Recap 3: The Drive Out

Apparently, we have no pictures from the people we visited on the way out. NONE! Don't ask me how that happened. Here are a few of my boys from the driving portions of the trip.

Napping during a break for lunch. All that driving wore him out.

We visited a fun cave (no pictures, of course) and Ethan loved his spelunking hard hat.

My cute hubby taking a turn driving.

The sweet boy was an angel on the drive. Slept or entertained the rest of us with his chatter.

Aren't I cute?

Hey! I asked you a question!

We don't play rough with our boys! Who told you that?

Awwww

Ethan was obsessed with his drinks the whole trip. "You mean I can have juice?? Really???? I drank all of this one. We need some more."

My Husband the Marketer

John hasn't started a serious job search yet. But he's been really actively networking. Getting to know people in his field here in Austin. Self-branding, if you will.

It's paid off. John had 5 interviews last week. FIVE! Like I said, he wasn't even looking. Two of them went really well. Really, really well. More once things are final.

Man he's good at marketing.

Lesson #8

Don't store your boxes in a garage where tarantulas might move in. Or even better, don't move to a state with large arachnids.

That's right. We have a tarantula living in our garage. It's at least the size of my hand. I've seen it twice at a distance and I swear it could take on a small dog. People keep telling me that its not dangerous but that doesn't make me feel any better. I won't even park the car in there.

We have to set aside a day to move the boxes and bins out to the driveway and figure out where it's living. Then a young woman in the ward has volunteered to come catch it for us. She has one at home and would like another. Creepy. Anyway, I'll put up a picture when we catch the monster.

Lesson #4

Be careful what you pack on top of your dryer.

After more than a week of trips to Home Depot to get the right pipe fittings, I was finally able to hook up our gas dryer. Then I turned it on. Each time the drum rotated there was a LOUD thump. I researched online and in the manual. Nothing seemed right, so I decided to just open it up and see if I could tell what the problem was. (Yes. I am the daughter of an engineer.) After removing the top I determined that the seam of the drum was scraping the top of the dryer. The entire top was dented so subtly I hadn't seen it until I knew what I was looking for. I took a rubber mallet to it and now have a fully functional and quiet dryer.

The dent was apparently caused by a box slightly smaller than dryer top. When additional weight was added on top of that, the smaller box left a dent. Don't do this! The repair wasn't hard but was a major pain because of the way the top is attached.

Grateful

Today I am grateful for

-Both boys having early bedtimes, so that even when they have a hard time going down, there's still time for me to relax.

-New motivation to be a home-maker. (It still confuses me too. But we're all liking it.)

-John working from home, at least for a while.

-New friends who already feel like old friends.

-The strength to step out of my comfort zone. And to let others into it.

-Not being pregnant again. (Yea. That was scary. Maybe I'll post about it tomorrow. Maybe.)

-The knowledge that John and I are where we're supposed to be in every way. Married to each other, two kids, self-employed, in this town, in this ward, in this particular house, even arriving when we did. We completely felt led here and already know some of the reasons why. (I have to admit that it's a comforting feeling. It took us several years to see just a little of why we were in Boston. Here, it only took a few days. The Lord really does know what he's doing.)

Lesson #2

Wrap your furniture.

Heres why
Luckily enough, this was an old slipcover that I already had a replacement for. Other items needed some cleaning though.

The wood furniture did not survive unscathed either. Most of it was only partially wrapped, as teasing was making some of the guys self-conscious about doing it. You can clearly see where the wrapping ended in the scrapes and dings. And of course the drawer that fell out of the unwrapped tv cabinet is completely broken. Someone make sure that the teaser's wife sees this so that their furniture survives! (We really should have asked him to deal with it or go home. It was NOT helping.)

Sorry about the rant. I'm determined to be more pushy about wrapping the furniture next time.

More Lessons to Come...

...when we can find the cord for our camera. Luckily we have a HUGE memory card in it, so we're still snapping away. But any photo we've taken since we left Boston is stuck on the card for the moment. If I don't find the cord soon, I'll pick up a card reader so that I can share with you.

