New Home, New Phone

We're moved in, we love our new home and neighborhood, and we finally got the phone situation figured out. My new number is 503-857-7462 while Nathan's is 503-857-7463. That's all for now, I'm exhausted. Boys are asleep, tiime for wine and Jeff Dunham

9 Months Already?

Day before yesterday, the boys turned 9 months old...a mother could cry. It has already been 7 months, 2 weeks, and 4 days since we brought the boys home for the first time. Pretty wild. This morning, while Nathan took a short nap, the boys were playing on the floor in their room and there was some fun lighting so I decided to take advantage of the photo op. Here's a few of them, to satisfy those of you who are going through baby photo withdrawals.

Levi

Levi

Asher

Asher

I am so proud of my boys. They had their 9 month well-baby check day before yesterday, and they are doing so well. Asher weighed in at 17 lbs 3 oz while Levi weighed in at 16 lbs 7 oz, which didn't surprise us at all. We've suspected for quite a while that Asher is about half a pound heavier than Levi. The super duper awesome part about the whole visit is when Dr. Smithson told us that the boys are now in the 5th percentile for 9 month old weight...bracket? Isn't that a wrestling term? Anyway, the fantastic part is that this means that the boys are no longer in the "preemie weight bracket". It can take some preemies up to two years to catch up with the weights of other babies who are the same ages as the preemie's real age. Basically, our boys rock.

On the moving front, we have two more full days to pack, which includes a day of putting everything in the uhaul. Today, we managed to pack up both of the storage rooms in the basement (no small feat), as well as most of the pantry (also no small feat). We actually don't have a huge amount of packing left, in terms of things that need to go in boxes. Most of the stuff left in the upstairs is furniture.

I seriously can't believe we're going to be gone from Baker in just three days. We're going to be saying goodbye to the house that we've made into our home, the home that we created a family in, the home that saw Nathan and I develop an even more loving partnership. Not only do we have the last two years, I also have so many years of memories with Marla that are held in this house. I'm sure my final goodbye to this home will be a tearful one.

And yet I am SO excited about our future.

Now I just have to finish the latest episode of the Bachelorette...it's my secret obsession, ha ha ha. Starting tomorrow, we won't have internet until Monday, so I wanted to get this post done. Until then, I'll be updating our Twitter updater that's on the right side of our blog, via text. Oh, and starting tomorrow, we'll have new cell phone numbers. Not sure what they are yet, and we won't know until we receive our new phones in the mail and turn them on, at which point we'll get text messages telling us what our new numbers are. We plan on keeping our old phone service until Monday, so don't freak out if you don't know what our new numbers are right away. We'll also send out text messages with our new numbers.

Love to you all and the next post on here will be from McMinnville!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

T-Minus 6 Days

We move in six days.

'Nuff said.

Countdown Revisited

• 2 days until my last day as a dispatcher for Baker County...only 3 shifts to get through.
• 4(ish) days until we close on the house...hopefully. More on that later.
• 7 days until we move to McMinnville!

We found out on Wednesday that we have been approved on our rental house! We were planning on moving in on Saturday the 27th, but we were informed by the property management company that they would not be available to let us in the house on Saturday, that they're only available on week days. So move-in day is Friday, June 26th!!! Thankfully, we've already got a good start on packing. We pick up the huge Uhaul truck on Wednesday, pack it on Thursday, and head out Friday morning. It's still hard to believe that we're leaving Baker, but I'm SOOOO excited about our future!

Unfortunately, we've ran into a bit of a road bump with the sale of our house. Hopefully it won't be too hard to straighten out, though. Evidently the assessor who came in made 10 mistakes on her report that she sent into the loan company...including mis-typing the expiration date for her assessor's license, so it showed that her license is expired. Who does that? She even had the chutzpah to say, "No, my license isn't expired, but I've been known to type the wrong date." REALLY?!?! If you're known to do that, wouldn't you then make a point of double checking

To top that off, the assessor is out of town all weekend, and won't be able to amend the report until she gets back into town on Sunday...the paperwork was suppose to be completed and ready to sign today, so that we could close and get our money on Monday. Instead, the paperwork will be signed on Monday, and then we have to wait another 72 hours before we can close and get our money. That bumps us getting our money back to Thursday...we have to use some of that money to get into our rental on Friday. Grrrr.

