Packing Up Our Memories

James got home last Wednesday from an 11 day work trip to Canada and decided to stay home with us for 5 days....it was wonderful!!  We were all so happy to have him back.  The kids and I surprised him at the airport and Rylee said, "Mom, I'm so glad our whole family is back together!" 

Having him back home to help out with the kiddos gave me time to start packing up our stuff for the move.  I am so glad I've done so much decluttering the past year as it is so much easier to pack things up now.  Before I got started, James suggested that we pack up everything we can live without for a year...including excess dishes.  We know we won't be having guests at our small rental house, so we decided to downsize from 12 plates and bowls, to 5 of each.  We packed away most of our glasses too as we each just have a favorite couple that we prefer to use.  We also packed away small appliances that we don't use very often and all of our serving platters and bowls that we would use when we host meals. If it were up to me, I would pack away all of my baking dishes and appliances too as I don't do much baking and would love to have a year of not even being able to bake.  Rylee and James still bake quite often though. 

Some other things we are packing away for a year are extra bath towels, bedding for the 2 guest beds we currently have and won't be using, blankets and décor.  Originally I thought I would do some light decorating in the rental house just to make it feel like home, but I think it will be easier to just leave it all packed up.  That way we don't have to worry about putting holes in the walls too.  Christmas will be a tree and stockings only. 

Packing all of these things away was easy for me.  The minimalist in me was so glad to pack away the extra stuff that we don't exactly NEED.  It made me think though...if we can live without all of this stuff for a year, do we really need to keep any of it at all??  James reminds me that if we just get rid of everything I will be wanting it again when we move into our new house.  He's probably right.  I will hold on to everything for now, but I'm hoping that living very minimally for a year will allow me to see that I can live without so much more and maybe I'll be ready to get rid of the things that are just sitting in storage.  Even Christmas decorations...I love to decorate and have 5 totes full of Christmas stuff, but maybe it makes more sense to just put up the tree and stockings and enjoy the Christmas décor in public places and other people's homes instead.  I could (almost) live without a storage room in my next house then too! 

A friend of mine who has moved a lot, but usually lives in nice big houses, told me that living in a small crappy rental for 7 months recently was very humbling for her.  I'm keeping an open mind and hoping I will feel the same way.  James and I want to build our next house to be much smaller than our current one and I'm guessing that living in the tiny rental house will help me see that I don't need too much....and it will make a smaller new house feel big.  I can tell anyone who is yearning for a huge house, that bigger is not always better!!  I thought I NEEDED all of these specific rooms in my current house and we only use about half of them...the rest are just mostly unused space that I have to clean.

Yesterday as the kids were outside playing with daddy, I decided to start taking down all of our decorations and pictures on the walls.  This was the hardest part of the packing process for me so far.  I walk past the pictures on our walls multiple times a day without giving them any thought.  But, taking them off the wall and looking at them made me a little sad.  As I looked at each of them I remembered why I chose that specific picture for that frame or that spot and taking it down, knowing I won't see it again for a year was a hard pill to swallow.  The hardest of all was taking things out of Rylee's room.  The things on her walls and in her closet have been there almost as long as the house has been built.  We moved into this house 2 months before she was born, so everything about her and that room is completely tied to this house for me.  Luckily she hasn't been sleeping in there for the past 6 months, so that makes it a little easier. 

I think what I will miss most about our house is the fact that we designed it with plans to be our forever home, James built it, and it is filled with memories of our precious little babies.  Beyond that, it is just materials that form a house and I'm excited to build another one.  We visited with our neighbors yesterday who own Royal Flooring about the coolest new cabinets and functional things we "need" for our next house.  I'm beyond excited to go spend hours days with them at the store choosing features for our next house!! (keeping it minimal of course)

Last night we slept with the windows open and as I was trying to go to sleep I heard the song of my favorite bird for the first time this spring.  The one that reminds me of the beauty of nature and how amazingly blessed we are to live in such serenity out here.  It's the song of the whippoorwill.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTATW8H8zpQ . I never heard this bird when we lived in town, but it really captivated me when I first heard it out here.  It's my favorite sound to fall asleep and wake up to.  I'm so glad that we decided to keep our farm down here so I can still hear this beautiful sound when we camp down here. 

I'm still very excited about our move to Ames and all of the things we will get to do (have lunch with Daddy and fish at the pond at his work, see Grandma and Grandpa all the time, have lots of parks to play at, trails to walk, more recreational and entertainment opportunities, etc.), but there is no doubt I will miss the peacefulness of living in the woods as well.  We have been very blessed these past 4 years of our lives.

It's Bob Time!

If you have been following me since I first started blogging, you might remember a couple years ago when I wrote about whether or not to chop my hair off.  Well, 2 years later...I'm finally ready!!  I think.....