A quick overview is that we're loving life right now. We have a great house, John is working from home (so he pops in to help us out a few times a day), I'm finding a new desire to be domestic (I know. Bizarre.), and we've jumped right into the ward. Except for missing our friends and dealing with the heat, life is good.

Ethan is enjoying that he has two rooms just for him! For now, at least. The boys have their own bedrooms and we've turned the formal dining area into a playroom. Ethan just loves that there is a large area for him to set up his trains where he can leave them out. His only really sad times are when we're going to a playgroup or to church and he asks if his friends will be there. I say yes, b/c he's already made new friends. So when he says "Yes! Benjamin and Julia and Aliya will be there" I have to clarify and he pouts for a few minutes.

Edward is developing by leaps and bounds now that we're on a more regular schedule. He's finally sitting up and has developed a strange little method to move forward. He has the crawling leg motion down, but just can't figure out moving his hands. So he gets up on his hands and knees, scoots his legs forward, pushes up into a better downward facing dog pose than I can do, then pushes his hands backward like he's doing a swimming start and flops forward. It's slow, and he'll only do it if things are just out of reach, but at least it's a step in the right direction.

Edward is also really into eating solids. Before we left, his dr said that he could have three meals a day if he wants it. And that he was clearly showing enough interest to try some finger foods. At six months! As soon as we introduced them, he got it. He doesn't have the pincer grasp, but he immediately figured out how to open his hand and push things into his mouth. For a while he didn't even want to be spoon fed, but a few new foods (pureed chicken and rice in particular) changed that. He gets so excited that he shakes his head back and forth the entire time. It's a messy process.

That's us for now. Once we have the pictures I'll post more.

Lesson #1

Don't forget to turn on the utilities BEFORE you move in.

Yup. We're in a hotel less than a mile from our house because we didn't know the utilities would be turned off. ALL of them. We might have toughed it out with no electricity and definitely could go without gas for a few days. It was the lack of water that did us in. No toilets with a three year old? No way. The basics will be turned on tomorrow. We'll deal with the others, like garbage pickup, sewage fees, and internet, later this week.

Ah. New house, new lessons to be learned.

Travel Updates

John has been posting audio snippets of our trip on his blog. Go take a listen!

...And They're Off!

It's official. We've left Boston. And we're feeling homeless. At least for the next week or so.

Why Are We Moving???

I had to ask myself that this morning after yet another wonderful visit with our pediatrician. I LOVE him! Today he celebrated with Ethan for wearing underwear to bed, gave hugs all around (before we remembered we'd be back next week), and gave us TWO CASES of formula! It was just another reminder to me of everything and everyone we're leaving. And a few of the reasons it's time to go.

- All of the friends we've made here over the years. We've made so many b/c of the turnover in our ward. It's finally our turn to contribute and not just miss everyone who left us behind. And we'll all stay in touch, even if it's mostly through blogs!

- Our AMAZING ward. This ward is like a training ground. It functions exactly like the Lord intended. Each member is cared for spiritually, physically, and emotionally, and contributes to the care of everyone else in their own way. Not a simple feat when nearly half your membership changes each year! We'll never be in a ward quite like this again, but it's time for us to put some of what we've learned to good use.

- The wonderful doctors I spent years finding. Literally years. Just the perfect combination of top-notch medical skill and friendship in both our pediatrician and my OB. How can I stand to leave them? I don't know. This is one of the things that I'm hating about this move.

- Boston. Oh, Boston. How we love the culture and history. And hate the traffic and city life.

- The trees of the Northeast. I've written about how much I love trees before. They just make me feel alive. I hope Austin has enough for me.

Those are the big things for me. Why I'm both excited and not so much about this move. If you ask me about how I feel, it'll depend on the day. Or minute. Right now I'm already missing our pediatrician, so I don't want to go.

For the grandparents:
I know I can't leave out how Edward's 6 month dr's appt went. He is doing great developmentally, dutifully showing the dr all of his tricks. Like holding his own bottle. And trying to roll off of the table.

Growth is slowing down, but not enough to worry. He's at 17 pounds, which is 50th percentile. Down on the charts, but so is his height. He'll hit a growth spurt soon enough. I think he may have the shorter J genes. We'll just have to wait and see!

