Moving Realization #2

I'm beginning to see the logic in e-books and e-book readers. We started packing the books first. We are using fairly small boxes since they tend to get heavy pretty fast, but we have already packed about 15 boxes just of books. And that's only about half of them. Plus the DVDs and Wii games....

I've tried to pare down our inventory. Believe me, I have. It's just--there's nothing quite like the smell of a book, the feel of the pages, and the sound the pages make when you turn them. Some people never re-read their books; I do. To me, that justifies keeping them around, even if they do take up space and weigh ten tons.

On a brighter note, after the books we pretty much just own clothing and kitchen wares.

PS: 3 more weeks to moving!!

Moving Realization #1

I have way, Way, WAY too much stuff.

But I will never have enough yarn. Ever. Even though I totally just filled two 35 gallon Rubbermaid containers with it....hehehe. :)

Cruise!



Alissa and me with our a towel rabbit.

 Here's a brief list of highlights from our recent cruise:

1. Cabo: seeing whales, awesome snorkeling, the most amazing taco restaurant with a Beatles-enthused owner/chef.
2. Puerta Vallerta: Long boat trip on a small little skiff, seeing tons of tropical fish, hiking around a small little village with tons of stray dogs, holding an iguana
3. Awesome shows: Second City, Justino and Daniella (magician), and an acrobatic couple
4. Games and meals with the entire family--27 people in all!



First meal on the ship.




Our ship, the Norwegian Star.




Whale!




Another shot of the whale.




Beach in Cabo.





Two good looking brothers.




What a cute family!




Silly boys!



Moving Cross-Country

If you've never had to move cross-country, consider yourself lucky. It's a lot of work. In an ideal world, you have an infinite amount of money, time, and resources to not only examine each and every possible scenario for what your life will be like once you get there. I don't believe that anyone really has this. If you have the money, you might not have the time. If you have the time, you might not have the money. Or, you might have money and time, but no way of making it out to the new area. It's always something. The greater the geographic distance, the harder it is. For us, it's a combination of all three.

When I found out Spencer's grandma wanted to take everyone on a cruise out of California, Spencer was in the middle of the interview process. Loma Linda was one of the first places he visited and he was absolutely in love with it. In his mind, it had everything a program could ever want and more. I was a bit more skeptical since it was one of the first and we were heading into another dreary Wisconsin winter so the appeal of somewhere warm was highly desirable, but as time went on it remained his top pick. So when it came time to book flights for the cruise, we decided that we would extend the trip by one day just in case we matched there so we could go look at housing. 

Match day was about a week or so before we left for the cruise. When we found out that we were indeed headed to Loma Linda, we began immediately making plans for how we would get out there, what we wanted to do, and most importantly which areas we wanted to see. We contacted a realtor, and he set up a time for us to meet him and show us a few places.

Most of the places he showed us needed a lot of work. Many were banked owned properties. It's truly amazing how poorly some people treat their homes. In one house, the people had let their dog urinate all over the room they locked him up in. In another, they had let their cats and/or dogs tear up the carpet. Others were in comparatively better shape, but still had cosmetic defects (which we were OK with) or in some cases more serious defects (like water damage) which we were not OK with.

One house stood out to us though. It was a lovely home, a bit small for what I though it should be, but it had a huge yard with a pool and more space than we've ever had. They had done a lot to build in storage and were the original owners. You could tell that they had worked really hard to keep up with the place and really loved it. So, we made an offer. We low balled a bit, but not much, because the other homes in the area we selling for less. They didn't negotiate. We walked.

At this point we were back in Wisconsin and I was freaking out. We didn't really have the time or money for another trip. We needed a place to live. We didn't know how we could find one without actually being in California to look.Miraculously, I was given the opportunity to be flown out to California for two job interviews. Despite being deathly ill, I was able to make it to both interviews as well as visit a property. It turned out to be just the thing we were looking for. We're still in the process of finalizing things because it's a short sale, but we will be able to rent it on a month to month basis until then.

So, at least that part is taken care of. We have a place to live. I've put my notice in for my last day at my job, and we now have a tentative move date. The pieces are slowly coming together. All that's left is to sort out the details.

Blizzard!

So this is crazy late, but back in February we were getting slizzard by a blizzard. School and work were shut down--which has only happened about once or twice in the past 25 years. The amazing thing was that by the end of the day, they had done a great job of clearing out most of the snow in the area so you could get around. Here's a few pictures:

This is a snow pile at the end of the parking lot where I cut through to our neighborhood.

This is a house down the street. Look how high the snow pile is!

This is the parking lot at work. You can see all of the snow piled up--it's almost as high as those houses!

 

This is a view of our driveway. The snow was in drifts so it was deeper in some places and others had nothing at all.

Well, it's 2 months late, but at least you can see why Wisconsin winters are so crazy! California here we come!!

April Updates

OK so remember when I said I'd be posting more updates soon? Yeah, I don't either. Well, here's a quick run down of why:

1. I went back to California for a few days.
2. I had some crazy bad virus that laid me up for over a week.
3. We have been trying to find housing from 2,000 miles away.
4. We've had a lot of other random things going on.

So, I promise I will post some pictures and updates soon. But don't hold your breath that they will be up very soon.

Thanks. :)

Adult

You know you're officially an adult when you've put an offer in on a house... :)

I promise! More updates to follow! Life just needs to slow down for a bit. Brief preview of topics: match day, cruising, California, Cabo, Puerta Vallerta, more cruising, house hunting, and hopefully some more definite plans on when we actually move! Phew! I feel tired just typing that.

Until later,
Ciao.