My Little Adventure, Craigslist Style

Here's a funny story to start off your week.
This morning I decided to be super diligent and keep checking craigslist all morning in hopes of finding the perfect piece of furniture to complete my front room area.
I was going about my business, doing my usual daytime routine, when I felt this prompting to go and check craiglist. Lo and behold in the free section was a piece that would be great! And, lucky me, it was just in the next town over which is only about 5 minutes away!
I quickly got the girls ready, then myself and we were out the door and on our way. The ad only mentioned that this wicker trunk, my perfect piece of furniture, was on the curb waiting to be picked up.
The whole time I was driving there, which ended up being about a 20 minute drive, I kept praying and praying that it would still be there and that my drive wouldn't end up being a waste of time and gas.
I finally pulled up to the house in this rather nice neighborhood and there the trunk sat! I was so excited! I quickly parked in front of it and walked over to investigate. It was SO nice!

I cleared off my front seat, all the while pondering how I could tell the person thank you. As I turned back to go and pick up the trunk, another car quickly pulled up behind mine. I smiled, because it was kind of funny that I beat this person, but I was prepared to be nice about getting there first. When out pops this older woman, literally running toward this trunk. I was kind of perplexed as to why she might be running, so I asked her if she was there to get the trunk too. She told me, "Oh no, I just talked to her!", I assume she was alluding to the owner, still coming quite quickly toward me and the trunk. I do not doubt if I had had that thing picked up in my arms that she would have literally pulled the trunk out of my arms. I.Joke.You.Not.

Having seen these people from Massachusetts in action and not wanting to get into anything, I calmly said, "Oh, okay" and walked back to my car. This woman said literally nothing to me. Not a "thanks", not an " Oh, I'm sorry". Nothing.

She was all business as she bustled about getting it into her car as fast as possible. I drove around the neighborhood a little more, hoping to find another freebie, trying to understand what just happened. I saw that woman hightail it out of there. With her trunk lid flying in the wind because the wicker trunk was too big.

( I am a little ashamed to admit I hoped that trunk would come flying out of there.)

Welcome to Massachusetts!! 

A Little Poem

Hickory Dickory Dock

the mouse ran across my floor

I would have screamed

but I wasn't sure I really saw what I saw

and so I went to bed. Upstairs.

Where there had better be no mice.

Our Fabulous Weekend in New York

We had been planning this fun weekend to visit our family in New York for a good week,  but nearly didn't go when it came time due to sickness. After a very persuasive visit on the phone with my sister-in-law Kamber, I decided that to heck with any and all sickness, we were going to go have a fun weekend whether we all got sick or not. Plus we tried to keep up hand washing and coughing into elbows. :)
 We arrived after a 2 1/2 hour drive from Massachusetts, through Connecticut and into New York. One thing I never expected was how quick it is to drive through the states here in the east. We drove through Connecticut in an hour and a half! You could never do that out west. Ever. Unless you were driving at VERY high and dangerous speeds. I think. Or flying.

We got there in the evening so after a few hours of chatting and the kids trying their hardest NOT to go to sleep, we went to bed. In the morning it was so nice not to feel like we had to rush off. We just had a whole day to enjoy each others company in whatever ways we wanted.

We started off at Costco for lunch! :) That was both delicious and fun. People kept stopping and staring at the cartload of kids we had, what with the 2 cute babies sitting in the front of the cart and the 3 older kids sitting in the basket of the cart.  They kept asking if they were all siblings, since there was such a strong family resemblance. Kamber and I kept pointing at each other, saying that there were 2 moms to all these kids. Seeing as how it was Sample Central there in Costco at lunchtime, far too often Reed was not there to claim his girls so I'm pretty sure Brian was getting all the credit for all of the kids. It was pretty funny how many people kept staring at the kids.
After that we went to Stew Leonards. That was an experience! Between all the singing puppets and animals and the rush of ALL the people there, it was indeed memorable. It was fun to get to stop amidst all the groceries to listen to the puppets and to get to try a few of their samples as well. We're still eating our Blue blueberry bagels. Well, mostly Reed since he is the bagel man. Oh and they had the cheapest strawberries I have found here and they were delicious!

 After all the shopping, we trekked over to New Jersey to see the Statue of Liberty. (Remember, the states are so much quicker to drive through. It was a quick drive.)  It was so neat to see so many buildings I had only heard of or seen in pictures. Aftyn was not quite as dazzled. So here is the picture portion of this post:

Ready to go to New York Mom!

Isn't she so sweet to oblige her mom a picture?

Driving to New York. Portable dvd player was the best investment for Aftyn!

Riding in the back of the van for all of our Saturday fun!

See that tall building in the middle of the picture. That is the Empire State Building!