Even better? The buyers' real estate representative, who happens to be our agent's assistant, is a complete flake. The buyers told her to call us on Wednesday when they got word that the loan was out of underwriting...we had also called her earlier that day to find out where things were in the process, and she told us she would call as soon as she heard anything. Did she call? Nooooo. And then yesterday, when she called the buyers to tell them about the problem with the assessor, the buyer AGAIN told her to call us to let us know. Did she call? Nooooo. Thankfully, we're becoming pretty good friends with the buyers and they live only a block from us, so both times, Whitney came down to our place to let us know what was going on. I'll be having a conversation with our realtor today about this whole situation.

In baby news, Asher is army crawling like a champ. By that, I mean he can, with the proper motivation, army crawl his way across the length of our living room in about 30 seconds. As soon as we get settled in McMinnville, we're investing a fenced play yard to put in the living room, so the boys can crawl to their hearts content without getting into anything. Our baby proofing endeavors will also begin with the McMinnville house, including a REALLY good baby gate at the top of the stairs. I think the boys are going to be able to crawl before they are able to sit up 100% on their own. They're able to sit up just fine, but then they get excited about it and then arch their backs, effectively knocking themselves backwards. Goof balls.

They'll be 9 months old on Sunday...don't cry Lindy, don't cry. Monday is their 9 month well baby check up, their last with Dr. Smithson, and then Wednesday is their 9 month immunization appointment. They are eating baby food twice a day, and love it. Levi is definitely the more picky eater, while Asher will eat pretty much anything and gets super impatient between his bites. Asher's also our more...solid baby, he's got to be at least half a pound heavier than Levi is. It will be fun to see what their weights are on Monday.

Yes, I have pictures and videos. No, I haven't had time to edit and/or post them. Sorry. It will be a while longer before that happens, you'll just have to be patient until then.

On Cloud Nine

I have my written job offer.

I did another sit-in with my new dispatch center.

We found a rental house.

That was the quick and dirty. Now here's the more drawn out explanation. On Friday, Nathan and I left the boys with my parents in Baker while we went to McMinnville to find a place to live. As much as I wish we could have done this online, there's just no way to tell what kind of a place/neighborhood you're moving into with the pictures they provide online. So we decided it would be better to go look at places in person, which also gave me another opportunity to sit-in at YCOM (Yamhill Communications).

I did my sit-in on Friday evening and it was great. I had a blast and am TOTALLY pumped about getting started on what is going to be a fairly painful training program. But hey, at least I'm going to GET training!

Before my sit-in, however, Nathan and I squeezed in a few tours of rental houses. The first one we looked out was a definite no...they wanted a lot of money for a fairly run down house, no AC, no stove/fridge in the kitchen, super creaky all wood floors (not good for soon-to-be-crawling babies), and located on a really busy street. We didn't get to go into the second house that day, which looked a lot better on the outside than the first house did and was in a much better neighborhood. We did get to go inside that house on Saturday afternoon and it wasn't nearly as nice on the inside as it was on the outside; it was pretty run down and smelled like on marijuana smoke. Another no.

The next two places we looked at, both duplexes, were amazing! The first one was in a super quiet neighborhood bordering farming fields and was beautiful inside. The only drawback we saw was that there was no dining room. We were going to have to put our dining room table on carpet and that just doesn't work very well with two babies. Plus the neighborhood was almost too quiet...the houses were all super new and you didn't see a single person outside while driving through the area.

