Small Request

I am enjoying a wonderful day babysitting my friend Kelly's little guy today with my kids.  It is a win, win, win, in many ways.  My kids get to sit on furniture other than a bed.  My kids get to spend some quality time with their little buddy.  And I get to do laundry not at a laundromat.  This is huge! 

We sold our washer and dryer at our auction and last week I went to a laundromat in downtown Rolla that was absolutely disgusting and mostly not functional.  I pulled one load out of the 5 washing machines I was using and just threw out half the clothes.  They were worse than they were when they were put in.  Seems wasteful, but you would not believe how much stuff I have been able to throw away.  Don't worry--plenty has been donated and/or repurposed...but a girl can only do so much.  I was in a kind of hurry to get to playgroup and didn't see the point of hanging out at this place longer than absolutely neccessary. 

So....threw some clothes out and put the rest in some dryers.   About half of the dryers had "out of order" signs on them.  Well, I was lucky enough to pick one of the not "out of order" dryers that had yet to be labeled.  I know---I should have played lotto this day.  I paid about 3 dollars on each dryer and kept looking at the clock tick away wondering just how many times the dryer needs to be fed to get this stuff dry.  When most of it was dry I started pulling out clothes and folding them, only to find out that one of the dryers was not heating at all.  Good grief.  The kids were done, I was done, so I abandoned my clothes in one of the dryers that I knew was working and headed to playgroup. 

Well, today I am very grateful to be able to use a washer and dryer that work perfectly and hope that when we move to D.C. I can hopefully (fingers crossed, breath held) have a washer and dryer in my apartment.  I really don't ask for much, but this would really help my sanity!

Auction Madness

or...you don't know what you've got until you have to put it all out in your yard in less than a day.

We have been moving along with the move, so to speak. Let's see, last Saturday we had our auction and sold nearly everything we owned in less than 5 hours. It was great, crazy, upsetting at times, and relieving. It was the only option for us and this move. We have accumulated so many belongings with the farm and have such a variety of things that this was the way to go. We sold horse drawn farm equipment, a 30 x 90 foot greenhouse with a heater, a walk in cooler, other tractor pulled farm equipment, a tractor, a vw jetta, and then all of the crap that we had sitting in a shop and in our house. Oh! we also sold two goats, two mules, and a big black percheron draft horse. We ATTEMPTED to auction our house that day, but unfortunately after showing it about 5 times, there was not one single bid or word uttered that resembled a bid. Now we have it listed with a realtor and are hoping for the best. I don't know how long we can swing a mortgage and rent in D.C.

Now we are kind of in a weird limbo. Our furniture consists of my computer desk w/computer and lawn chair, a matress on the floor for Andy and me, and the kid's bunk beds. I am wondering how much longer I can stand our bed being such a multipurpose piece of furniture. The kids are doing pretty good about eating carefully on the bed, but it is still kind of gross and smells like food.

I took the kids to Maramec Spring Park in St. James on Wednesday and it was wonderful. For those of you that aren't familiar with this park, it is a trout hatchery where you can feed fish.  It has a rich history as well, since it was an iron mine and iron production site, as well as a distillery.  The kids had a blast and it was great to focus my attention and time on them. The next day we went to playgroup with the homeschoolers (who we will DEARLY miss) and Izzy had her (most likely) last soccer game. I say "most likely" because there is a chance we will still be here finalizing the moving with the mover people on the 11th when her next game is.

Andy has his last day of work tomorrow and it will be a long one. What better way to go out than with a good 12 hour one.

Tuesday is a day for trying to catch up and sort out the remains of our possessions and figure out what will go with us on the road and what will be shipped the following week with the moving company. I am not exactly sure how we are supposed to pack our stuff for them or even if we are supposed to pack it at all.

Wednesday we are cheesing it up with a lovely free two night trip to Branson! Andy got some free nights there from Bass Pro and we have to listen to a 90 minute time share schpeel. We even got some free tickets to Silver Dollar City from my mom's cousin that works there. Score! I am just looking forward to getting away for a bit from the house and not obsessing about not knowing what to do next.

We should be on the road by the 14th and heading out East to find a place.  Wish us luck!

First Post--kitty has a new home

This blog is created on the first "real" day of the new adventure. We (a family of four is setting out an a journey far far away). Andy has gotten a job with USAID, which stands for US Agency for International Development and is a branch of the Foreign Service.

We will be in D.C. for at least a year for training and then we will be assigned to and eventually get to choose our posts overseas.

The reason I say that this is our first "real" day is that it has finally hit a couple of us. We have an auction coming up in 4 days that will take place and remove most of our personal belongings and home, but today we dropped off our cat at a wonderful new home. I have had this cat since college and he has lived in every place with me and us since 1997. Everyone has asked me how the kids (Izzy-5 and Hollis-3) are taking it (the move). I thought they were doing great until today when we had to drop Gizmo off at our friends' house. Since we were going to Lann's birthday party and dropping Gizzy off at the same place I thought we would all be fine.

Gizmo did great except for he meowed the entire time and the kids were a bit upset. They sang to him and wanted to check on him several times on the drive. Before cake was brought out, I took Gizmo out of his cage and walked him around while holding him. He seemed fine, didn't freak out or anything. I let him down and followed him and petted him periodically. He decided that he was happy under the outdoor wood furnace. I got to pet him a few more times under there and said my goodbyes just in case, yet figuring he would still be there when we left.

Unfortunately, he disappeared when I went back one last time. He is a little explorer and can hold a grudge. I think that Molly and I are enough alike for him to really latch onto her.

When we left and knew he was in great hands, I looked back and saw while were driving that Izzy was very sad. I asked if she was tired, she said "no". So I asked "are you sad because we had to leave Lann's birthday party?" She said, "no". I saw the tears and I asked, "are you sad about Gizmo" and she said, "yes," and let the tears flow. Needless to say I was holding them back, so I jumped on the opportunity.

We had our drive of at least 45 minutes to be sad and now as I am welling up I still know this is the best. The best for our children that will get opportunities beyond our wildest dreams. and our pets will be just fine. By the way, Hollis asked me to get Izzy to stop her whining. I guess he is still too young for empathy, but I guarantee he will ask about Gizmo tomorrow first thing and say "ooahhwww, I miss him".

As we prepare for our auction it is hard for me to think that we will be sitting in a house nearly empty of furniture and certain comforts, but hopefully freer and with a clearer understanding of what is important. By the way~~we have some chairs to return to Walmart and upgrade to the fancy ones!! We are going to go all out and spend double on some lawn chairs since they will be our furniture for a week!