We've moved!

A picture of Miciah with the little bitty fish she caught (and then let go again).

Our House

A hello to everyone out there. Some of you we've talked to recently, and some of you, well, it's been a while. But this is a hello to tell you that we've had a few changes in our life. We decided to buy a house! Well, we're not too excited about the financial junk that goes with that decision, but we love the house. It was built in 1947 and the last owners lived in it for over 40 years. So it's older, but it's in pretty good shape and we've been thoroughly enjoying living here. It's also 2 doors down from R & C, my aunt and uncle that are as much like my own Mom and Dad as you can get without actually being my Mom and Dad. :) And that's fun, too. And convenient: we get to borrow all their tools that we need for our house. Like a rake and a hole digger and a shovel and loppers (big clippers for the tree we cut down).

No other big news to report, thankfully. We'll take our "boring" life for now, cause boring means that life is going well. :) We're pretty settled into the house (we moved in on October 26th) and it feels so much like home that I'm forgetting what it was ever like to be in an apartment.

Miciah

Our kids also really like our house. Miciah, 4 years old, was so excited to see her play room downstairs (which will soon be carpeted) and she got a new big bed and life is good. Elijah was a little harder to convince that this was home, but now he loves it. Miciah is in pre-school and loves it. She talks and talks and talks. She really likes to role play and goes around like a director telling people what their right lines are (word-for-word), where they should be looking, who the other characters are, what they're doing, etc. It's funny. She also watches the same movie for weeks at a time. Hence, why she can tell people what their lines are verbatim.

Elijah

Elijah, 19 months, is addicted to 4 things: food, his blankie, his binkie (which we're weaning from him, slowly), and Baby Einstein. Thankfully we own like 15 of them, so I don't have to be watching the same one everyday. Elijah is the sweetest little boy and life is just good for him. He's always smiling and laughing and has started "talking." You know, saying mumbles that are consistent enough to be called words, even though they don't really sound like anything. He has a word for Baby Einstein, which is really more like a screech, but it's the same screech every time. I thoroughly enjoy the time I get with Elijah, though he has just figured out the whole separation thing and can get clingy at times, even when he knows we're not going anywhere.

That's life here. When there are other big things to report, we'll pass them along. We love you all and hope life is good for you. We have a lot to be thankful for this Thanksgiving, as I'm sure all of you do. Happy Turkey Day!

Tamra, Rob, Miciah, and Elijah

Well, it's about time for an update, isn't it. We moved into our new house on Saturday, October 29th. Miciah and Elijah had been with Rob's sister, M, for the week, so it was nice to have them back and be into our new house all in the same day. Miciah instantly loved the house. She was able to tell that I'd set up her room much like at our apartment and that seemed just fine with her. And then I showed her the play room downstairs and that was all it took for her to like the house.

When she showed up, her cousin, M, was with her. She proudly said to M, "Come on, I'll show you my new bedroom!" Then she looked at me and said, "Is it this way?"

Elijah was a little harder to win over. The first night was the time change. We gained an hour, but lost that same hour with how many times we woke up with him. I think he'd just wake up a little and then not know where he was. After the first week though, really the first few days, he was sleeping better and now he sleeps better through the night here than he did at the apartment, on the average. He's got a cold now so that gets him up a little bit with the coughing and stuff. Elijah's also been spending some time throwing fits when I tell him he can't touch this or that, but it occured to me, during one of those fits, that he's just figuring out our new house and our new rules, so that made things better for me. He seems to be over most of that now and has things figured out.

