This and That

We have been in San Antonio now for six months, two months in our rental house (we lived with our friends for four months), and it still doesn't feel like home.  We were in Vancouver/Portland for 14 years so I think it will take some time.

A few things I have noticed:

*The trees are ALL as tall as a two story house and lots of them don't even look like trees, just overgrown bushes on steroids.
*There are no gutters on the houses so you walk out your front door and through a waterfall.

*There are no drains for the rain water to go into.  The water either floods the street or it flows to a huge drain randomly placed between houses.

 

*Drivers here don't know what a Yeild sign means.
*Driver licenses expire in 6 years.
*Instead of registration stickers going onto the license plate, they're put on the inside windshield of the drivers side.

*There are no major landmarks (like Mt Hood) to know if you're heading North, South, East or West so I'm constantly turned around.
*You can make a U-turn at almost any major intersection, I love it!

I have started working for an older couple as a CNA.  The woman had a stroke in January.  I go every morning for a few hours to get her ready for the day and then go back in the evening to get her ready for bed.  I absolutely love this couple!  We have been the answer to each others prayers.  It drained all of our money to move down here, who knew there would be so many deposits and fees?!, so it has truly been a blessing for me to pick up a few hours of work.

For the most part, Doug is enjoying his time working for Pepsi.  He especially loves the discounted price on soda!  We attended a company picnic two Saturdays ago and had so much fun.  They had games for both the adults and kids, face painting, a clown making balloon sculptures, chair massage, free food and drinks.  Towards the end of the night we played BINGO and Olivia won $50.  I should have kept track of how much money they gave away but if I had to guess, I'd say it was around $700-$1000. Doug was saying he heard talk of a Christmas party with big ticket items they'll be giving away.  We'll definitely be there!!!

In church, I've been given the calling of 4th Sunday Relief Society teacher.  That's a huge change from YW President and I love it.  Don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed working with the youth but I love only having to teach once in a while.  Doug was just called as an Assistant to the Wolf leader in Cub Scouts.  I think he'll like it.

We do Sunday dinners with the Walker's and each week (or close to that) we take turns inviting another family over for dinner.  It's been fun to finally get to know some more families.  It's a really young ward with lots of people moving in and out; lots of military and internships.  This is something that I had wanted to do back in Vancouver but never quite got around to it.  Plus, it helps having another family doing the meals every other Sunday.

It's not set in stone, meaning they haven't signed the contract yet, but I have the opportunity to help a young couple in the ward with a home birth.  Her husband is from Beaveton, Oregon and his sister was in my primary class many years ago when I used to live there as a child.  The doctor that delivered him was the doctor who helped me with the twins.  It's such a small world!  I'm super excited to be working with them.  I just pray that it will work out well with my other job. :)

Fun in the sun

The kids are enjoying the sun.  They can get pretty creative with the sheets and jungle gym.

When we first got here, I couldn't find the kids' birth certificates and SS cards so I couldn't register them for public school.  The whole way down they kept hounding me to home school them (Leslie home schools her kids) so I decided to as well.  Doug ended up finding the documents in storage a few day later but the kids really wanted to keep home schooling.  So far it's going really well.  I had tried home schooling a few years back but it didn't go so well.  I had to check in with the state every month and twice a week had to drive the kids to the Parsley Center so they could go to "school" with other home schooled kids.  The kids weren't thriving and I was stressed and really didn't enjoy it.

This next year, I was looking forward to having the kids in school all day, having a few hours a day for myself.  This was a hard decision for me but by not being able to find the papers right away, I felt that was an answer to my prayers.  Shannon has struggled so much in school, learning is not her thing and she has to have an IEP (individual education plan).  Although she's in 7th grade, her learning level is the 4th grade level.  I was having to go in every year and sit with couselors to go over the plan for the following year and to see how she's progressed throughout the current school year.  I always felt deflated at the end of those meetings, like somehow it was my fault she wasn't progressing they way they felt she needed to be progressing.

So far, this new school year has started out great. I still sometimes wish I had more time during the day just for myself but it is nice having the kids home and not having to worry about school lunches and activities.  If I need to run an errand, the older kids are home to watch the younger ones, which makes things real nice.  Keeping my fingers crossed that it continues to work out well.

Day 8

*In the morning, Doug went out and bought some groceries so we could have breakfast.  Since it was a kitchenette room, we had to fend for ourselves.
*After breakfast we went to buy some things to have for lunch later, then we were off.

The sign shortly after we got back on the road.

I have never seen a speed limit like this!  Too bad we couldn't actually go that fast.  Darn you moving truck! 

Another cool rock formation.

*Finally arrived in San Antonio around dinner time!

Day 7

*Enjoyed another complimentary breakfast.

*Headed out for Texas.

*Missed our exit and drove an hour passed where we needed to be. I called Leslie to have her help us get going back in the right direction. Thankfully we had passed a town 20 minutes earlier so we turned around, stopped for lunch, and mapped out our new route.

*Decided to stay the night in Fort Stockton to split up the last leg of the drive.

*Because of the detour, we drove on some interesting roads to get back on the main road. It was a pretty boring drive over all.

