Box Trolls

With all the unpacking, I had a multitude of empty boxes.  The littles decided to play "Box Trolls."  

And they built a box house too.  Hours and hours of fun.

And I liked this post by Celeste on Facebook.

Our Van

Steve and I had this conversation over text about our van a couple of weeks ago.

Yeah, we aren't fans of that car.

First Week In Our New Home

 We stayed at a hotel in Lehi Utah from Tuesday-Friday morning.  We had to load all our belongings on the moving truck on Tuesday, so we had no furniture.  Plus, we needed to get the house cleaned and prepared for the new owners.  Early Friday morning (May 22,) we left for Texas.  Friday was the kid's last day of school, but we had them miss it.  They didn't mind.  Actually, Celeste had another week; but grades were closed already for her and they weren't doing anything the last week.  

Anyhow, so we left Friday just before 7am.  Our plan originally was to drive to Albuquerque New Mexico on day one, and to Georgetown on day two.  Albuquerque was about the halfway point, with about a 10 hr drive.  But we ended up driving all the way to Lubbock Texas on day one. It was about 900 miles and took us about 15 hours.  

We got in late and got to bed late.  We were beat.  At 2am Steve and I were awaken by our smoke alarm going off in our hotel room. It was the loudest alarm I think I have had to experience.  We think it went off because we had a humidfyer going in the room for the babies who still had coughs. It was very humid in town and with the humidifiers going, it almost was smokey.  We scrambled to get it to stop but couldn't.  Steve called the front desk and tried to yell over the sound to tell them the problem.  (Although I am sure they could hear it.)  We held our ears closed and put pillows over the babies ears who didn't even stir through all the commotion.   The kids in the next room never woke up either.  The guy came up and tried to disable it, but couldn't.  It was so loud, that he frantically pulled it off the ceiling.  It still blaired.  He then yells to me "Are you ok without this?!"  And I laughed and yelled back, "Yeah!  Smash the thing!"  So he took it and ran out of the room, with it blairing all the way down the hall.  What an adventure.  

The next morning we ate breakfast and left for Georgetown.  We decided to go straight to our new home and just stay there that night even though we had no furniture.  It was pouring raim as we got  into town.  So it was kind of a gloomy way for our kids to see Georgetown for the first time.  We got to our new house around 4pm.  The old owner met us and gave us keys and a quick orientation while the kids ran around exploring the place.  The house was not really cleaned by the old owners and with all the rain, some of the kids were feeling disappointed at our new digs.  We drove the kids around Georgetown real quick to see their schools, the rec center, and downtown areas.

We also went to Target and got some bedding and food and came back home to campout there.  I stayed up super late into the night cleaning the gross kitchen and bathrooms.  The kids helped some too.  Our bathroom really grossed me out. I cleaned boogers off the shower, a drawer with a bunch of nail clippings, and  poop in the toilet room.  I even threw up doing it because I was so disgusted.  We also noticed our bedroom and bathroom had a nasty smell to it.  We guessed it was marijuana.  The carpet was also so disgusting, I didn't even want to walk on it barefoot.  We were feeling a little disappointed with the situation.  We knew the carpet needed to be replaced when we bought the house.  The owner took four thousand off the price to accomodate for that.  But we hadn't planned on replacing it immediately.  After realizing the smell and extent of the filth, we decided the carpet couldn't come out soon enough.

The first 24 hours or so in our new place we had some heavy storms.

We kept getting emergency alerts on our cell phones.  Even tornado warnings!  Texas has been getting hammered in storms.  There have been a lot of flooding and some tornadoes.  There have been casualties.  As of today it has been 27 deaths in Texas due to the storms and flooding.  We have been fortunate where we are at because we weren't affected by it too much.

After a couple of warnings to take shelter, we decided we better obey.  We gathered all the kids and went to the room we felt was safest as we dont have a basement.

Some of the kids were scared, others excited, and some unphased.  The tornado didn't cross our path thankfully.  

