Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Doing what ya never thought you would

As a kid, I heard that people could go up in the St Louis Arch. I remember thinking that that was something I'd never do. Not because I'd be scared to, but because I'd never have a reason to be in St Louis.

Today our route took us within a mile of the Arch, so of course we stopped. The girls loved it! It was worth the side trip.

The kids are getting restless from all the driving, but are still hanging in. One more day of driving and they'll get 3 days off. I'll admit I'm right there with them. Looking forward to walking around and seeing some sites instead of endless farms. We are back in the land of normal radio, so that is certainly an improvement. Tomorrow? Appalachians!

Sunday, June 14, 2009

On the road...

First of all, a big THANK YOU to all our friends and family who helped us in the last week to get everything squared away with our sanity intact. You have no idea how much your help was appreciated! Toward the end, I ws about ready to just throw in the towel on this whole thing, and your help kept me going. Man, I'm going to miss you all so much!!

Friday was moving day. A and I were on about 4 hours sleep each, but we managed to make it through the day without any major incidents. We had enough errands and final deliveries to make to keep us in town until 1 pm, but we made good time to Albuquerque. The girls traveled so well! Not a single complaint! I was shocked!

The first hour or so into New Mexico was so beautiful, with sculpted cliffs and old buildings along the highway. The closer we got to the city, though, the more frustrating the roads got and the crazier the other drivers became. I drove the last couple of hours and I was ready to be there, so I'm sure that didn't help! We got to our hotel by 8:30 local time, had a late dinner at a Denny's next door, and then went to bed.

In the morning, we went to the ABQ Zoo as soon as they opened and walked around for a couple of hours. If you get the chance to visit that zoo, take it! It was great! Polar bears, seals and sea lions, koala bears--it had a lot of animals you don't usually see in the "smaller" zoos.

We hit the road by 11 am. We had lunch on the side of the road around 1 pm. The weirdness with the NM roads continued and I will adult I was glad to leave when we finally hit TX.

The youngest announced she needed to use the potty, but we were in the middle of nowhere, so A pulled up near some bushes and the youngest and I got out. I tried to get her to join the sisterhood of Roadside Pee-ers, but she wasn't having any of it, so in the end, we got back in the car and she held it for another 10 miles.

What radio stations we could get through TX were country, but they didn't stay tuned in for long. As soon as we got into OK, though, all that was on the radio was station after station of Christian Rock, Christian Easy Listening, or Christian preachers. They don't call it the Bible Belt for nothing, I guess.

There was a really scary looking storm near us for a while and we even had a hail and tornado emergency warning at one point, but it moved slower than we did, so we out ran most of it and just got a bit of rain.

We ate at a Flying J for dinner and the went further up the road a bit for dessert at a Dairy Queen in Clinton, OK. The kids were antsier toward the end of the drive today, but they still did really well. Certainly MUCH better than I expected! We got to the hotel at 10 pm local time. K was asleep quick, but the youngest was punch-drunk for a while. Everyone is snoozing now, and I should be, too, but I am still on AZ time! Thank goodness for wifi!

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Since then...

I'm glad to see the end of last week. Not only did someone drive into my house, but on Thursday, we came home to the power being completely shut off. The electric company admited that it was a mistake, but insisted they couldn't send anyone out to turn it back on until the following day. All told, it was 30 hours without power, and we ended up at a hotel for the night.

Things picked up, though. Saturday night, some friends threw us a farewell party. It was all very happy and non-tearful, and a lovely way to say goodbye to our friends here. We've been very blessed since then with offers to feed us dinner and watch the kids while I pack more. I can't believe how helpful everyone has been. We are so grateful.

We are truly down to the wire now. We leave in 72 hours. I have some errands to run on top of all the packing yet to be finished. The girls have a couple of playdates between now and then that I hope will leave me enough time. Still, I think that Thursday night will be a late one!

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Careful What You Wish For.

You may have noticed at the end of my last post that Monday was my birthday.

I've had better.

First of all, Monday birthdays are inherently lame. Everyone is burned out from the weekend and groaning their way into the week, so Monday birthdays are barely acknowledged as people reenter the daily grind. I was kind of bummed that there wasn't more going on for my birthday.

I had a bunch of errands to do. We left the house at 11:30 so the girls could go to their first day of swim lessons. It was great. They both did a good job, and no one had a time out. We looked for boxes on the way home, and then pulled into the driveway at 12:30.

To find that someone had knocked a hole in my house.

At first, I thought it was a motorcycle, because the hole was only about 2 feet wide. They managed to hit right where there was a wall stud, though, so it carried the hole up the wall about 6 feet.

I called A. I called the police. My husband got here first and he was able to figure out from the tracks that it was a 3-wheeler, and from some paint that was left behind on the wood that it was red. He went over and talked to a neighbor who told him he'd heard it happen, but by the time he got out to see what was going on, the people were already driving down the street.

The police showed up and took a report and canvassed the part of the neighborhood where the people had gone, but they couldn't find them. There are two dead end streets in that part of the neighborhood, so they were there somewhere, but they'd had plenty of time to get the 3-wheeler put away by the time the police showed up.

We have photos, but I can't find the camera at the moment. When I do, I will add them to this post. It was pretty impressive. On the inside of the house, the drywall and everything was pushed about 18" inside.

There are upsides. Because we're moving, the mess isn't nearly as bad as it could have been. They hit where our homeschool shelves used to be, but those have been gone for a month now. All that was there were some half-packed rubbermaid containers and they just barely managed to miss those. There was an old rubbermaid container with some stuff from the shed in at the front of the house that they did hit and destroy, but everything inside it was ok, and the container was missing it's lid so I was going to have to throw it away anyway. Also, our car was out of the way when it happened. We still NEED the car for several more weeks, so I'm glad that we were gone when it happened and it didn't get crunched up instead.

Also, the woman who crashed into our house is lucky that she hit the wood addition and not the block part of the house, because she had apparently mixed up the brake and the gas and hit the wall really, really hard. Had she hit the block, she'd probably be dead.

So, you know... It could have been worse.

Still, it put a damper on the day. There were other negatives to the day, too, but the people involved may not want that included in my blog, so just trust me when I say that the day was really bad. With a capital B. Bad.

We had cake with the girls. They got me a Mickey Mouse watch, which was very cute. A got us a sitter and we went out for dinner. We ended up just driving for an hour through parts of town that we frequented when we were first married, but haven't been to much since we moved to this house. We finally settled on Benihana's for dinner, which was pretty good. I've never been to a knife-slinging-Japanese-grill place before, so it was a good time.

When we got back from dinner, the woman who had crashed into the house had come back and left her information with our sitter and restored my faith in humanity. It's nice to know that some people still do the right thing. She probably could have gotten away with it. It's not like the police could have gotten a search warrant to search every house in that part of the neighborhood to find out who had a damaged 3-wheeler. But she came forward anyway, and that made the day better.

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

I have spent a crazy amount of time this morning sitting at my compter trying to write a post addressing the issue I'm facing with a small handful of people in our lives who are having a difficult time with our moving to the Philippines. It seems like most of their concerns, while well-meaning, are born out of fear of the unknown. And then a friend over on LiveJournal posted this, and it just sums it up so well, though in a different context. So, instead of whining and cajoling, I'm offering humor:



(My blog format isn't showing the whole comic. Just click on it to get the last panel.)

Also? Happy birthday to meeeeeeee!!!