The second duplex was equally as beautiful but didn't have those two minor drawbacks I mentioned in the first one. It's in a great family neighborhood on a narrow street so people can't zoom down the street, and we saw a lot of families out walking down the many walking paths in the area and playing in their front yards. There's a dining room attached to the kitchen but separated from the living room, and the third bedroom is just off of the kitchen which will make for a great office so that the upstairs is only our bedrooms/bathroom. Speaking of the upstairs, there's a large bathroom at the top of the stairs, which is also attached via a sliding door to the large master bedroom, which is complete with a huge walk-in closet (insert happy dance here)! The ceilings are really high and everything feels really wide open.

The room that will be the boys' room is even longer than our room is (because of the bathroom attached to our room) and has two smaller closets. Did I mention that there's a full sized bathroom downstairs off of the kitchen as well? The whole thing is very new construction, with AC and automatic sprinklers, and a perfect sized backyard with high wooden fences. Basically, I'm in love with this place and wouldn't mind living in it for a few years. We turned in our application for the place, along with our screening fee, and should hear in the next couple of days whether we got it. I'm not worried though. I would attach the photos, but I can't save them from the property management's website.

We actually spent Friday night in McMinnville at a hotel so we could spend more time there. That night we went out to dinner at the Golden Valley Brew Pub, which brews its own beer. The beer was pretty good and the food was delicious, I think it's our new Barley Brown's. After that, we went to the McMinamen's Roof Top Bar. As the name suggests, it's a bar located on the top of McMenamin's Oregon Hotel, which is in downtown McMinnville. Waaaay too cool.

On Saturday, we slept in a bit, went out to breakfast that the Union Block (a coffee shop downtown), and then decided to go into the Beep Beep Baby Boutique that we were parked across from. We met the owners, a really nice Christian couple who had just moved to McMinnville three months ago and have a 7 1/2 month old girl who was born less than a month after the boys. We ended up hanging out in their shop and talking with them for an hour and a half, and we plan on having them over for dinner after we get settled in. They actually go to the Nazarene church, so we will be checking that church out when we get there.

That afternoon, we went to a couple of wine tasting rooms and then headed up to Johnny and Laura's for the night. After an long evening of good food, good wine, and good friends, we went to sleep, had breakfast with them in the morning, and then drove home. It was so nice to get home to the boys, who had visibly grown like weeds in the three days we were gone, but we can't wait until we're all over in McMinnville. I definitely fell in love with the place, and we're so excited to start our life there. Only 6 days until my last shift with Baker Dispatch and only 13 days until moving day!

Now we just have to pack!

Next Generation in Video Game Nerds

Levi loves playing video games with his Daddy.

The Cleaning Of The Closet

I think this is one of the most dreaded activities of motherhood, right up there with teething and immunization appointments. It's the time when you go through your baby's closet and ruthlessly extract the oh-so-adorable clothes that no longer fit your ever-growing child.

I just now forced myself to clean out the boys' size 3 Month clothes...they are currently wavering between size 6 Month and 9 Month. Their closet has been a jumble of these three different sizes as I gradually bring in the bigger clothes and yet refuse to part with the smaller. It's been a source of endless frustration as we try to grab onesies that actually fit over the boys' heads and wade through the pile of too-small footie pj's, but I just couldn't say goodbye. I can lie all I want, claiming a lack of time to sort through the mess, but it's not true. I was just stalling.

It could also be that I have realized that we are woefully low on size 9 Month clothes. One of my co-workers generously gave us the clothes his boys grew out of and there was a range from newborn to 12 month. Because of that, we really haven't had to buy the boys ANY clothes since we brought them home, aside from the outfits that were "just too adorable" for my mom to pass up. From newborn to 6 Months, we were 100% set. Starting at 9 Months, though, the pile starts to dwindle and I think we're actually going to have to start coughing up the moolah to get the boys onesies, socks, t-shirts, and pants that actually fit. Oh no, I have to go baby clothes shopping! Such a shame, such a shame.

