Tomorrow, February 19th, marks one year that Cary and I left on our week-long road trip that brought us ultimately to Maine. You can read about the long trip
here and
here.
This last week brought us our newest adventure: we moved to another rental home in a neighboring town of Small Town. We'll call this one Bigger Small Town. Hmmm...I may have to rethink the names here... (FYI, I have kept the names of the towns off of the blog for interests of Brylee's security. I have debated on making the blog private or changing names to protect her, but making her more 'anonymous' would almost be pointless as that is A LOT of posts to change, but also I post a lot of pictures of her, and in ST and BST, it might not help).
Our living room:
Our kitchen and eating area:
And the dining room converted to Brylee's playroom:
The three above rooms are all connected, with the stairs between the playroom and living room, and the stairs to the basement are in the kitchen. You can walk in one big circle here.
And now, for the upstairs:
The master bedroom (with huge windows to let the sun shine in just right...and it faces west so we aren't blinded by the morning sun!)
The guest bedroom, a.k.a., my parents' bedroom:
And B's room: it doesn't even have toys in there yet! But that's why she gets a huge room for all of her stuff...
There are 2 1/2 bathrooms, the 1/2 being the laundry room as well. The hardest part is that I have to transfer the clothes downstairs to wash and then back upstairs again. Not really a problem, but I just have to figure out a 'pattern' on how to be most efficient.
The view from the patio, which is the exit from the kitchen:
The front door steps that lead to...nowhere...
And the side door, which is what I consider our backyard. Look at that hill: it would be perfect for sledding!!!
As nice as it is to have all of these exits, we leave and enter through the basement. But it gets slippery there as the water from the roof drips off here, and refreezes overnight, and no official steps to go up or down...just a gravel/dirt slope. Cary and I might be fixing that. Brylee has learned the meaning of the word slippery and how to be patient while mommy closes the door to take her hand.
Along with the 'interesting' exits of this house, we also have a crazy steep hill to drive up on to leave the street. It's all dirt/gravel, and before we moved here, my car wouldn't even drive up the hill, so we had to quickly purchase all-weather tires so B and I wouldn't be stuck at the house in snowy/icy/rainy weather. Thank goodness, because below you'll see just how busy we've been the last several days!
Anyways, this last week has been quite adventurous just in the process of moving. We originally had 3 days to move, starting yesterday (Friday), but somehow it was changed so that we had a week to move. Thank the Good Lord for that one! It made life just a little easier with one of us having to watch tot during the time of the move.
Somehow, during the course of our move, I also somehow scheduled it to be the busiest week and weekend we could have:
Saturday we had dinner with some new friends. I definitely have an interesting story to share here that I wrote out before we had internet connection to post:
What a day of miracles and happy times.
The evening was set up to go to my friend Tracey’s house
for dinner with her and her family, as well as another family.
As Brylee and I were leaving to go pick Cary up from work
after a day of setting up our new house, I felt and heard a clanging noise as I
released the gas pedal in the car. I
realized that as long as I was going 55, the clanging was not there...no
problem, until I reached reduced speed just a couple of miles ahead.
I decided to slow down and go much slower, even if there
were pushy people getting behind us. But
it felt like the clanging was getting worse the slower I got. I drove on the shoulder of the road, hazard
lights on, just praying that I would make it to Cary’s work…just a little
further.
Thu thump…thu thump…constant and worse. Not far before Cary’s job there was a car
dealership with an auto repair. I
decided at the very last minute to turn into there. I called Cary, he took his mom’s car to the
car dealership to find out what was going on.
He reversed the car, and we heard the clanging. It was much louder outside than inside and it
was coming from the front driver’s side wheel.…he pulled back into the parking
space and got out to inspect a little more.
When he pulled the cover off of the hubcap, 3 lug nuts came tumbling
out. My heart dropped. Only 2 held my tire on.
He went inside the dealership to see if the auto repair was
still open, but they were not. However,
he spoke with a guy there, who pulled another guy over to the car to inspect,
and within minutes, our car was being pulled inside the garage to repair.
15 minutes (maybe), and all lug nuts tightened on all tires
later, we were back on the road…without paying any money. My heart was, and still is, full of gratitude
for this dealership and the man Cary dealt with who made the decision to help
out without any cost.
The coolest part about this story is when we got to Tracey’s
(amazing) home just a few minutes after this happened, she told me another
family was joining us for dinner…and this family turned out to be the man Cary
had spoken with at the dealership, the son’s owner. It was a great evening getting to know people
in the small town, and leaving I feel blessed to have been able to experience
the day as it was.
Sunday was Disney On Ice with Brylee and her Oma. I will post a separate post there. But it was really fun, and B was mesmerized the entire time!
Monday and Tuesday night consisted of Cary, B and I going to the condo and finishing our packing/loading the boxes into the car.
Wednesday night, we got to relax and have dinner with Cary's parents after I spent the afternoon tot-free and loading the truck and Volvo with more boxes. (a super-huge THANK YOU to Gary!)
Thursday we finally got our cable and internet service and that night found me having to go to a VBS prep meeting at church and Cary worked late, so we saw each other for about an hour that entire day.
Friday night (last night), consisted of Cary and I taking a well-deserved (or so I think) trip to see Star Wars Episode I in 3D.
Today had Brylee and I going to a birthday party in New Hampshire, and Cary working hard (it's his busy season!)
Throw in there the fact that Monday and Wednesday I had playgroup/playdates and Tuesday I had MOPS, and it equaled up to being one of the busiest weeks I have ever had!
Alright. Enough of a super-long post, and now to start writing about the more colorful times of this last week!
