surfer dudes

I've unearthed the camera...and a lot of other stuff too in this past week! Tonight marks one week living in the "new house" as Jackson says, hard to believe. Its been a very busy week and I've been so tired from working coming off the time from packing and then moving that I did not have a ton of time to unpack during the week. I got back to that again today and got the entire formal living room set up including unpacking the china and crystal (nothing broke) while Jackson slept. In between unpacking and trying to organize our life a bit, we did get to swim in the pool for the first time and go to the beach! I took Jackson early this morning and then we all went down again around 4:00 when the heat started to break. There were some big waves and a lot of wind from Hurricane Danielle that is due East off the coast. Luckily that is all the hurricane weather we will see from that storm and it really was a beautiful day with sun and a solid blue summer sky. If it was not for the larger waves, we would not have known there was a storm out there. Jack has a new wet suit that I had found a few weeks ago at a consignment shop while looking for a Halloween costume for him.......it is brand new with tags and all from a surf shop in Hawaii! He was so darn cute in it, I grabbed the camera and snapped a few shots as he and Jon were heading to the beach, boogie boards in hand (Jack just carried one, of course WE DO NOT LET HIM go into the water with one, or really into the water at all, especially not on a day like this). We are teaching him more and more about both pool and beach safety and working on his swimming skills. Tomorrow brings more unpacking and I am going to a baby shower for a friend who is expecting a little baby boy named Charlie in October! Hope everyone is having a nice weekend, I will try to post some house pictures tomorrow.

and we're in!

We moved yesterday...............OMG THAT WAS STRESSFUL.....but we made it. For anyone that does not know me that well, (that probably is not anyone that reads this blog, but oh well)........you have to know how HARD this is for me as I am a type A HIGHLY ORGANIZED individual so putting an entire houseful of contents into a boxes, and then into a truck and then transporting them to a place where I then have to unpack them over a period of time pretty much throws me for a loop and almost makes me borderline OCD because I CANNOT STAND MESS and want it to all to be set up the way I want it like NOW. I think I have slept about 6 hours in the past two days and I'm sure I've only had one shower...gross.

I have tried my best to keep the panic/anxiety/psychosis at bay by focusing on one room at a time but then sometimes it would just overwhelm me and I felt like I was going to have a total panic attack when I saw all the boxes remaining. I have done two big moves before in the last 5 years when I moved to Florida, and then when we bought our house but we did not have as much stuff, pets, or a child........ahhhhhhhhh. It is WAY WORSE this time but we are making it. The kitchen is set up, our family room space is set up, we do have cable and internet which is a BONUS (trust me, these things are not lost on me) and our beds are up and put together and both bathrooms are unpacked and fairly well set up. I've even run three loads of laundry and the laundry machines here though old are SO much better than what I had at my house, they are bigger and the dryer dries so much faster, I LOVE IT!!

The guest room surprisingly is almost set to go and the hall closet and closet in the guest room are also functional. I packed meticulously this time to ease the transition so the boxes that stayed boxed are LABELED and easy to identify in the closets so that is a bit of an aha moment in all of this for me.

Jack's room (the #1 room I had hoped to have set up by now) is NOT functional, but his changing table and bed at least are. The problem is, I am MOST productive when he is SLEEPING at night or napping so it makes it hard to focus on his room when he is down so I have worked on the other spaces first. One thing at a time, pictures soon, as soon as I FIND the camera. Pray for our dogs. We have fence in most of the yard but one side is not fenced so we got an invisible fence...they are training now but they do not like it. Jon has it on the lowest level but you would have thought they were being killed. I could not watch, kind of like when Jackson had swimming lessons, again I could not be around for that as they basically just threw him in the water and he had to figure it out......of course we are not going to let the dogs hurt themselves and the swim instructor was not going to let Jackson drown but from where I stood, it was not looking good at first. This too will pass.........

The transitions are all around us right now...Jackson starts the big boy 2 year old class tomorrow, here is his FUN schedule, if I did not have to be committed to get a day like this, I would love a day in this life:

7:30: school opens

7:30-8:30: drop off/greeting, wash hands, exploratory play

8:30-8:45: morning snack

8:45-9:15: outside learning

9:15-9:45: morning circle time (songs, weather, introduction of theme and concept)

9:45-10:45: classroom activity and structure centers

10:45-11:00: Music

11:00-11:30-story time and preparation for lunch

11:30-12:00: Lunch

12:00-2:15: quiet time/music/back rubs/nap time

2:15-2:45: afternoon snacks/brush teeth

2:45-3:15: circle time (songs, stories and/or puppets)

