Moving again…

New House Slideshow

We are unexpectedly moving again in 8 days! We are so incredibly excited. We were blessed with the opportunity to live in an amazing home at an incredibly affordable price. The home is on 2 acres out in the county and we are so excited to get settled there. I hope to finally be able to start a garden and am so happy to be moving out of the apartment. Here is a photo slideshow of the house. There are 4 bedrooms and 2 1/2 bathrooms (I forgot to take a picture of the 2nd bedroom). The house is 3600 square feet!

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Moving Insanity

It’s a good thing we have a sense of humor, that is all I can say.

Two days before our move to Bellingham all of our plans began crumbling into a mess of chaos. In speaking with the upstairs tenants we were able to determine that the kitchen/laundry room was not properly sealed when demolition of the black mold was underway and as a result all of the mold spores were free to move about the house. This would, at the least, require that the carpet be thoroughly shampood before we moved in. So not only would we not have a kitchen for the first few days but no where to move in our things.

In addition, the property management company repeatedly lied to us about the problem and was even so bold as to declare that there was no mold and that they were simply replacing the joists, insulation and drywall as a “precautionary measure”….um, riggggghhhhtttt. Luckily we had the whole story from the tenants upstairs and we called the actual home owner who also gave us the complete story. I was smart and had the property management company email me with their little story about what the problem was so that I could have their lies in writing in case we needed to get out of the lease and get our money back. We were considering still moving forward and living at the property but then the home owner decided that dealing with the tenants was too stressful and that the whole reason she hired a property management company was so that she wouldn’t have to deal with all the stress. Makes sense but there is no way we were going to rent from a management company that obviously had no problem lying to us.

So we decided to bag that house and instead traded over 2000 square feet on 5 beautiful and luscious acres with a stunning view of Mt. Shuksan for 1000 square feet of apartment with no yard and our choice of a view of the parking lot or a dozen neighbors windows (time to break out the binoculars). The upside is that we now have a bathtub.

I really shouldn’t complain too much. As far as apartments go this one isn’t too bad. The space is set up nicely and there is quite a bit of closet storage space. The biggest perk is that they are super inexspensive and we should be able to start saving for a much needed mini-van since it is hard to fit our family of 5 into a 91 Honda Accord.

Camden is oblivious to the fact that living in an apartment isn’t exactly a high point in life. You’d think she’d have stumbled across the housing jackpot or something. When we first brought her to the apartment I was expecting to hear questions about where is the playroom and where is our yard, etc but children are wonderfully adaptable and easy to please. Instead of complaining like her mom she ran around in circles and shrieked for joy over her new house and jumped up and down in her new bedroom. Mike and I promptly informed her that we couldn’t jump in the apartment (we will repeat this phrase more than a billion times over the next 12 months I am afraid).

Much to our frustration the apartment was not adequately cleaned before our move in either. The carpet was dirty, the kitchen floor was sticky and the bathroom was nasty-o. I used more than half a roll of paper towels cleaning the nasty toilet, alone. Mike and I wound up buying a new toilet seat because it is our housing tradition. I am still trying to get a hold of the property manager to complain about how clean the place was…we’ll see how productive that is.

So far our neighbors seem quiet and nothing too crazy has gone on. I’m sure we’ll have lots of swell adventures in this place.

Loading up the truck. Mike’s dad was kind enough to move us in his truck

Goodbye House…

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Garrett is 2 Months Old

Garrett is two months old today, or rather yesterday since it is after midnight all ready. HERE is his Birth Story if you never had a chance to read it.

He is such a beautiful person and I love him dearly. It is fun to watch his personality bloom. He loves to coo and talk and he is so good at mimicking the noises I make at him. He also seems to be keenly aware of many phrases and I sometimes take forgranted how truly intelligent and amazing babies are. He is smiling so readily now but mostly at me, Camden and Mike…not so much at strangers yet. I need to weigh him in the morning to see what he weighs. Camden almost got him to laugh the other day and it was soooo close to a laugh but I won’t call it that quite yet. He continues to baffle me with how well he sleeps at night. He is still pretty easygoing during the day but is demanding to be in arms much more often which would be perfectly fine if it weren’t for the fact that packing is somewhat difficult that way. He has been drooling a lot for about the last two weeks.

EC is going great and will be the subject for an article later on when I have more time. Right now we are catching about 75% of his pees and always his poo (well, we had an off day a few days ago but other than that he never poos in his diaper). He is very good at cueing me and letting me know when he needs to go.

As for the rest of life…

We move in one day!!! Friday afternoon we will be loading up the truck and moving to Bellingham. We are experiencing some annoyances with the move because there was some construction in the kitchen of the house we were moving into because of some serious mold issues that needed to be addressed behind the drywall. They are replacing the joists, insulation and drywall and they probably won’t be done until early next week. We can move our stuff in but we won’t have a kitchen yet. Mike will yell at them tomorrow and we’ll see what happens.

Life is about packing right now basically. Camden is taking it pretty well but both kids are being completely ignored and I feel bad for both of them. Luckily it will all be over soon. Camden, Garrett and I got to take a much needed break and visit our friends and members of our mommy groups for one last good-bye at a neat restaurant/hangout called Smoovies. I was able to enjoy green bean fries for one last time.

He loves his pacifier

Watching Football with Daddy

Going for a stroll…LOL…Camden thought this was the funniest thing ever

Trying to get a sibling picture…maybe someday it will work…

Garrett Smiling…it is hard to catch his smile on camera

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One Last Photo Shoot

Last week we were able to fit in one last photo shoot before we move back to Bellingham with my talented photographer friend, Shilowe. Shilowe’s website for her up and coming photography business is in the works and I am so excited to see her business grow from a dream into a reality.

Here are some of the pictures she took of Garrett and Camden. Garrett is nearly 8 weeks in the photo’s and Camden is nearly 4. I am amazed that she was able to get the photo’s that she got because Camden was uncooperative (what’s new?) and refused to hold Garrett (he’s too heavy, she says) and she didn’t want to smile (as always) and Garrett acted like a typical baby and didn’t want to be put down. So all in all, I’m amazed. Way to go Shilowe!

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Moving…Our New House

Mike and I have finally found a new place to live. We are moving back to Bellingham after living in Eastern Washington for the last 2 years and are happy to get back to the other side of the mountains and closer to family. Looks like we will be moving on October 17th.

We are moving into the bottom half of a beautiful home located on 5 acres of amazing property.  The property is within walking distance to Lake Whatcom. There is a beautiful view of Mt. Shuksan and tons of room for the kids to roam. We were also happy to meet the upstairs neighbor who happens to also be a stay-at-home mom of 4 children and also homeschools, doesn’t vaccinate and avoids food dye, etc which is very exciting. I couldn’t be happier with what we were able to find and how affordable the rent is. The house is very quirky since it was a custom built home and it used to be a Bed and Breakfast so the kids room will be a little weird but the space is huge, over 2000 square feet. Another pitfall is that there is only one bathroom and no bathtub. Cami will have to adjust to only getting to take showers. We decided that was a sacrifice that would be acceptable considering the alternative is to cram our family into a small apartment with no where to play outside.

Here is a picture of the house. I will update with more pictures after we move.

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