Keeping my head above water

So, the car ride up was brutal.  We started off at 10 am and unfortunately did not get there until 9:00pm.  Since my night's rest wasn't the greatest I tried to rest while my mom did most of the driving.  I would just get to sleep and hear Charlie from the back seat "Mom, Mom, Mom, Mommy.." 

"What?!" I would respond and be retorted to with toddlerese.  The gist of the translation: don't go to sleep mom.  No problem kid.

The last leg of our journey was up "the hill".  That is what the locals call it.  We are only 500 ft above sea level.  As we start winding our way up every town gets a little smaller.  We go through a town with one stop light.  The next one doesn't even have a stop light or a store of any kind.  Now I am getting nervous.  We finally roll into Boulder Creek.  Couple of store fronts, one or two grocery stores and the local bar etc.  Almost all are closed down and it is dark.  As we come to the only three way stop in town panic begins to settle in.  "Oh no!  I have moved my family to hickville!!!  Mom, we are in the middle of no where," I whisper/shriek.  In my over exhausted state of mind that is what it looked like.  We go down the road a few more minutes and make it to the house.  The moving van is there and only 1/3 unloaded.  Though my stepdad and stepbrother left the night before they took a longer route and had only arrived an hour before us.  I began to cry uncontrollably and begged my mom to find Jesse and bring him to the car.  Our amazing church members were working to unload the truck and I could not keep it together.  After talking to Jesse my angel mother took me and Charlie back down the hill to a hotel for the night.  Finding a hotel Memorial Day weekend was an adventure in itself!  After a better night sleep (Quality Inn really has amazing beds) we came back the next day.  Things looked less bleak but still small town.  After a crazy two and half days of unpacking and recovery I said good bye to my parents and stepbrother.  Unpacking is still in progress but our house is slowly coming together.  The boys love their new school and so do I.  The town is small but I do have access to most things I need in under 20 minutes.  I have made some friends but have yet to find a pool to fulfill my aquatic needs:). All in good time.  Here are some pictures of our first few weeks.

Boxes make good seats

Checking out the view

Coolest bridge: photo op!!!

Our backyard

Santa Cruz

Some of our backyard finds

Boxes everywhere!

My way to cope...

Charlie is in charge of his wardrobe

Saturday adventure: this little place is actually in Santa Cruz.  It is a satellite exploration station for Monterey Bay.

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It has happened...

The phrase: "Why me and why now?" came to mind once or twice as I struggled through the last week and a half before and during our big move. Moving is no easy task.  Moving with three kids, no husband at home, and almost 9 months pregnant in hot, nasty weather is darn near impossible.  As I was moving things kept going wrong with the house.  First the a/c damaging the office floor.  Fixed it and replaced the floor.  Then, the water heater sprung a leak and damaged the office floor.  Replaced the water heater (ouch) and fixed the floor again.  Sent the husband out the door to get up to the new house and go to job orientation.  Then, termites.... REALLY?!?!?!  When I found out we had an unwanted party underneath our porch and how much it would cost to fix it all I sat down and had a good cry.  A looooong cry.  A headache producing cry.  Then, I went through what we needed to do to fix it.  I really didn't have time for the pity party to last so I gave the go ahead for the work and we agree to pay them out of escrow.  Isn't it amazing how things change?  The next day the exterminator brings over paperwork and tells me they can't be paid out of escrow.  Nice.  The day people are coming to load up the truck with our belongings I am scraping up money to pay for the house to be tented and repaired.  We had to pay out of pocket or the escrow could have fallen through or been rejected because of the discovery.  Ahhh, get everything into the truck already so I don't have to deal with this house any more!  

Friday afternoon we kicked things into high gear.  Thanks to an amazing friend who picked up the moving truck for me among other things, we were loading by 3:30 and finished by about 6:30.  I had many helpers and trying to coordinate this myself got to a point where we decided just get it all out of the house and into the carport area then the loading guys took it from there.  By 7:30 the floors were swept and the house was locked.  I eagerly headed to my moms where my boys were waiting.  Once arriving at Grammie's house all of us decided one last swim was in order.  The day had been so hot the water was barely cool enough to be refreshing but it felt great to get the weight off my feet and let the kids have fun.  I finally got the boys in bed by about ten and myself a little before midnight.  Knowing we had a long drive the next day it was an unwelcome surprise to have my two year old crawl into bed with me at 2:30 am.  At one point I got off of my edge of the double bed to slide him to the other side.  He promptly rolled towards the middle and kept snoozing away.  "Lovely!"  I thought as I made my way into the other room where my older boys were sleeping.  I attempted the roll to a side move with my oldest and slept on the full bed with him till the morning instead.  Remember this:  I am pregnant, stressed, and seriously sleep deprived at this point and we still have a 10 hour car ride ahead of us.  Yippee.

I made my way over to the house one last time to wipe down the kitchen, clear any last minute items, and give the floors a last once over.  Another friend helped me with that.  I really have some amazing friends and family!  You don't realize what dirty people you are until you move.  I vow to do better every time.  This time will be different!  Right... With everything done I locked the doors for the last time and took the last bag of trash to a neighbors trash can.  Ours were packed and I had been using all our neighbors trash cans to chuck stuff all week.  We had really nice neighbors or neighbors out of town.  Both were useful.  I looked at the house and just felt relief.  I was not sad to be leaving this money sucking leech.  I was only sad to see a place with memories be left behind.  I got back to my mom's and we hit the road around 10am.  The road trip will have to be another blog post folks.  I don't want to pack too much good stuff into one.

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