Craigslist - our new favorite store

Snowsuit for Rowan - $5

Snowsuit for Ellie $5

Down jacket for Jason - $20

TV and stand (attached) - $50


Bike for Jason - $20

Newer bagless vacuum - $15

Bumbo seat for Rowan - $20

We are never moving again!

I am so sorry to disappoint all of you who are waiting for us to come back to Arizona. After everything we've been through and all the money we've spent getting our stuff here, we are staying right here in this apartment forever! Yes, our stuff finally came yesterday. I'll spare you all the details, but in short we had to rent a truck and haul everything into our apartment ourselves. This wasn't completely the fault of the moving company, but partly due to construction on the streets near our house. It was either move it ourselves, or pay them $500 extra to do it. After being fed up with the money and time it was taking, we refused to pay them more.

This decision was almost a disaster. What were we thinking? How were Jason and I going to move all our stuff into our apartment, and watch our kids at the same time? It worked alright at first; Rowan was asleep and Ellie was watching a movie. But really, I'm not very strong. Jason and I moved 4 huge boxes together and by the fourth one, my arms were giving out already. But...nice neighbors to the rescue! One woman sent her husband to help us, at the perfect time because Rowan woke up. One neighbor offered to watch Ellie. In no time, there were 3 other guys helping Jason unload the truck. To top it all off, the original couple invited us to dinner at their place after the truck was empty! We had a great time with them; they have two girls, ages 2 and 1.

Our stuff is finally here!! We are so extremely excited. I finally was able to rock Rowan to sleep this morning instead of walking him. And, we have things to sit on!

Well, we probably will move again. But this time we are selling/giving away all our furniture and just buying more when we get to the new place. We'll probably buy it from craigslist :)

Rowan "talking"

Rowan "talking"

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I have a job!

Well, it didn't take long, and I found a great job for me. When school starts, I will be watching the 2 girls that I posted about before. Since they are close in age with our kids, I'm hoping that they will be great friends. Both of the girls are sweet, although the oldest has a little teenager attitude sometimes. It's so hard not to laugh!

The temperature is coming back up, even thought it's still rainy, so don't worry about our kids being cold. Hey, I can always put them in their snowsuits! The church we visited on Sunday was okay; the service was pretty dull, but the people were super nice. One man even offered us an extra microwave that he had, and he delivered it to our house yesterday! I wish their services were better, but we'll check out more churches.

I keep forgetting to tell Tara to make her jealous - I can get cheese curds (squeeky cheese) with my WIC checks!

No moving truck yet :(

Well, no stuff for us yet. It's uncomfortable to be sitting on the floor all the time, but at least we all have beds of some sort. We bought a toaster oven since we threw out our old one, so we at least have something to cook with. It's amazing what all you can cook in a toaster oven! We've made burgers, biscuits, bratwurst, and corn on the cob, just to name a few examples. Our poor kids though. The high today was 61 degrees and it was raining all day. It still is actually. And none of us have warm clothes. The only kind of warm clothes the kids have are their pajamas, so that's what they wore when we went to the bank today. I'm pretty sure I was the only person with a tank top on when I went to the grocery store. And of course our umbrella is packed in our stuff. Hopefully we'll get to Walmart soon to buy another one, because it's supposed to rain until Thursday or Friday.

I've discovered craigslist.com! For those of you who haven't, it is a website where you can find stuff for sale in your own city, so you can go pick it up instead of having it shipped to you. We're picking up 2 snowsuits tomorrow, one for each kid. And they are only $5 each! I also found a potential new job on the website. Monday we are meeting a family in need of childcare while the wife teaching at the university. It would be about 12 hours a week, and they have 2 girls who are almost exactly the same age as our kids. Apparently the almost 3-year-old girl is quite a chatterbox, so it will be fun to see her together with our own little chatterbox! They also have a 3-month-old daughter. They would come to our apartment, so if the two babies are both fussy at once, Jason will be here most of the time to take Rowan. It's practically the perfect job for me! Hopefully it works out.

I've found a church for us to check out tomorrow morning. If we don't like it, then Jason can pick the next one :)

Just a quick hello from Rowan

In our new home

Well, we've finally made it. Yesterday afternoon we received the keys to our new apartment. It is much nicer than we expected! All the appliances seem newer and there is lots of closet space. We have 1 1/2 bathrooms, and there is a play area in front of our apartment with swings, a sand box, and lots of grass. There seem to be quite a few kids living nearby, and a lot of them seem to be close to Ellie's age. Ellie keeps begging to play outside! The temperature isn't too bad, especially at night.

Our stuff from the moving company isn't here yet, but at least we have somewhere to stay. Grandma Hoffman lent us a blow-up bed and some silverware, so at least we can eat and sleep :) I'll update more as I have time!

Does anyone still read this?

So sorry to everyone that I haven't written in a long, long time. We've been pretty busy with traveling, packing, and just entertaining two kids.

We're on our way to Wisconsin! I am currently sitting on the couch of our (really nice) hotel room in Albuquerque, day one of our drive. It went really well today, with two stops along the way. Both places we stopped at were great fun for Ellie; a rest area with grass to run around in and a fountain to splash in, and a McDonalds with the best kids area I've ever seen. Instead of it being a boring day in the car, I think Ellie actually enjoyed today. She even was able to swim at our hotel before going to bed. I don't think Rowan had as much fun, as he slept all day :) Hopefully the next couple of days will be just as good.

The most exciting news is that the Porters (Zane and Tara) are adding a baby girl to their family. My first niece!