But back to my original point. Cleaning out your baby's closet is painful. It hurts every single time.

But it sure looks a whole heck of a lot better!

McMinnville, Here We Come!

Here's the big news:

I GOT A CONDITIONAL JOB OFFER FROM YAMHILL COUNTY DISPATCH IN MCMINNVILLE!!!!

It's conditional upon me passing the background check, eye exam, and hearing test...none of which I am worried about passing. So, essentially, I have a job!!!

According to Janis, the dispatch director there, I will probably start there at the beginning of July. So I plan on giving my current director my two weeks notice tomorrow, which makes my last day of work on the 21st and allows 8 days for us to get moved.

EEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!

I can't even describe how excited I am to know where we're going. Oh man.

The Current Countdown

• 3 days until my interview in Bothell, WA
• 13 days until we can start moving into our rental
• 15 days until we close on the house sale
• 15 days until my interview in Madras, OR
• 22 days until we have to be 100% out of our house
• 23 days until my very last day at Baker County Consolidated Dispatch as a full time dispatcher

Is it bad that I'm starting to get just plain sick and tired of this whole process? I don't want to be moving, I don't want to fill out any more applications, I don't want to drive across the state anymore. Any chance we could just fast forward through the next couple of months to the point where we have a steady income and are settled into a house somewhere? I'm trying so hard to keep a good attitude as time progresses, and I am still very excited about what our future holds...but I'm just SOOOOOO tired. Literally every spare moment of my life is filled with filling out applications, making calls about job openings, driving to and from interviews, filling out background questionnaires, looking for more jobs...that includes any down time I have at work. The rest of my time is filled with working full time, babies, cleaning house, doing laundry, paying bills, and getting an average of 5 hours of sleep. The only part of any of that that I enjoy is the babies part.

On the bright side, we have sold our house, we're just weeks away from being 100% debt free, and we made over $400 on our garage sale that Nathan and my parents took care of yesterday. It is SO nice to have the garage sale done, just one less thing on my list of crap that needs to get done in the next 23 days. You should see my list of addresses that need changed...and how much of a pain in the butt is it going to be to have to change our address twice in as many months? The other good news is that my mom offered to go with me on my trip to Bothell; we're driving up there on Tuesday, I'm hopefully doing a sit-in on Tuesday evening, my interview is at 11:30 am on Wednesday, and then we're immediately driving home. Yuck. But having Mom with me will make the trip a lot more enjoyable.

It's not even 10 am and I already need some wine.

Where Is My Rock?

You know, the one I can crawl under to hide until this transition is finally over?

I have so much to post updates on that I really don't know where to start, so I'm going to do it in segments. First I'll touch on the big event in the past few days.

Day before yesterday was Nathan and my 3 year anniversary. We've been married for THREE YEARS! In some ways if feels like time has absolutely flown, while in others it feels like we've lived a life time in those three years. To celebrate, we did the following:

• Slept in. Well, Nathan slept in, I got up with Levi at 7. But that's sleeping in for me, since my alarm usually goes off at 4:30 am. Levi happily hung out in his swing for an hour while I puttered around the house until Asher woke up.
• Lazed around the house until just before 1 pm.
• Looked at rental houses around town...more about that later.
• Went out to lunch at our friend's wine and art bar. Best sandwiches EVER. And wine. And cheese cake. It was a good lunch. Levi wanted to sit in my lap and kept trying to grab my salad, until Mary (the owner of the place) scooped him up and cuddled him while I finished eating...I'm going to miss those little perks of living in small town where you know everyone.
• Went home and waited for my parents to arrive from Portland.
• Had dinner at home with my parents.
• Went to bed.
• Woke up with the boys at 7 am again.
• Waited for my parents to arrive to babysit the boys for the day.
• Drove up to the East Eagles to do some finishing.
• Observed the Beer Corner (it's a tradition started by Marla).
• Got to Eagle Creek and watched Bandit almost get swept downriver by the roaring waters...no fishing there yet...decided to try the OTHER mountain range.
• Drove back into town, got camp chairs and books, drove to the Elkhorns.
• Drove almost to the ridge line, found a nice sunny spot by a creek, had lunch, read for about an hour, noticed dark storm clouds, drove home...but not before my right arm (the one that had been hanging out the truck window all day) had gotten burned. Sweet.
• Washed the dog, got showers, went out to dinner at Barley's and then back to Mary's for more cheesecake and wine.
• Went home, went to bed, got woken up at 5 am by my stupid alarm. Back to work. Blech.

