We've Moved!

We officially moved and a half weeks ago. The kids have been in school for that long. The movers came and packed us up in Rock Springs on Monday the 24th. They loaded the truck on Tuesday. We drove that night and attended open house. On Wednesday the kids started school and the movers dropped off our stuff. We are staying in a rental house until our house is built. The rental house was disgustingly gross when we moved in. The previous tenants had a cat when they weren't supposed to, and lets just say we don't think they used a litter box. After several days of carpet cleaning, we made the place habitable and are somewhat settled in. We drove over to our lot today and our house is staked out. We hope digging and framing will start next week. We are excited and hope things move smoothly from here.

Complain, complain, complain

Warning: this is a massive gripe post.
We are building our house and the builder said it will be done Nov. 1. He also said his dad had a rental house we could rent until it was finished. Everything looked so easy. Well, his dad's renters decided to stay and we found out last Friday. Since then we have been scrambling to find a rental. Our realtor thought she found one, but the guy rented it out to someone else. Dan was in Cheyenne a couple of days ago and talked to a handyman who had two rental townhouses, by the time he got a hold of the lady who handled the renting, they were both gone. There is another one he had called about, but who knows if that is still there. I've talked to four property management companies and they won't do a lease for anything less than 6 months. Eliza's birthday is on Sunday. The movers are coming on Monday and it looks like we will be sticking our stuff into storage and hoteling it for a while. The kids start school on Wednesday. My stress level is extremely high. I can't sleep very well and I feel like I have had adrenalin constantly coursing through my body for the last week or so. I just keep telling myself: "this too shall pass" and in a few months, we will have a beautiful new home to live in and life will be good. I just hope we don't have to live in our car until then.

The house that Jenn and Dan built (or at least will pay somebody to build)

We went to Cheyenne and looked at houses and didn't find anything we wanted. Some had tiny rooms that would barely fit one child let alone two or three, some had the laundry in the kitchen. Some had backyards you could barely turn around in, let alone have five kids comfortably play. We have been watching the market the last couple of months and we have watched all of the good houses get snatched up. We were hoping that one would come on the market right before we got there, but that didn't happen. So we have decided to build a house. It will be 2800 square feet. It has two stories with 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms on top and 2 bedrooms and a bath in the basement. It is on a good size lot. Here is the lot:



We are a little anxious about building as we have never done it before, but feel it was the best decision to do so we can get a house that will work for our family.

Do other people's kids do this?

Every once in a while our kids do something kind of strange and say "Mom, can you take a picture and post it on the blog?" This is one of those times.

My mom was visiting, so she took this picture.

Fort Bridger

We have been trying to do some of the things that are around Rock Springs before we move. A little over a week ago we went to Fort Bridger. Dan and I had been before when we crossed the country to move to Virginia before the kids were born. In the above picture, we are standing in front of an officer's cabin. It was furnished to the time period with the idea that an older veteran and a younger officer were sharing the cabin. We enjoyed seeing the buildings and the museum. The kids enjoyed the kid area of the museum.

Cake Decorating

Last summer, Emma took a cake decorating class. We knew we might be moving this summer, so we didn't sign up for any classes. Instead we did our own cake decorating class. This way the other kids could do something too. I'm not very skilled in this area, but we had fun playing. we decorated sugar cookies, brownies, cupcakes and finished with single layer round cakes. we did one thing a week over abour six weeks. The kids had a lot of fun.
Gideon with his smile cake. I helped him get started and then he added his own "special" touches.

Emma has gotten pretty good at doing roses. The older kids did theirs all by themselves.

Eliza's flower and sun cake.


Ben's one angry man cake.