It's Official!

We are actually moving. Job be damned! After John spent quite a long time job searching, we decided that we need to be where the jobs are. (In the current economy, everyone is trying to hire locally to save money.) So after reviewing our options, we're going to....AUSTIN, TX!!

Yes. I did actually say I'm moving to the country of Texas. I'm scared for me too. But like I keep reminding John, Austin isn't like the rest of the state. My east coast ways may kind of fit in there. At least that's what I'm told. I've never been there! This is a giant leap of faith for me, but I feel really good about it. WE feel really good about it.

We'll be packing up the truck the last weekend in June and heading out July 1st!! If you happen to live along our route, let us know and we'll stop by to visit. We'll be going from here to DC to stay with friends for a day or two, then through Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, and finally northeastern Texas.

As stressful as moving our entire lives in 4 weeks is (FOUR WEEKS!!! AAAAAAAAAA!!!), we're really excited. The area looks beautiful. (They have trees! Lots of trees!) The schools are good. (Always a concern when leaving the northeast. - Yea. That's right. We're snobby and proud of it.) And we can rent a large house for less money than the average apartment out here. We won't be going larger than we need, but I was expecting to have to bend on what I wanted and I won't need to at all! Yea for 3 bedrooms, a two car garage for the extra storage space, and a fenced backyard I can watch over from the kitchen and living room!!

(Wow, this post has a lot of exclamation points. Excited much?)

Ok. Back to packing.

The News

A lot of you know at least some of this already. Here is the whole story of why my husband is amazing. (He would write this himself, but as you'll see by the end, he's pretty busy.)

We've been talking about moving for, what, 2 years now? The thing holding us back was John not being ready to start a job search. After Edward was born, we realized that Heavenly Father had stopped gently nudging and had started shouting. So John started looking around and updating his resume. But until two weeks ago, not applying for anything.

About a month ago, John found a great position in North Carolina. He was excited and made a big push to have his resume ready. After two weeks of rewriting, having others look at it, and rewriting again, it was an incredibly powerful resume. I think my dad even swore (by association) about how good a section was in the last draft. Plus a perfectly tailored cover letter and an email that would get their attention. It really would have been shocking for this company to NOT respond.

Respond they did. Less than twelve hours later they asked for salary requirements and whether or not we would be willing to move. So John took the weekend to research and make sure he asked for the right salary. This was tough. Coming from the Northeast, we worried that they would consider even his current salary too high, but we aren't moving without a raise b/c we plan to buy a house. After agonizing, John felt good about the range he gave them (a range b/c it would depend on benefits, obviously.)

We were stunned when the next morning, they responded that they were going to make someone else an offer. The wording told us that they had been waiting on this other candidate b/c they thought John might be better, but that our salary request ended that. Ouch.

My great husband, not willing to have things end that way, emailed back that he was glad they found someone and asked about what it was they had been looking for from us, so that we could have a better idea when applying to other jobs in the area. We were so glad to hear back that John hadn't asked for too much. They realized after reviewing John's qualifications and the job description, that they had created a job that was a higher level position than they had intended. So they actually changed the job description and John was overqualified. And they offered to be available to answer questions about the area if we do continue to look for work there. Which we are.

It was kind of a roller coaster for about a week with this company (and John didn't even make it to an interview!), and we were sorry that it didn't work out with them. They were clearly a company of good people. But the amazing response has been so motivating for both John and I. He spends every moment he can on his job search and I've started working on getting us ready to move.

You should see us. John is doing only his one big chore (dishes) and childcare when I need him to and spends the rest of his time on the computer. I've been dejunking, working on using up the food in the pantry rather than restocking, and packing. Yes, packing. I've already packed up some of the files we don't use regularly and am heading to the bookshelves next. On top of keeping our house cleaner than usual and the addition of a newborn. Crazy, I know.

So, my husband is amazing. When he finally started his job search, he did it with a bang. And it's helping me accomplish more in a day than I previously did in a week b/c I'm so excited for the change.

Wish us luck! If anyone has any leads for an Internet Marketing Specialist (particularly in the Cary, NC area, but it doesn't have to be) let us know!!