(lots of this)

(and this)

(our view the majority of the trip)

*Arrived in Fort Stockton and got a nice kitchenette room

Day 6

* Had a great complimentary breakfast. I love how hotels are starting to do that now. So much better than just coffee, donuts, and muffins. Now there's eggs, biscuits and gravy, juices, pancakes, etc.

* Let the kids swim some more in the morning while Doug took the U-haul trailer back. Don't ever go through U-haul! They would not refund any of our money back because we didn't go all the way to Texas with it. Plus they wanted to charge us a service fee for dropping it off at a different location, which Doug refused to pay.

* On our way to Albuquerque. That was a LONG drive.

(cool rocks we saw)

(not the whole in the rock the previous picture was talking about :) )

* Arrived around 1am to stay in a Best Western. We were so tired. It was a cool room though. I've never stayed in a suite. The kids slept in one room that had the hide-a-bed and Doug and I had the other room that had a king sized bed. We had a glass door that separated the rooms.

(enjoying the nice flat screen TV before we left in the morning)

Day 5

Monday morning

*Called Penske in SLC to say we were coming in and they said we needed to call the emergency line and have them arrange things

*Doug calls and they said they needed to send out the mechanic again to look at things AGAIN and they had to send out a different guy to look at the tires (who said that the tires were fine)

*Same mechanic comes out and says there's a radiator leak and transmission leak

*Penske then tells us they will put us up in a hotel while they switch out our moving truck

*We have time to kill so the kids go to a pool and spend some time with their cousins

*We're then off to SLC

*Stop at Uncle Joe and Aunt Wanda's to say hi and get directions to the Penske yard

*Arrive at Penske, leave the old moving truck there while three men unload it and re-load our things into the new moving truck. They loaded the new truck properly and were able to get all the things out of the U-haul trailer I was pulling and into the new truck

(Shan playing with the camera. You can see the trailer I'm pulling in the background)

*While the men were busy with the trucks we went and had dinner with some friends of ours

*After dinner we checked into a hotel, the Holiday Inn Express. We chose this because it had a water slide for the kids

*Kids and moms played in the water while Doug and Pat went to get the moving truck since it was done

(pictures are dark because my flash doesn't work)

heading up to the water slide

playing on the kiddie structure

*Bedtime

Day 4

*Sunday was a very relaxing day
*Slept in
*Hung out with family
*Had family pictures taken
*Hung out with family some more, ate yummy food and played games.

Our little nephew wasn't feeling well so his parents decided to take him to urgent care. He's four weeks old. They were told to go to the ER right away. After a few hours waiting in ER he was diagnosed with RSV. ***He ended up having to stay in the hospital for a few days but is home now and doing well.***

Day 3

*We left Caldwell around 11:30am
*Stopped in Burley for lunch and tried to fix an issue that a warning light was telling us about
*Got to I.F. at 5:15pm
*We had dinner with Julie and her family, David and his family minus Holly, James and his family and Richard and Amber (and with the parents of course)
*Doug called Penske about the light on since he couldn't get it fixed. They sent out a contracted mechanic to take a look. He said the truck had bad tires, too hot of an exhaust and a transmission leak. We were told we needed to go to SLC on Monday for the repairs. It was Saturday and we were planning on leaving Monday anyway.
*The rest of the evening we hung out and played games

Day 2

Doug and Dad up at 6am
U-haul trailer picked up at 7am for the stuff that couldn't fit into the moving truck
D & D back to the house to finish loading our things
Both of them back to pick us up
Said goodbye to the folks (so hard and many tears)
Finally on the road at noon
Had to stop by FedEx to pick up Doug's paycheck and turn in his uniform
Took 9 hrs to get to Caldwell, Idaho when it usually take 6 (moving truck could only go up the hills at 35 mph)
Went and saw The Hunger Games with our friends Melanie and Trevor (we stayed the night at their house)
Got to bed at 1:30am

New Big Adventure-Day 1

Went to bed the night before with it snowing outside
Woke up to snow on everything
Took Shannon to her dentist appointment
Kids had 2 hour late start due to the snow
Dad and Doug show up with the moving truck and carrier for the van
They do a dump and DI pod run
Packing, packing and more packing (I had thought I was almost done but things kept jumping out of the woodwork)
First helpers show up
Start loading boxes into the truck
More people show up to help
Lots of loading
Mom takes the kids to her house
Truck is almost too full, was told not everything will fit
Had to leave and get pizza because I was starting to freak out
After eating, a few more things were loaded and the help goes home
Said good-bye to one of my bestest friend, Marissa, and her family
Loaded the van up and onto the trailer
I left and went to my parents house where we were all staying for the last night in Vancouver
Dad and Doug finished with the van and went home to rest
It was midnight when Doug climbed into bed

WHAT?!?!

Yikes, I'm actually blogging! It's been 1 1/2 years since I last wrote. That's so sad. Looks like I also need to update some pictures. Unfortunately this is just a teaser since I don't have much time to write at the moment, story of my life. I promise though to write more within the next week....so stay tuned. :)