new house party

We had a little party at the new house Friday night, complete with roasted hot dogs in the backyard firepit and a sleepover movie night (well at least Matt and the kids slept over. I went back to my comfortable bed at the old house). The kids loved it. Garrett proclaimed, "This is the best campout EVER!" and they keep asking to go back to the new house.

We've got a bit to take care of before we are officially moved in, though. The kids and I leave tomorrow morning for Jeremy's wedding in Utah, the movers come on Wed/Thurs/Friday, and Matt will join us in Salt Lake on Saturday- then we'll come home to the new house for good, hopefully all in one piece.

you gave up on me, didn't you?

When I realized we're almost into August I decided I'd better post something, if for no other reason, so that I don't have a gap in my blog archives.

Frankly, July wore me out.

It's been over a month since we left, and Brazil almost feels like a distant dream now. After a week or so of hesitating before flushing toilet paper, drinking tap water, and greeting people in English, we're all adjusted to being in America again. It's really good to be back.

We miss it though. Brazil was an incredible experience and one we will never forget. We miss living across the street from one of the most beautiful beaches in the world. We miss the tropical climate, the fruit, and the juice, but most of all we miss Matt. After nearly 4 intense weeks of business trips around South America, he's almost done with his international assignment. We get him back on Saturday.

We already really like Texas. The kids and I spent a few weeks there before flying to California to visit family. We've had a lot of fun over the last month along with a fair share of tears and exhaustion. We feel a bit displaced and are all ready to be home, to put the suitcases away (for a really long time), and to start decorating this place:

more to come...eventually.

Last Day

We leave tomorrow. Matt took today off. We lived it up.

Ipanema Beach

Ipanema market

The Lagoa

Brothers

Barra Beach

It was a perfect day.

Tchau, Rio. We will miss you.

almost all packed up

getting here

I guess I'd better start at the beginning, for journaling purposes. Last week was completely and utterly nuts. You'd think that with this being our 10th move in 7+ years of marriage, we'd be pretty good at it by now. This move was unlike anything we've ever done before, though. It's all pretty much a blur now, and I'm glad those last two weeks before the move are over. They were filled with too many late nights, final preparations, sick kids, sick parents, last minute changes to our flight and housing arrangements, and a whole lot of stress.

While the company is incredible and does so much to take care of us, there was still an element of unknown that made certain decisions and preparations difficult. We relied on prayer and faith; something we are all gaining a lot of through this experience.

The day prior to our departure began with going to the Oakland Temple. The day couldn't have started any better and I gained a sense of peace and comfort as we embarked on this crazy journey. The rest of the day included:

- the last day of school for the boys

- a visit to the doctor's office with Lydia

- getting a speeding ticket

- turning in our house keys

- two more stops at Target

- sending off our van

- saying goodbye to friends

- and final packing of the suitcases.

I think I got about 4 hours of sleep that night. Our visas were completed on Thursday afternoon and arrived in San Francisco Friday morning via Fed Ex, just in time for us to catch our 11:00 am flight.

The flights went amazingly well. I started to panic as I was standing in line at the gate in Washington DC just prior to boarding our flight to Rio. I was waiting to talk to an agent about switching some of our seats around because the seats we had booked weren't all together. Matt was elsewhere with the kids, and I quickly found myself alone in the midst of a large group of people, primarily Brazilian, all speaking Portuguese. It hit me at that moment that I'm really leaving my world behind.

We were certainly a sight to be seen in the airport in Rio. It seems that Rio is a good place to be with kids. Apparently, if you are spotted in line with a stroller full of kids, you get to cut in front of everyone. While we were standing in two different (and long) lines for customs, some Brazilian airport official came and got us and took us to the front of the line. It was great. I wish I would have gotten a better picture, but I was trying to be discrete as to avoid drawing any more attention to us that we were already getting.

Here are our 4 carts piled as high as possible with 10 of the largest possible pieces of luggage, 7 carry-on bags, and 3 car seats. Three airport employees and Matt pushed the carts while I pushed the kids in the stroller out to our vehicles.

We got to our apartment and pretty much crashed for the next two days!

boxes revisted

The movers came and cleared all our empty boxes last week, thank goodness. The day before they came, I looked out the window to find this in my backyard:

follow up on our trash

I didn't mean to leave you all on such a cliffhanger...

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We left our garbage can out while we were in California last week and when we came home they were indeed empty. I don't know if they came on Monday like they said they would, or Thursday which is our regularly scheduled trash day, but at this point, I wouldn't be surprised if they came at some random time like Tuesday at 3 in the morning.

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At any rate, they took our trash, and we're waiting on pins and needles to see what this Thursday morning brings for us!

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(You don't know what in the heck am I talking about? Here's the story.)

a load of trash

Wednesday, May 23: Phone call to Waste Management.

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Matt: "Hi, we're moving into our house tomorrow and need to set up garbage collection."

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Company representative: "No problem. Trash day is Wednesday. Leave your garbage in bags on the curb and they'll pick it up Wednesday and leave you a garbage can. "

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Matt: "Great! That was easy. Thank you."

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Evening of Tuesday, May 29: Carry everything out to the curb for pickup and notice no one else has their garbage cans out.

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Wednesday, May 30: No garbage collection. We move all the stinky garbage bags back into the garage.

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Evening of Wednesday, May 30: Notice the neighbors' garbage cans out, figure they just told us the wrong day and move all our garbage bags back out to the curb.

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Morning of Thursday, May 31: Garbage truck comes. Garbage truck takes the neighbors' garbage. Garbage truck leaves. None of our garbage is picked up. No garbage cans left for us.

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A few minutes later: Phone call to Waste Management.

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Matt: "The garbage truck came but didn't pick up our garbage."