New York skyline

Blurry, but it is the Statue of Liberty!

Sitting on the boardwalk while the rest of us look at the Statue of Liberty

If you close one eye and ignore the blur, that's us with the Statue of Liberty! (As you can clearly see, our camera does not take great dark/night pictures. I'm thinking we could use a new camera since ours is only 5 years old. : / )

Times Square

Look at all the cabs! Know how they talk about all the crazy driving in New York City? From what I saw, it's completely true. Crazy cab drivers.

I think this is right before Times Square. You can't even see the tops of the skyscrapers.

The adults got home and put the kids to bed and then decided to stay up and chat for a few minutes. 4 hours later when we realized it was 2 am, we hurried off to bed. In the morning, Reed and I packed up and got ready for church and said our good-byes.

All in all such a fun weekend.
We got to spend some time with  family and got our first glimpse of New York City!

Our Apartment - One Room at a Time III

Up the stairs! Our little landing before you traverse the large set of steps

Longest closet I've ever seen right at the top of the stairs. The closet runs the entire length of the apartment wall! It's awesome!

Master bedroom right at the top, if you turn left you would see the door to the girls room.

Girls room! Bigger than it looks in this picture. It's bigger than their room was in Idaho.

Lots of big pipes in this room. Bronwyn's side has the heater/cooler thing. :)

Only brick wall in the apartment, and it's in our room painted over. Lots more pipes, but lots of nice windows.

This is how we make our laundry/dresser work. The only light in the room is located on top of our dresser.

Our Apartment - One Room at a Time II

Front Closet/Coat closet in this lovely large hallway spot that also houses the bathroom

The bathroom, directly across from our front closet

A view into our bathroom. Notice the exposed pipes in the ceiling, remember this is a loft. This is a common sight.

Heaviest door ever created. Must be an original because the doorknob and the whole door seem authentic to this building. It has this crazy frosted/lined glass that you REALLY cannot see through. Reed tried.  :)

This is what our floors look like throughout the bottom floor of our house. Kind of gappy. By the way, I'm standing in the tub to take this picture. The bathroom itself is a little small.

Our Apartment - One Room at a Time

This is our Kitchen! Notice no dishwasher. Also, you should know we only have one shallow sink. No divider, so dishwashing is a creative time with lots of soap and then lots of rinsing until our dish drainer is full.

Front Door - please remember we're still moving in and putting things away!

Bronwyn, loving the pots and pans on our rack from Target.I don't know if you noticed, but we don't have a lot of storage in our kitchen, thus we had to buy some shelving to provide more storage!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kitchen table in the lower right, front room/computer area straight ahead. We have a combo kitchen/front room area.

Important people: Aftyn and Reed's lower half.  :)

Bronwyn the crawler eating the buckles on her/Aftyn's booster seat.

Life is Good . . . .No, Really

Things got much better last week after my sprained wrist healed, we got 2 dressers from people in the ward and we got a table and chairs for our kitchen.  It all made a WORLD of difference.

It probably helps that with a little more time, we learn to adapt a little bit better to all the changes we have made in the last 6 weeks. It still makes me laugh a little bit to think I live in Massachusetts. Home is still Idaho, but now also encompasses our apartment here.

Our 2 girls have made some amazing changes in the last few weeks. Aftyn has had to become much more mature and take on a whole lot more. She amazes me. The things she can comprehend and talk to me about are SO different than the things we used to talk about and think about.  Giving away a lot of her toys and moving and being away from her things for so long, she doesn't seem to take things for granted the way she used to. It's made her seem more grown up. She also likes to talk about when she was a baby and hear stories about when she was a baby like Bronwyn.

Bronwyn is a crazy mover girl. Before we moved, she had started this push-up/moving thing that I kinda called crawling since she could get across a whole room that way. Last week, she really started crawling. And going up the stairs! I found this out one day while on the computer, I happened to glance behind me and there she was on the first stair about to climb onto the 2nd one which is also our landing. This girl is majorly motivated to move. Last week she also started pulling herself up confidently to things. No major tumbles yet. The funniest was when we finally set up her crib this past weekend and I sat her in there. She was so excited to grab the bars and pull herself up  over and over. She still has to learn about the sitting down part of pulling yourself up, but she will get there soon I'm sure. She loves Aftyn. Major love affair. Anything that involves Aftyn and Bronwyn together, Bronwyn loves and it's usually about 50/50 with Aftyn loving it or not. She loves that Bronwyn loves her most of the time.

I went to take pictures of our apartment yesterday after finally finding our new media card for the camera only to find out that our batteries are dead on our camera. Sorry! I will work on getting some this week so that we can have these initial moving in memories to remember.