I have naturally wavy hair and it is so curly when it's wet.  I have been trying for months now to make it look good once it dries.  I have spent around $50 on hair products and tried every single method I read about online.   But no matter what I do....I have "just got electrocuted" hair :( 


Wet and curly.
 

Getting dry, straightening out...and fluffing up to "just got electrocuted" status

I have given up on being able to wear it curly.  That leaves only 2 other options for me....straighten it daily or wear it in a ponytail.  Sure, there are LOTS of other options...but I royally suck at doing my hair, so for me it really is only 2 options.  I have been wearing my hair in a ponytail way too much lately and its getting super boring.  Not to mention, I break so many hair ties!! 

On the days that I straighten my hair, I really like it (even though I lose all feeling in my fingers because I have to get the iron SO HOT to take the wave out of my super thick hair that it burns my hands). 

Straightened half of it...you can see why it looks so much better if I go through that daunting process.



All straightened and rid of the 'fro.

 

But then when I see myself in pictures I don't love anything about the way my hair looks (although the one above isn't terrible).  I've said it before, but some of us just aren't meant to have long hair...unfortunately :(  I look at hair pictures on Pinterest a lot and I see so many long styles that I really love...but I know my hair can never look like those because it's so thick/wavy/dry, etc.  Luckily, I also really like pictures of short cuts too!  I always notice how beautiful women are with short hair...their faces stand out so much when it isn't hiding behind long hair. 

I really did love having short hair when I did years ago.  It was so quick and easy to get ready...even if I had to straighten my hair, it took half the time and didn't seem like such a chore.  So, I have decided that it's finally time after 2 years of debating.  I have an appointment next week and can't wait!!  Stay tuned for pictures.....

And to any of you wishing you had thick hair.....don't!  It's particularly miserable in the hot summer! 

Garage Sale and Ames

I had my first garage sale on Saturday in Ames (at my mom's).  I never wanted to have one before, because I felt too greedy asking people to pay for my used stuff.  I also heard that they are a lot of work and thought it would just be so much easier to take my stuff to Goodwill.  I've taken about 15+ loads to Goodwill in the past 2 years, but decided to give my last load of things a try in a garage sale.  My mom and sister-in-law also had some things to get rid of, so I figured between the three of us we would have enough to be a "real" garage sale. 

We had planned to just have it on Saturday morning, but since I was all set up and ready by Friday afternoon, I went ahead and opened for a couple of hours in the evening.  I was so glad I did this, because I made half of my total money in those 2 hours....and it rained on Saturday morning :(  I was pleasantly surprised how many people still came out in the rain!!  It wasn't a huge money maker, but it was definitely nice to make some money and I only ended up having a few boxes of things left at the end, which I took to Goodwill. 

Being in Ames for 3 days over the weekend got me really excited to get moved there!!  I keep thinking of more things that we will be able to do and now I just want to get the move over with and get settled!  We have a tentative rental in place.  We haven't signed the lease yet, but have already seen the place and I'm meeting with the landlord tomorrow.  It is a small house with 2 teeny tiny bedrooms that I'm still not sure how we will make work, but the location of it is fabulous!!  There is a park just around the corner and it is walking distance to the grocery store, doctor's office, my bank, and a couple of restaurants!! It is also not too far from Grandma's house.  In addition to walking lots of places, we will have SO MANY park choices to play at, an amazing (expensive) water park, outdoor library programs, weekly main street farmer's market, concert venues and so much more!!  I have Ry enrolled in swim lessons already and am looking into dance studios. 

By far the best thing though, will be seeing Daddy more.  He will be home an hour earlier and we can actually eat supper together!  We will also be able to have lunch with him when we want to too :)  So much greatness to look forward to this summer!!  :)  3.5 more weeks until we move! 

In other news, our appraisal finally got scheduled for Wednesday of this week...yay!!  And...we made an offer on a lot to build on just outside of Ames and it was accepted.  We close on that a few days after we close on our house sale.  Things appear to be falling into place and we have much to look forward to!  We will definitely miss our Southern Iowa friends and the gorgeous view we have.  We will also miss our house and environment.  But since we are keeping the rest of our land down here, we will still get to enjoy it from time to time and see the neighbors too. 

Moving Process

I'm really keeping an open mind about this whole move and am excited about our next journey, but I can't say the process isn't stressful.  I'm a very organized life-planned-out kind of person. Not knowing were we will be in 5 weeks is challenging for me.  We have looked at 10 rental homes in the Ames, Nevada and Huxley areas.  We have one we really like and definitely want to rent.  Problem is, we don't want to sign a lease until we are more sure that our house sale is going to go through....which honestly, could be the day we close, leaving us no home to go to. 

