We made it!!!

These are pictures from my dad's outing with the kids on Monday.

Early Tuesday morning, we hit the road for Colorado.  Lydia made each of the kids a gift to open on the road, which helped immensely motivating them to get back in the car.  Thank you Lydia!!!

The whole drive was beautiful and I wish I could have stopped more to take pictures, but I just had to soak it in.  The windmills at the end of Kansas/beginning of Colorado freaked me out, but once we got into Colorado, it felt like we were driving in the clouds.

We had dinner that night with Ben's aunt Amy and her family.

Alison-8, Schuler-7 (I think), Rayna-9, Eli-5, Colin-3

It was so fun!  The kids instantly clicked and had a blast playing together and it gave the adults a chance to just sit and catch up...super made me wish we lived closer to eachother!  

Halfway to Denver, we got a call from the movers saying that they had to deliver our stuff first thing Friday morning, or we would have to wait another week!  We were originally told that it would be delivered Monday and we had planned on spending a fun day in Colorado and staying at a nice resort in Sedona, Arizona on the weekend.  It took us all of two minutes to decide to cancel all frivolous plans and book it to Yuma to get our stuff...living in a hotel for another week sounded miserable.  We had a deadline of picking up the house keys from the rental company by 5pm Thursday, so Wednesday morning, we left Denver and drove to Gallop, New Mexico.

The kids did an amazing job staying in hotels every night.  They are finally old enough that bedtime is not a nightmare and we don't have to worry about pack n' plays or getting up in the middle of the night with a baby.  YEA!  But falling out of the bed was an issue.  Colin fell out twice and Eli fell out once.  Eli didn't even wake up but was sobbing.  I put him back in bed and he slept the rest of  the night; it wasn't until the morning that I saw the gash in his cheek!  Poor guy hit it on the corner of the end table!  I felt terrible. 

We were up early again Thursday, because this was deadline day.  We scooped everyone up in pj's and headed out to the car, only to find the van had a flat tire, thanks to a screw in the road.  Thankfully it didn't happen on the highway and we were right next door to a Walmart with an auto center.  The ordeal still took 2 hours and we looked funny shopping in our pj's, but I'm sure Walmart has seen crazier things.

It helped knowing we were going to see our new house this day, but it was a hard day of driving.  I was SO surprised by the typography!  I kept wondering if I am just naive about Arizona...does everyone know there are forest covered mountains?  Eventually the  forest turned into large cacti, but we didn't hit flat ground until Yuma.  Every state we entered, the boys and I would "blurb" into it (blub=do a little shimmy as you say "yea!  We're in....") and when we got into Arizona, Eli said, "Well, I don't see sand and I'm not hot, but if you say this is Arizona, I guess I'll believe you." 

Colin doesn't suck his thumb much anymore, but this drive and a little kids Dramamine, had him going to his happy place.

We picked up our keys just 30 minutes before they closed, but WE MADE IT!  We had talked about how cool it is to run through your new empty house, exploring and claiming which room will be yours and the kids definitely caught onto that excitement.  This house is strangely laid out very similar to our old house, so it made it familiar, but with Arizona accents and random nooks in the walls.

The backyard was the highlight for us.  It's much bigger than the pictures made it seem, with beautiful flowers around the surrounding wall and we discovered we have a lemon, lime and orange tree!

P.S. all of the kids grew on the trip here.  I have a feeling Target is going to love us in the next couple of weeks, because they all need new clothes on top of a bunch of things we need for the house.

Colin has been carrying fruit and rocks around like they're toys... I found lemons in the car that he had snuck in on our way to dinner. 

Friday morning the movers were here with our stuff and worked all day unloading.  There were only 3 guys and they would call off inventory numbers that we would have to mark off a list, so it took much longer than I anticipated.  They boys were happy playing with fruit and rocks...

The trees were overgrown and there was a lot of fruit on the ground.  I asked them to make a pile for me, but the pile became a smashing pile and they had a blast jumping on them and throwing them.  Eli kept coming up to us, asking us to smell them.  I loved how excited he was about our own fruit.

That afternoon, some guys came to clean up the yard and fix the sprinkler system and we saw them filling bags with the extra fruit.  We took it as a good sign that they are okay to eat and have been enjoying lots of fresh oranges.  They also cleaned up our garden space and left a little bunch of spinach.  Now I just have to research what to plant and when and we will have our own garden!

 

It may seem silly to be so excited about little things, but when renting houses, you sacrifice a lot; being able to change landscape or paint walls or fix things the proper way or have a decent dishwasher, so it's nice when little perks come with the house.

A picture just doesn't capture the scenery well here.  This is the view from our master bedroom...you can see mountains in the background.

We told the movers long ago that we wanted them to unpack the boxes, but by Friday afternoon, it was clear that there would not be enough time for them to do that.  They told us that they would come back Thursday to pick up all the empty boxes, so I was thankful that's at least one less thing we have to worry about. 

2 days in Arizona and the boys are already naked all of the time.  But they have been awesome helpers and begging to help me unpack boxes.

Eli said it feels like Christmas and I appreciate his enthusiasm.  Unpacking is overwhelming for a momma; trying to figure out a new space and how things will best be arranged and then answering 5,000 questions while trying to find something you need.

The master bedroom closets have mirror doors, which take us back to the days in our first house in Michigan, but this house has the closet on both sides.  The boys keep coming in here and laughing that there are 4 of them and making super hero poses.  And of course they are in their underwear because it's too hot for clothes apparently.

Saturday morning I got up and started unpacking the kitchen right away.  We found the coffee pot and coffee, but it took us 3 more hours to find the filters!  There were some things they packed really well and some things were not.  For example, said coffee filters were wrapped in 4 pieces of paper, but our nice ceramic pot was wrapped in nothing.  We've only found 1 thing broken, so I guess their system works okay.

While we were distracted finding coffee filters, the boys started dumping the paper out of boxes and built a castle.

Ben and I took turns running the neighborhood.  This was part of my view:

I have been enjoying the weather.  It's been cool enough to play outside and even have the windows open.  I'm pretty sure sunglasses will be glued to my head starting now and we have all been extra parched since coming here, but we'll adjust soon I'm sure.  The only negative I have so far: the packers mentioned to us that wind was coming Friday night.  We didn't think anything of it, coming from Kansas, but that night the wind started blowing like we were in the middle of a huge storm.  My Kansas blood was screaming to sprint to shelter, but I tried to convince myself of the truth: there was no storm, no rain or hail or tornado, it was just wind.  The lemon tree kept knocking one of our windows which made it extra scary for me, but all was fine.  In the morning, our cars were covered in dirt and we wondered how many times we'll be washing our cars or if you just succumb to a dirty car all the time.