House News:
We officially close on the house sale on the 22nd, just a short 17 days from now. (Insert tears and denial here.) That means we have to be out of the house in only 24 days, on the 29th. Since we really have no idea where we're going to end up yet, we decided it would be a better idea to find a temporary rental here in Baker to stay in for a couple of months until we figure out where we're going to be living. That way, we don't have to survive two BIG moves. As mentioned above, we looked at a few rentals here in Baker through Nelson Real Estate, the real estate group that is selling our house. We looked at a total of three houses; the first house smelled the smoke, while the second house smelled like urine. 0 for 2.

The third place we looked at, and the one we ended up putting a deposit on, is a house converted into two apartments. The half we are renting is a fully remodeled one bedroom, and is adorable. The price isn't bad either, to be honest. It's going to be a tight squeeze and there's no washer/dryer hookup, but we'll live. Again, it's only for a month or two and this way we can save some money...plus it doesn't smell like smoke or urine. Thankfully, my parents are taking Bandit until we get settled...wherever we end up settling.

Job Search News:
Still no job offers, but there are several promising things on the horizon. As I mentioned previously, I feel really good about how my Redmond WA interview went. When I got home on Monday, I had received a letter from them stating that I had passed both the oral and written exam, and that I should be getting another letter soon with my test scores and my ranking in the hiring list. I am waiting for that letter with bated breath.

My testing for Tacoma went well, I think. I should also be getting a letter from them in about two weeks with my test score and ranking in the hiring list. I'm waiting for that one with semi-bated breath.

I'm still feeling pretty jerked around by McMinnville. I think I'm done pursuing that one. If they want me, they'll call. If not, their loss.

Yesterday was a good day. I got two calls inviting me to two different interviews. The first one is on the 10th (just 5 days from now) up in Bothell, WA. It pays REALLY well and is just a few miles north of Redmond, so still in the area that I looooooove. Plus, it seems like it would be a lot like Redmond, in that it's only dispatching for Bothell City Police. Big hopes for this one. The other interview is with Jefferson County (Madras, OR) on the 22nd. We'll see how I feel about that one after I see the center. It doesn't pay very well, less than I make here in Baker, and is another "out in the middle of no where" agency, which makes me nervous in terms of budget. Small agencies seem to get hit the hardest with budget cuts, and I really don't feel like going through this again.

That's where we stand so far.

Kiddos News:
The boys LOOOOOVE carrots. They are absolutely fascinated with toys, as well as with noises. They will specifically pick up something and fling it around just to hear the different noises it makes, which cracks us up. They have also started being very deliberate about their movements. Both of them have become scootching masters. Yesterday, I was sitting about 4 feet away from Asher, holding up some toy keys and shaking them so they jingled, while calling Asher's name. He covered that distance in about 30 seconds. It just blows my mind how fast they're growing up. Still not sitting up on their own, but that's ok, I honestly have no problem with them staying relatively immobile for a little while longer.

Other than that, I'm actually kind of excited to have a month or so off from working. It will be great to have that time to spend with Nathan and the boys. Whenever we aren't job searching, we're hoping to spend as much time as possible up in the mountains that we love and are leaving. I'll also be doing some reserve work for the dispatch center, covering...the vacancy that will be created when I'm laid off. Weird.

I'm seriously ready for this transition to be over.