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Company representative: "Sorry about the inconvience, sir. We'll send a guy to pick it up."

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Matt: "Great, thanks."

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A little later in the morning of Thursday, May 31: A second garbage truck comes. Second garbage truck leaves. None of our garbage is picked up. No garbage cans left for us.

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Another few minutes later: Another phone call to Waste Management.

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Matt explains the situation.

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A different company reprsentative (the short version): "Trash day is Thursday. You can't leave all that garbage on the street, and they'll only pick up three trash bags. You have to wait until you have a garbage can delivered, then they can collect your garbage. We'll have someone bring you a garbage can today, and they can take whatever you can fit into the garbage can."

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Afternoon of Thursday, May 31: We hang up the phone and wait. Matt watches the window and runs out to the driveway as he sees a garbage truck drive by. He waves his arms frantically to flag them down, yet returns to the house defeated. This makes garbage truck number three that came in the same day and left without taking our garbage and without leaving us a garbage can.

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A little later in the afternoon of Thursday, May 31: Another phone call to Waste Management.

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Matt: "I just want to verify that we will, in fact, receive a garbage can at some point in time."

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Company representative: "Yep, they'll bring it today and collect the garbage in it tomorrow."

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Matt: "I was told they'd collect the garbage at the same time as delivery of the garbage can."

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Company representative: "No sir. The delivery truck doesn't have collection capabilities."

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Matt: "Okay, tomorrow then."

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Even later in the afternoon of Thursday, May 31: Delivery of garbage can. Hurray!

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Evening of Thursday, May 31: We cram as much as we can into the tiny garbage can, move it to the curb for our personally scheduled pick up and leave the other 2/3 of our garbage in the garage (until we figure out how we're going to dispose of it)

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Afternoon of Friday, June 1: We stand in the driveway and stare in amazement as a garbage truck comes by, backs up like it's going to pick up our full garbage can, and then switches gears and drives off. Our garbage can sits on the curb, still full and stinky.

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We look around for the hidden camera crew to jump out and tell us about the joke being played on us.

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A little later in the afternoon of Friday, June 1: Yet another phone call to waste managment.

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Matt again explains the perplexing situation.

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Company representative: "Everyone's gone home for the day. We'll send someone on Monday to pick that up."

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Sure you will.

hello California

So, I thought I'd take a little break from the boxes and give a little update on our week as newly reinstated Californians.

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With just the belongings we brought on the airplane (which filled 7 suitcases and 4 carry-ons, by the way) we moved into our house. That was last Thursday and our movers came today to deliver our belongings.

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For those of you not doing the math, that's 5 days in an empty house. It was great. With a few trips to Target and some borrowed bedding and linens (thanks, Maressa!), we managed just fine and are basking in the enjoyment of living in a house! We keep having these "how did we ever live in that apartment for so long" moments. Like when we run the garbage disposal or the dishwasher, open the garage door, or send the kids out to play in the backyard. It doesn't take much to please us and it's better than I could have ever imagined. The kids have been getting the biggest thrill out of calling to each other from upstairs/downstairs and hiding in the walk-in closets.

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We were all a little sick the first few days but once we started feeling better we found plenty of things to keep us busy while we waited for the moving van to arrive. We attended Mason and Mala Harrell's sealing in the Oakland Temple on Friday, which was beautiful. We also had Grandma here for a few days which always makes things more fun.

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I only have a few pictures from the last week because I can't find my camera charger (no doubt buried in or beneath the boxes somewhere). But here's just a glimpse:

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Garrett finally got his bike we promised him for his birthday and has been riding it pretty much non-stop ever since.

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Ethan's favorite thing to do has been to go to the really cool park down the street from us and dig in the sand.

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Lydia has found all kinds of fun things to do. She took off running when she realized that I saw the bottle of rootbeer she had in hand!

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The movers came today so we now find ourselves in the middle of boxes and chaos. I have this urge to just stay up all night and get it all put away. Then again, it feels really nice to just lay here in bed as I type. I think I'll just go to sleep now. It'll all still be there tomorrow...

status report

Well, who would have thought I could blog while I wait in the Las Vegas airport for two hours to catch my midnight flight back to New Jersey!

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You know you're asking for it when you take a trip across 3 time zones in which you are travelling for more hours than you are actually in your destination city! I arrived in Oakland at 11:30 last night and am scheduled to arrive in Newark at 8:00 tomorrow morning. I'm not really sure what time my exahusted body thinks it is.

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The trip proved to be worthwhile though, as I signed a lease for a house this afternoon! Pending approval from the owner, we will move in next week. We're hoping (and praying) that she's okay with us only staying until January. It's a cute little house in San Ramon. I took a lot of pictures to show Matt, none of which are very good. I attribute that to my half asleep mental state. I got a nice view of the garage though!

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The reports from Matt (holding down the fort in NewJersey with the kids) are positive. The movers came and cleared the place in a matter of hours. With the exception of a lost binky, the day went smoothly.

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Oh, hurray. They're boarding my flight. Over and out.

The van returns

We shipped our van back from California. It was supposed to arrive in New Jersey a couple of days before we arrived.  When we got to New Jersey though, there was no sign of the van. Turns out that the truck it was on broke down. We've spent 5 days trying to track down it's location, to discover it was still in Arizona!  We been cramming our three car seats into the backseat of a small 5 passenger rental car until the van finally made it back today!  

Home at Last

After our 3 month adventure in California for Matt's summer internship, we have at last returned to New Jersey. Although we had a great time driving to CA back in May, we opted to fly home and ship our van back. No doubt we turned a few heads as we navigated through the airport with our 3 kids, 14 bags, 3 car seats, and double strolller. It's good to be home.