It's so tough.  If it were just James and I, we wouldn't have an ounce of concern.  Having children though, presents so many more challenges and reasons why I'd love to be able to move straight into a rental home from our house.  We have passed the inspection hurdle, and have been told all is well for the buyer's house sale to close.  The only thing we are waiting on now is the appraisal on our house...which has yet to be scheduled, unfortunately.  We are 5 weeks out from closing and I know appraisals can take 2 weeks to be completed.  I'm going to guess the earliest the actual appraisal at our house will occur is late next week....and then up to 2 weeks to hear back on the results....leaving us just 2 weeks left to find a rental and sign a lease.  That doesn't sound stressful at all does it??   We have a couple of relatives who will welcome us into their homes if we need it, but that will mean moving all of our stuff into a storage unit, just to turn around and pull it back out to move into a rental.  But, it is what it is.

I've heard that moving is expensive....but holy crap is it truly expensive!! First, if you use a realtor you have to pay them a large percentage of the sale and you may have to pay closing costs too.  Then you have the expensive of movers, or a U-Haul if you don't have your own trailer or several trucks to load your things into (we don't).  And in our case, we could have this expense twice if we have to move to a storage unit first.   And then wait...a third time too when we move into our next permanent home.  Ugh.  And then the storage unit expense too.  We will likely have to get one regardless of where we rent, because we are going from a 4500 sq ft house to around 1000 sq ft rental.  We have 5 bedrooms furnished right now, and will only have 2-3 bedrooms in our rental.  We've been liquidating lots of furniture from our house (the wanna-be minimalist in me gets a little giddy seeing things leave my house).  James has tons of things in his garage too that will probably occupy the most space in the storage unit. 

And then, don't even get me started on the cost to rent a house in the Ames area.  Okay, I'll start.  I swear the richest people in town must be landlords!  1,500 sq ft houses renting for $1,800/month.  It's nuts.  The place we like and are planning to rent if all goes through is going up in rent by $350 in August!!!  I just cannot believe how much they can charge...and that people are paying these prices.  I will, only because I have kids and want a decent house for them.  We have had 2 Ames realtors tell us how much smarter it would be to buy an inexpensive house and then turn around and sell it when we finish building our new place.  I checked mortgage prices on a $90,000 house I like....$430!  It almost seems like a no-brainer, but we are truly hoping to only have to rent for a year and it just seems crazy to have ourselves tied up in a house we don't even want.  James has no desire to be a landlord, or we could probably rent it out for double the mortgage amount. And then to make matters worse, Ames has a August-July lease period (to cater to students), so finding a place available this spring is tough. 

Anyway, I know it will all work out in the end.  We will make the best of whatever options we have.  Luckily it will be warmer out and being in a larger town gives us so many more options of things to keep us busy this spring/summer/fall.  I was able to get Rylee enrolled in preschool in the fall in Ames, so as long as we live within 20 minutes of the preschool, we will make everything else work. It's really been a great time to move so that she can start school at the same time as the other kids.  Getting to see James before 6:30 in the evening will be a huge bonus too!!  There really are so many positives to this move, it's just clearing the hurdles to get there that's a bit challenging at the moment.  We are mentally prepared to work together to get over them the best we can. 

Trader Joe's

I'm a little late to the Trader Joe's party...being that they have been in Des Moines for several years and I've only been there 4 times.  I have a couple of friends who have served me food from Trader Joes and it was delicious!!  I had to start checking it out for myself.  It's such a fun store and relatively inexpensive.  It's small, so I prefer to go without kids, but that's not always possible.  When I do bring them, Rylee pushes the little mini carts they have :)  Today we walked in and the music was playing rather loudly....but it was awesome!!  I heard the theme songs to Scooby Doo, The Flintstones AND Super Mario Brothers (levels 1 and 2)!!  How fun is that?!?!  

The employees are very casual and friendly.  There is always some food and/or drink set out to sample...and I've given into those every time!!  But I found a favorite juice out of one of them...

I have also read that you can ask to sample any item in the store!  How cool, right?!?!

There aren't a ton of choices in the store, but I love knowing that almost anything I buy is fairly healthy for me.  Don't get me wrong...there is plenty there to stay away from, but for the most part it's decent for ya.  I haven't tried a lot of items yet, but so far, here are my favs in addition to the juice above:

This bag of frozen peppers is only $1.60 and already cut up.  I eat a lot of peppers and can get about 6-8 uses from 1 bag.  I don't have to worry about them going bad since they are frozen.

 

And for a non-food item, I really love this!!! A lot!!!

 

I found these fun facts (i'm assuming they are facts) about Trader Joe's online:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/samstryker/trader-joes-is-the-bomb-dot-com#.dmo6Yj7naB

If you haven't been there....check it out!!!  Weekdays are better to go for your first time so you can look around without lots of people in your way.  Happy Shopping :)