3:15-4:00: outside learning

4:00-4:30: classroom activity (songs, stories and/or art)

4:30-5:30: exploratory play

5:30: school closes

Now that we have moved, Jon will be taking him to school most days unless he has a really early morning so Jack will arrive at school about 8 or so and one or the other of us will pick him up just after 5. He must like school as he asked me about TEN times this morning if we were going to go to school!! Happy Monday,and best of luck with the FIRST day of school to little Lucy and to the teachers in our lives, Mimi, Grandma and Aunt Frances:)

P.S. HUGE THANK YOU to Papa for coming down to help us move this weekend, we could NOT have made it without you and Jackson must have asked where in the heck you were about 100 times today:)

moving is..........

EXTREMELY STRESSFUL. Trust me, I have thought "did we make the right decision" like a hundred times and woken up equally as many times in the wee hours of the morning with anxiety about the transition ahead but we just need to get through it. I remind myself how much EASIER my life will be when we are closer to work and other places we go all the time,and the beach will be just a stones throw away.......but I have to get through this PROCESS for lack of a better word. About a hundred people have told me that I am extremely organized so I will fair better than most with this kind of a move, but organized or not, it is still a bit overwhelming. There are boxes EVERYWHERE in our house and I just want to get the move over with already! I have like 5 lists going on the counter, we've begun changing our address with utilities, insurance companies, and other bills we have and also we changed our mail effective this Saturday and changed our Driver's licenses as well today. Thankfully we can do almost all of this online now a days so with the click of a finger, you can rearrange your life! Thank goodness also that Papa was able to come down at the end of this week to help Jon break down bigger pieces of furniture and to help keep things in check with the move and be an extra set of hands and eyes to help with Jackson. Finally, thank goodness that we are moving this time of year when my work is the slowest (even though I'm still busy, it would be much worse in the spring months with season residents here and all the extra that comes with that).

Pray for our sanity this week and for Jackson and our pets to have a smooth transition. Jackson is pretty much happy anywhere we go as long as we are with him, but it will still be a change for him. It is sad to think that he likely will not remember his first years here with us, good thing we have like 5,000 photos!!! I did not think I would be sad to move from here as I have wanted to move for a while to be in a more central location but it is our first house and where we brought our tiny baby home and learned to be a family..........if I keep going down this path I'll never move!! Hopefully we only have ONE more move ahead of us if at all for a LONG LONG time. I NEVER moved as a child and for good reason........I do not like it...as Jackson would say, "NO LIKE IT"!! I would post a photo of the shambles our house is in with boxes everywhere, but I honestly do not know which box the camera is packed in!!!

MOVING in less than 2 weeks!

AHHH, we are MOVING our ENTIRE HOUSE in less than TWO WEEKS, AHHHH again!!! I am trying not to FREAK OUT and STAY CALM, but this is an undertaking. I am an extremely organized, control freak type A personality by nature.......and Jon is GOING TO OHIO FOR A WEDDING for the next FOUR days so I am PACKING like a mad woman.

The short part of the story is that we've wanted to move for 2 years........the market took a total sh** and is WORSE in Florida than 99% of the states in this country and of course we bought our house in 2006 at the PEAK of the market. Fast forward.....we now owe WAY more than our house is worth. We can afford the mortgage but we're driving ALL OVER God's green earth just to function each day and of course now houses that were TOTALLY out of our reach in more desirable locations now cost LESS than our house did in 2006, UGH. So......we tried to sell the house, we event tried to work some sort of a short sale with the bank........that proved to be unsuccessful and we cannot do foreclosure like half of the rest of Florida as I am an attorney and we have A LOT TO LOSE......so after many arguments, tears, and just total feelings of despair, we decided to list the house for rent (Florida, unlike other places we have lived is a HUGE rental market). In LESS than 24 hours, we had 3 house showings, and Jon had over 50 emails and calls. This was without even using a realtor or MLS system!! We got the house rented to a nice family from Nebraska being transferred here by Wells Fargo. The mom is a district manager with Wells Fargo, the dad is a supervisor with UPS. They have one 13 year old daughter and a small lap dog. We got firs,t last and security, I drafted the lease and we even got a pet deposit! They loved the pool and she said she felt comfortable with us as we were "real people" and not just a model home like she had seen so much of. I feel good about the tenant too. She seems really nice and liked our home and seemed so like a person from OhiO! They too cannot sell their house in Nebraska, they are a first time renter like us and are renting until they can sell there. We let a lot of people see the house but were VERY selective with our choice. One family had FOUR boys under the age of 10...um no.....I have ONE and I see what he alone has done to the walls!! The family loved our pool and backyard and outdoor kitchen and we loved that they had good solid jobs, set up auto pay for the rent and we met her at her work to sign the lease so I know she has a decent job. We also loved that getting our house rented meant we could get into something where we want to be and we did not have to sacrifice having a pool...a must in South Florida!!

