We will be moving in forever

I remember when I used to live in apartments and co-ops, and moving took a weekend or so. Now that I live in houses it just goes on forever. We have TOO MUCH STUFF. No matter how much I give away on Freecycle, there is always more and more and more. And it all needs to be unpacked and arranged. Or hung. Tonight Rocket Boy hung six more pictures. I realize that we don't really need to hang all our pictures, but then what is the point of having pictures? We have hung 21 so far, not counting calendars and things I just taped to the wall, like the tortoise poster (see below).

In this photo, Rocket Boy is preparing to hang up a new light we bought at IKEA last weekend. It's designed to go over a changing table, but I thought it would work well over a puzzle/game table too. It seems to do the trick. (That's a screw sticking out of Baby A's mouth, by the way. Sigh.)

Of course that's the other trouble with moving in -- your stuff never seems to work exactly right in the new house and you have to buy new stuff to add to your stuff to make it work. Like that light.

Also, life moves on and people change. Little people, in particular, grow up and need new toddler beds. I decided it was FINALLY time to ditch the cribs, so we bought nice new toddler beds at IKEA too. Here's Daddy taking apart one of the cribs.

And here we are in our new beds.

The cribs and their mattresses are gone already -- I freecycled them on Tuesday. A young woman drove up with an old truck and took them away. She said she had foster kids. Sometimes I think half the kids in Ridgecrest are in foster care. I told Baby A that the cribs had gone to new babies who didn't have any mommies and daddies. That concept was alarming to him, and I probably shouldn't have mentioned it. But I wanted him to know that the cribs would be appreciated by their new owners.

We had the piano tuned this morning, I emptied a complicated box this afternoon (full of odd bits of paper, each one requiring a lot of thought as to whether it should be kept, and if so, where), and tonight, in addition to the six pictures, Rocket Boy rigged up a place in the garage for the exercise ball. Bit by bit it's all getting done.

More on moving

Little by little we are finding our way with this new house. A week and a half ago, we (i.e., Rocket Boy) got the TV working (we get our TV over the air -- you get quite good reception in Ridgecrest, though of course it's from a repeater, not direct). Here he is up on the roof. The roof of our new rental house, like many houses these days, was covered with satellite dishes and antennas when we moved in. We added our antenna to the mix, but actually ended up hooking up our TV to the one that was already there.

In the photo, Baby A is exploring the tortoise pens that we are starting to set up. I don't know if we're really going to have any tortoises at this house -- it depends on various things. I just think a bare Ridgecrestian backyard is so much nicer with tortoise pens in it.

Last weekend we took a break from unpacking and drove to Short Canyon, which is quite near here. Here's a photo from the parking lot looking back towards Ridgecrest:

Short Canyon is supposed to have fabulous wildflower displays in the spring. I don't know how we've managed not to go here before. We'll definitely go back in a month or two. There were even some wildflowers blooming already and I don't even know what they were. The twins thought it was a great place to run and play. Here are my big boys climbing on a rock:

I made Rocket Boy get them down from all the scary places they climbed. I'm afraid we're raising budding rock climbers. Well, maybe not. As a child, I was very fond of climbing both rocks and trees, and look at me now. But still.

I have this feeling we aren't going to be here much longer -- no more than a year or so, anyway -- and so the whole place is seeming very dear and soon to be lost.

Welcome once again to Ridgecrest

I don't know why it's taken me so long to start blogging again, but Valentine's Day night seemed like a good time to do it. We moved to Ridgecrest originally just a couple of days before Valentine's Day, three years ago.

That V-Day ranks as one of the worst Valentine's Days of my life, easily the worst since I've been married. Rocket Boy went out to get a pizza and came back nearly 2 hours later with a bizarre excuse (he'd wanted the pizza place to make a heart on the pizza out of a red bell pepper but they didn't have a red bell pepper, so he went to a grocery store and bought one and took it back to them.....). Meanwhile I was sure he was dead and when the doorbell rang (he'd forgotten his new key), I was sure it was the police coming to tell me that. I don't know where the twins were when all this was happening. Maybe I put them to bed. They were only 11 months old at the time. I don't know. I've forgotten. Wish I'd forget the whole episode!

Anyway, today was a better V-day, with cards and candy and homemade sugar cookies and a homemade dinner (baked apple french toast, which the twins wouldn't touch). But we've been living here a while now.

The movers showed up at our old house almost 3 weeks ago and moved all our furniture and whatever boxes I'd been able to pack. Then we spent almost another full week moving everything ELSE over to the new house by ourselves. It was nightmarish. But here's our old house, empty:

Of course, no Property Preservation Person has come to do anything about the house. I've emailed the lawyer who made us get out of it -- twice I've emailed her -- and she simply doesn't respond. We still have the keys and the garage door opener -- though it doesn't work because the electricity has been turned off -- and we've gone by the house a few more times to check on it. No break-ins or anything. It's just sitting there, ignored.

Anyway, so we're in our new house. Here's the dining area/living room, with a corner of the office showing:

Here's the guest room, all ready for visitors:

And here's the office:

The room we call the office is probably supposed to be the living room, and the room we call the living room is probably supposed to be a little family room, but that's OK. We need a big office, to accommodate all our desks and bookcases and file cabinets. And the piano. And the twins' table where they do puzzles. The living room can be smaller and cozier. We won't be able to have any big parties, but we weren't planning on doing that anyway.

These photos were taken about a week ago and it doesn't really look much better now. We've unpacked some of these boxes, but others have moved from the garage into the house. Certain items are refusing to show up: the board with coathooks on it that goes on an entryway wall, the eggbecker thingies (that you serve soft-boiled eggs in), Baby B's "Elmo in Grouchland" DVD. Other things show up that I can't understand why we brought with us: empty boxes, old magazines, broken bits of things.

And we all keep getting sick. Right now I'm either getting a cold or another bout of strep throat, not sure yet. My body is screaming at me: "Take a rest! Eat only fruits and vegetables! Get more sleep!" and maybe I need to pay more attention to it. So I'll sign off here and get ready for bed. More in a day or two.