We also got started right away on painting.  We spent 6 days doing a great deal of painting and enlisting the kid's help.  They chose the colors for their rooms.  

They were pretty good sports and worked hard.  It was tough work, but we felt like we were bonding as a family doing it.

And the kids were starting to love our new home more.

They had a little too much fun at times with the paint.  Andy the aborigine.   

We painted the kid's room, master bedroom and bathroom, pantry, the living room and the dining room.  Phew!  

We had our flooring replaced on Wednesday and Friday.  To get the kids out of the flooring guy's hair, Steve took the kids downtown Austin and to the Capital building while I continued to paint.

Cessie took these photos.

And she posted on Facebook about the experience.

On Thursday I had to get the cars oil changed and registered.  While we waited for one of the cars, the older kids and I walked around downtown and loved this awesome store, The Sweet Tooth.

We had a lot of fun in there.

Unfortunately our van needed some repairs and was in the shop for 24 hours.  But we were lucky it got us to Texas ok.  On Friday we got our laminate flooring installed.

Much prettier than the old carpet!  

With all our new painting and flooring and all the fun we had had, we were all so happy with the house and area.  People here have been incredibly kind and friendly to us and that had made a huge difference too.  

Some of the kids have already made firends, and are so happy about that.  

On Friday our moving truck was finally delivered too!  It had been delayed.  The movers couldn't come to help us unload it yet, so we started unloading some of it today as a family.  We had dinner on a dinner table finally today, and that felt great.

We'll get the rest unloaded tomorrow and we'll get the unpacking going.  I can't wait to decorate!

It has been a very full and eventful week!

Moved

Well, we moved!  The week leading up to our move was nuts!!!  We were crazy busy with packing, preparing the house for the new owners, end of school year events, and Charity getting croup.  It was really rough!  

But we had a few angels come through for us to make it possible.  My brother Tim helped a bunch.  My sister Anna helped. Steve's sister Janice brought us dinner.  And my dear old friend Dana and her cute little kids came and worked their tooshies off for a couple of hours.  I was so grateful for all this help.  I was in too deep and drowning.

But we managed to get it all done.  

The night before we left, Jenalyn was sweet enough to host a dinner for all the Bishop family.  Steve's parents were in town as well as Brian and his family.  So we were able to say our goodbyes to them all.  It was a nice time.

Ballet Class Photo

I just received this cute photo of one of my ballet classes.  Hana was in this class obviously.  She is so cute!

Swimming At the Hotel

Hana's 3rd Grade Award

Hana's 3rd grade class had an awards ceremony today and it was so cute.

Hana with her cute friend Izzie.

Hana was nominated for best hair.  :)

She loves her teacher Mrs. O'Driscoll.

Jonah's 9th Grade Graduation

Our little charter school goes from kindergarten to 9th grade.  They do a nice program and ceremony for the 9th graders at the end of the year.  Monday night was when this happened.

Jonah was excited and we were excited for him.  Unfortunately I had to miss it because I was in the hospital with Charity.  I was so sad about missing it that I cried.  Jonah seemed to have had a good time even if I wasn't there.  Fortunately he had his dad there.

And Steve was great to send me photos.

Charity sick...again

Charity awoke Saturday morning pretty sick.  Cough, fever, feeling miserable.  It was a crazy day, but by afternoon I realized I better drop everything and take her in.  We went to the Instacare and they sent us to the ER. She was having trouble breathing.  They said she had croup.  

She really wanted Cessie to come with her.  So I brought her along.

She stayed several hours.  After a steroid and breathing treatment, she had improved enough that they sent her home.

On Sunday night Steve took her back in. They did the same thing, and several hours later released her.

Monday she was still miserable and worse in some ways.  So that afternoon I took her back in.  This time they admitted her overnight.  She was pretty dehydrated and struggled to breathe.  But after all they did for her, she was released on Tuesday late morning.  We were all so exhausted from the experience! 

Race

On Saturday I ran the school's 5k and got 2nd place among the women. It was a very small race, so it was not hard to do.  But I got a fun prize!