Our new house is three houses from the beach and we got a pool with it (this was hard to get in a rental). The owners are a client of my firm (although I did not figure this out until half way through the transaction) and the two managing partners I work with have such a great reputation, it was EASY for us to rent. As soon as people heard where I work, they were instantly like no problem and wanted us as a tenant. Of course we would rather BUY NOW rather than be a tenant, but we are bound up in the other house for now so this is the next best solution. We are actually not spending a dime more to move so it is even better. The rental market is booming where we live due to the economy and so many people being in a sense trapped in their houses like us. We move next weekend so I am packing like a mad woman these days. Wish us luck, we will post pictures soon. The new house is not as updated as ours but it is a bit bigger, and the location is killer. I will be about 6 minutes from my office, we are excited!! The owners are even willing to entertain a lease with option to purchase so we'll test drive the house and then see where it goes.

a friend found under the Volvo

This afternoon after we recovered from the garage sale antics and Jackson had napped, I happened to be in the front room and peaked out the window and something LARGE under my car caught my eye. At first I thought it was a cat, but then I realized it was a GOPHER TORTOISE!! It looks like a very large pet turtle for those who have never seen one, I'm pretty sure they stick to very warm tropical climates.

I've seen these before down here, but usually in the sand dunes near the beach, NEVER under my car or in or near my yard, much less UNDER MY CAR ON MY DRIVEWAY. Of course I yelled for Jon (and the number one assistant helper, Jackson). Suffice it to say we got the turtle out from under the car (never mind it took a large broomstick to gently do this) and then we put it in a safe area in our yard (the dogs left it alone) and we read up online to see what it needed (turns out grass is all) and it is doing fine......in fact Jon could not find it in the yard any longer so he thinks it got out (I guess they can dig quite well) and this little bugger could MOVE......I mean seriously, I thought turtles are supposed to be slow, this thing put that saying to shame, it hauled A** across the yard and was out of site in no time.....poor thing did have three spys looking out for it though! Jackson, Bella and Trey were like the three wisemen looking after Terrence the Tortoise (as we named him).

Enough about the turtle....tonight I got Jackson down by 7:45 (all the garage sale excitement wore him out) and Jon is out with some guy friends watching some big wrestling fight at someone's house on tv and I have PEACE. I have been reading a book that I started on MATERNITY LEAVE. That is right.......you read that I am STILL reading a book I STARTED on maternity leave TWO YEARS AGO. I've been busy the past two years (that is an under statement) but I found it the other day while preparing for the garage sale and it is "Eat, Pray, Love".......no time like the present to read this book since the movie is now coming out, geez. I used to read several fiction books a week........but I've spent my precious free time the past two years sleeping whenever I had the chance between work and taking care of my young family. I'm hoping to finish the book by the end of August!! I'll let you know how I do with my goal.

In other news we are still working on the potty training here and there. I know he is ready, if I ask him if he has to go he will sit and go, I just need to find a long weekend to dedicate to this and just get it done............ugh. Time is a precious thing!! We are also continuing to work on the paci. He is officially 100% PACI FREE at school, but BEGS AND PLEADS for it from the minute we pick him up to when we get home. He still has it at night and we try our hardest to limit it to ONLY sleeping at night at home, but sometimes he gets the best of us. Slowly but surely we are working on this. Poor Jackson loves his paci so much so we are doing this gradually.

Tomorrow we're taking one of my co-workers for a boat ride along with her family. Other than that we'll be home gearing up for the coming week and Josh's wedding......hard to believe we will be BACK in the Buckeye state for a long weekend SO SOON!

garage sale day!

We had a garage sale today, we have not had one in about three years, since I was pregnant with Jackson so it was time! We teamed up with our neighbors across the street who also had one and we all did pretty well. This garage sale was different than our last one in that big items did not move, but the stupid small stuff that I consider total TRASH is what would sell, crazy but it did add up to about $250.00! The garage sale people in Florida are totally crazy too though.....weird fanny pack wearing old people, and random Mexican families, and then some normal people here and there too, totally different than an up north garage sale.

I am going to put some of the bigger items that did not sell on craigslist and see what happens. Jackson had a blast and spent most of the sale helping our neighbor's daughter, Hailey who is 5, with her lemonade stand!!

Here are some photos, from the sale!