We are not completely "settled in" here, but I feel like I can sit down on the couch and relax without feeling guilty, so I guess that's settled in enough. Moving is work, work, and more work. But it's already been worth it. Most of the things are organized, or at least organized enough. We've had a lot of help from family and friends, and I'll have a whole stack of thank you notes to write real soon. R & C, of course, have been a big help. I've made a ton of trips over there to ask for something and then more trips than that to return it (I keep thinking I've returned it all and then find something else, and by the time I return that something else, I've borrowed another thing). They've been very gracious and act like it's all not a big deal. I guess they weren't using the stuff right that minute anyway, but it's still been very nice. I'm going to go rake their leaves today, since I borrowed their rake. :)

We've had a few adventures with getting this house working the way we want it to. Rob and R and V (Rob's dad) did the fence, and one side of it has to be re-done (there's a slope and we're going to need to dig a little trench or something). That's okay, since we had to buy 50 feet of fence to cover 10 feet of yard. We have enough fencing to re-do the fence another 98 times, so we're good. We also have been testing the washer and dryer down here, since we already had a washer and dryer that work fine. We've been trying to figure out which one to keep. Well, the dryer wasn't doing squat and took forever to dry. So we replaced the dryer hose to see if that would work. It was an old plastic hose. It was so full of lint that I don't think we could have even cleaned it all out. We just took it off and threw it away. And then, drying the clothes the same way we'd been doing (on high heat and for the longest time), Rob almost burned his hands off taking them out of the dryer. So I think we'll keep the set down here and give away the set we'd been using (or give them back to who gave them to us).

On Saturday we'll acquire a few more pieces of furniture, given to us by Rob's Mom and Dad, given to them by someone in their ward. We've been truly blessed in our marriage to have many things that we need, and even lots of things that we want, given to us. On this move we received an entertainment center (it's huge), a piano (from Aunt S), the old owners had left several things that were nice or at least useable, including random iron trinkets in our kitchen, and we're about to get more stuff in a few days. A bookshelf, a chest of drawers (so our clothes won't have to be in clear plastic bins in our bedroom), a weight lifting bench and some weights, and a few other things.

I remember now that I promised pictures of our house with our stuff actually in it so you could get a feel for how our house is. Those will come as soon as I get pictures from Dad of his bookcase that he made. No, I'm not bitter that I don't have them yet. :) We love you all.

Tamra, Rob, Miciah, and Elijah

Our house in the middle of our street

Well, we are officially home-debters. So that's exciting. We signed our lives away in blood on Wednesday and we've been packing boxes and moving things around and trying to pretend to stay organized for the last 2 days. It hasn't helped that Rob has a cold that knocked him out for the better part of today, but it's okay, I didn't mind the excuse to go a little slower. Moving is, needless to say, a drag. But it's fun to have our own house and think things like, "We need to mow the lawn [with the lawnmower we're going to borrow from R & C]," and, "I'm going to cut down that tree [with the tools I'm going to borrow from R & C]," and other such things. The unorganized part is a neccessary evil and will be over soon enough.

That's about all we've thought about for the last little while. Because it's enough to think about. Rob's sister 2 hours north offered to watch our kids for us and so they've been up there since Tuesday and we'll get them back Saturday some time. She's a gem, offering that. She already has twin 3 1/2 year olds, so now she has triplets and Elijah. I'm glad I'm down here moving instead of doing what she's doing. She has the harder job. :)

Umm, that's all. Not very exciting, maybe, but exciting all at the same time. We still like the house. There's a little bit more work than we were thinking to be done on it. Well, a few more projects than we thought, not a lot of work, maybe. But we really like the house. We like that we can turn the heat on and the house is insulated enough to make it warm in a few minutes and not feel like 3 different climates from room to room. We like that we have shelves and space for just about everything that we've been cramming into our little apartment. We like that the kids' room looks HUGE without all the toys in it because they have a play room downstairs. And, of course, we really like our neighbors. :) Being so close to R & C is going to be fun and eventually we will not be borrowing half of their belongings all at the same time. They've fed us dinner 2 nights in a row. Isn't that nice? We like them a lot.

Okay, that's life here. Rob sounds like he's getting a lot better and over his cold, and moving doesn't feel so overwhelming today. It feels like a project that's doable and like it's something I WANT to do. :) Of course, wait till the kids get back and then, ... Oh well.

We love you all.

Tamra and Rob

Online

Hello again! We have just established our internet connection again. A dial-up connection, but it gets really good speed (50K) and it's free from UC. No complaints. :)

SO, here we are. Our apartment is still a mess, but it's coming along. We have our computer up, our kitchen done, our closet close to being done and our living room almost is livable. We own too much stuff. Anyways.