our perfect family dinners

So tonight the kids and I are sitting outside eating dinner when Simon announces "I want to pee on the grass" I agree to it. A few minutes later I yell for him to come back up and eat and he appears totally nude. I then tell him that he needs to go get his clothes and he replies "I can't, I peed on them" I told him he has to eat and so he ate without any clothes on. A few minutes later I was cleaning up and I went looking for the kids and caught them about to ring the neighbors doorbell, Simon is still naked at this point. It was so quiet and relaxing.

Out with the old

David and I are very different when it comes to storage. I love getting rid of anything, but I also love to get new things. David would never get rid of anything. One example of this is an old box of cassette tapes. We do not have anywhere, house or car, where cassette tapes can be played and yet he could not part with his old cassette tapes that had been in the attic untouched for 4 years. Last fall we had a yard sale to prepare for our move to Utah. I went through every single drawer & closet in the house. When it was time to go into the attic I knew Dave would have some rise in his blood pressure. It usually went like this
Janet "do you want to keep this for any reason?"
Dave "yes, it is usuable?"
Janet "you haven't used it in 5 years"
Dave would then either ignore me or say something like "do what you want then"
In the end I was very pleased with how organized my house was when we were packing to move. We also got rid of some large items including our couch, chair, coffee table(which had been chewed on by our dogs and had numerous coloring from the kids), eliptical machine & lastly our washer/dryer.
We got our washer/dryer when we moved to NC 8 years ago. We got both for about $600. They were the cheapest Kenmore available. They worked fine but I knew they would be a pain to move, were not at all energy efficient & were very noisy. We sold them on Craig's list to a UNC student who was beyond excited for $100.
The timing of Memorial day sales is so perfect for us moving into our house. On Friday I found the washer and dryer I could only dream of on sale $600 off. I am so excited. It shows how old I am that my joy is truly in a washer and dryer. I also got a couch and 2 chairs this weekend saving another $2000. In our new house we need a couch upstairs and a couch downstairs so we will probably have to wait a few months to get the upstairs couch, which is fine since I now own a red washer and dryer.

Favorite new treat

I have found the best thing in Utah.....chocolate covered cinnamon bears. I know, they sound disgusting, but they are truly super yummy. You can buy them in bulk at the grocery store down the street from my parents and I often make trips there just to buy them. About a week ago I bought a large amount and they were on a bench in the basement. My dog Ruth found them and ate the whole bag. That night I was watching t.v. and truly I could barely breathe as the cinnamon bears made their way out of Ruth in a gas form.

We got the house and we close on June 5th. I have been in Utah now for 3 weeks. It feels like I have been on a long trip and need to go home. I will be in NC June 26-29th for David's graduation.

Found a house

So I finally found a house. I have been searching
like crazy the 8 days since I got here. I had a list
of about 12 houses but I didn't really like any of them
enough to go look at. The area we were wanting to live
is super expensive for a beautiful split level house that
was built in 1962. I found this house last night and my
parents and I drove past and the street is wonderful.
It has huge trees up and down the street and cute little
street lamps down the street. We put in an offer tonight
and hope to hear back sometime tomorrow. Hopefully
everything will work out. I had mentioned in my last post that
we would probably only have 2 trees in our yard - there is 1 tree
in the backyard. I am super homesick, I try not to think
about how much I miss North Carolina and all of my friends
because I cannot change anything. I am super excited to go
back for David's graduation in June. Simon was asking if Becket
his friend from NC could come play today. It is hard because they
don't really understand that they will never see most of their friends
ever again.

Things I will miss

This past week has been pretty crazy. I have been packing and trying to fit in some of my favorite things around here. I have made sure that I go to the flea market every Saturday this past month. I was hoping to make it to the amazing zoo here, but didn't get a chance. I went to the Liberty antiques festival with my mom yesterday and it was great. I also made sure I went to dinner with some friends. I have such great friends here, I am going to miss all of them SO much. It is so hard to absorb all that is going on. Davey and I have lived here almost a whole decade. North Carolina is always going to hold the best memories for us. It is exciting to move onto the next phase of our life, especially when Dave will be home more. Here are a few other things we did this week.

The museum of life and science. We love this
museum, it has everything you could imagine
http://www.ncmls.org/







Sarah Duke Gardens. I met a couple of my
friends here for a picnic.
http://www.hr.duke.edu/dukegardens/




Pickin strawberries. I will miss this so much
The berries are always so yummy and we make
our jam and of course some ice cream.
http://www.jeansberrypatch.com/




I will also miss all of the trees. I just took
these photos of our backyard. I know in Utah
we will probably have like 2 trees in our yard.




One thing I will not miss.......Mosquitos. I already
have about 5 bites on my legs. We have a creek/standing
water behind those woods in our yard and it is a breeding
ground for mosquitos. I get bites even when walking
to my mailbox.

What do you learn at church?

So my kids have had to watch a lot of tv while I have been packing. One show they have watched a bunch is Alvin and the chipmunks. Tonight I was reading to the kids and they asked what we were going to do tomorrow. I responded "we are going to church" then Charlotte said "what do we learn about at church?" and I said "I don't know, what do you learn about?" to which she responded "hippies" I think that Alvin will need to be put away for awhile because they talk about how their parents were hippies and live on a commune.

Packing nightmares

I have spent around 5 hours a day packing for 6 days now. I would not recommend it to anybody, especially with little kids. Charlotte and Simon are loving unpacking the boxes after they are packed and destroying the downstairs while I am upstairs. They are both exhausted whenever I ask them to clean up. Yesterday I was upstairs packing and Charlotte and Simon were playing on the deck. I looked out the window and saw Simon putting about 6 inches of the blade of a box cutter into his mouth. Miraculously he did not cut his mouth. I then brought them up to have a bath. I went into my room for a minute and came back to them using the tub as a slide so my entire bathroom was drenched, I suggested they could finish their bath on the floor since it had more water than the tub. I put more water into the tub and again went into my room. I came back to find them both standing up and peeing into the tub. I filled up a tub a third time because I still hadn't washed their hair. I let them know that most likely the water would be cold to which they started crying about. After their bath I went to get Charlotte her pj's and came back to find they wanted to empty out all of the toys from the toy chest. All I could say was "Are you kidding me?"