 chairs from garage sales, our crib is recalled but we can't afford to put money with the refund to buy a different brand so we keep using it praying that Coen's doesn't fall through the railing, our Ikea dresser whose drawers broke after only 3 months of use, 2 of which we've gotten rid of all together and the other ones John has to keep "fixing", the changing table drawers (hence the reason for ditching it in SL), our entertainment center that once had a door and 2 drawers (witch we also ditched), our mattress didn't break but it was free and used when we got married - we could feel springs in our backs, even our bed frame is tied together with rope so it won't come apart...hmm, anything else? Anyway, I'm sick of it!!!! We can barely afford the stuff in the first place and we definitely can't afford to replace it. Poverty is a vicious cycle. You can't afford nice stuff, so what you end up buying keeps breaking and you keep putting money into it to fix it or replace it when really what you need to do is save up to buy nice stuff to begin with so that it lasts longer but you can't save for that kind of thing because expenses keep coming up. I hate it! Okay, there's my rant.

To continue...several other things went to my mom's house for safe keeping until we return. But we were all wondering how on earth it was all going to get into the truck. Luckily my dad was on the scene, working his magic. He is a miracle truck packer. He is practically famous for his skills, and his friends and family call him to come load their trucks whenever they move. I believe it took 3 1/2 hours but he did it! Someone commented to me at the end "If you had asked me an hour ago if all that was going to fit in there, I would have said no way!" I'm still in complete awe. I wish I had set up a video camera to film it all and then sped it up to replay it. How cool would that be??? It was certainly entertaining, everyone was completely amazed. Thank you Dad!!!

After everyone left John and I set to work making sure everything made it out. We still had a couple boxes of pictures, cleaning supplies, and miscellaneous stuff left to pack in our cars. We vacuumed, mopped the walls (it was a brand new mop) and floors in the kitchen, and decided to call it quits. The $200 deposit wasn't worth getting back at that point. We were exhausted and needed to sleep before heading out the next morning at 2am. We still had to have dinner and pick up the kids at my moms and say goodbye to her. They need to remodel our apartment anyway and if they were just going to tear out everything I wasn't going to waste time cleaning it. Our safety on the 2 day trip was much more important than getting the money back. We spent the night at John's parents. When the alarm went off at 3 we decided to wait until 4. Four turned into 5 (come on, it's me we're talking about!) I felt a lot better waking up at 5 then I did at 3. So we packed up and headed out. Coen was asleep before we got to the freeway and Marshall was too excited to go back to sleep but sat quietly for a couple hours in the back while I listened to Plumb and sipped gulped a diet coke.

At exactly 11.1 miles into the trip I started crying about leaving. That quickly ended as I listened to Plumb's "Me," realized it was Mother's Day, and saw a running slideshow of my boys lives in pictures in time to the song and that reminded me that I never packed the external hard drive!! I quickly walkie-talkied John to ask if he had seen it. It was in his briefcase - whew! And that was that, we were on our way to a new life!!! In the last few weeks I haven't had time or room in my brain to even think about being sad. I've been way too excited!

We drove until 8:30 that night - 15 hours! - and only got to Lexington, Nebraska (aka the middle of Nowhere). We had no idea where we were, just that we needed to stop right then if we were going to let Marshall swim in the hotel pool like we'd been promising him all day. Mapquest says that from Salt Lake it should take 10 hours to get there. Ha! They aren't calculating a U-Haul, 2 kids, a diabetic, and a post-baby mom bladder! It took us soooo long to get there! We made too many stops that lasted too long. We had originally planned on being 6 hours away from KC for the 2nd day but at the rate we were going it was going to take all the next day too. So we had dinner, John took Marshall swimming, and we all went to bed. The plan was to get up early again but we were so exhausted we slept until 8:30. We had the continental breakfast, gotta love those! and headed back out...in a rain/wind storm.

Monday was quite comical really because sometimes you just have to laugh, right? We got a later start than we had planned on. I wanted to be at the new place mid-afternoon. Time for a nap or at least a minute to unwind before help from the elder's quorum arrived to help unpack. Yeah right! John had printed the rest of the directions from the hotel printer that morning, and left them in my car. As we were getting ready to switch freeways, Coen was reluctantly being woken up from a nap by Marshall who was whining that he was hungry and I needed to get him a snack out of the bag-NOW, John was worried about being on empty, so I was looking for a gas station, and trying to navigate the interstate change all at the same time. Well, after a few minutes of wandering down a beautiful country road that had been rained on all day, we realized it A) did not have a much needed gas station and B) was not the freeway we needed to be on for the next 53 miles. So, I swung around on the 2 lane street and waited for John to find a spot to do the same as I pointed him towards a nice big driveway. He opted for the side of the street. In the grass. The grass it had rained in all day. Grass+Mud+3 Ton U-Haul+Trailer Hitch and Car=OOPS. Big Oops. It took 2 hours. First, I flagged down the first Ford that drove past. The guy didn't have a chain but went home to get one. Since we were in the middle of nowhere, home for him was half an hour away. So we waited. I took the boys to get lunch and find a gas station in town. By the time we came back for John he had been pulled out by a tow-truck. By this point it was about 2, which was the time I wanted to be in Missouri by.

We were going to have to hurry if we wanted to make it by the time the apartment office closed at 6. At about 5:45 I started to panic. I didn't have their number to call and let them know we were almost there. I walkie-talkied John to tell him we had 15 minutes to get there, so to catch up to me and stay close. Little did I know his battery had died!

...to be continued