Moving fun

Last week we moved all our stuff. We spent several days moving the smaller things (thanks to friends with mini vans!), then used a U-Haul to move everything else. Despite getting rid of a lot of stuff after we moved here a year ago we still have a lot of stuff. How does this happen? This means we'll be doing another round of sorting and purging.

Everything is moved, the rental house is all clean, and now I can focus on our house. Getting settled, figuring out where to put everything, painting (the walls turned out to be in worse shape than we initially thought), deciding what to get rid of, and so on.

Despite calling way in advance Comcast couldn't/wouldn't give me a straight answer about transferring our internet service. We've been without internet since we moved Saturday, except for when we've been at the rental house cleaning. Not ideal at all. Luckily we found another service provider and hopefully we'll have access by Monday at the latest. Still not ideal, since I would have liked uninterrupted service, but what can you do?

Sunday Funny

A recent conversation:

Me: "Don't wipe your fingers on your shirt"

LMS: "I didn't. That was my fingers"

"What was your fingers?"

"They fell down"

"Your fingers fell down on your shirt?"

"Yes"

 Noodles and Co has little plastic thingies you put on your chopsticks to make them easier to use. LMS loves them and is quite adept at using them.

Eating gluten free, dairy free garlic shrimp noodles. Yum!

Sunday Funny

Since getting her glasses, LMS likes to say "I'm just like you now mommy!"

She doesn't just mean wearing glasses, though. She thinks she's all grown up now :)

She's also learned how to swallow pills (our probiotics and digestive enzymes come in capsule form only), which has further convinced her that she's all grown up :)

Being cool at 5 Guys the last time we went before we realized potatoes don't agree with us at all.

RV show and a road trip (or two)

This summer we're going on a road trip, but before we go, we need to buy a travel trailer.

Why is it a need and not a want?

Because LMS and I like to eat :)

Seriously, though, trying to find safe places to eat while traveling is very difficult (we're down from 3 restaurant options to 2, and even those are a little iffy as to how "safe" they are for us), and cheap motel rooms are not equipped so you can prepare your own food.

The trailer we'll buy is small, we don't need a behemoth, but it does have a frig, freezer, microwave, and two burner stove top. Everything we need to cook our own meals. Well, except our rice cooker and crockpot, but we'll be bringing those with us.

It also has a toilet and shower, which will be great for showering after a long day driving. Even if I don't do anything I feel grungy after spending all day in the car.

The beds mean we can park in a truck stop and go right to sleep (we experienced this a couple years ago with Mr S's parents and their trailer, and it was an epiphany). So much more flexibility as to how far you go and when you stop. And you don't have to pay for a hotel room every night.

Last week I researched travel trailers to find out what our options were and what would work best for us. I was able to narrow it down to 8 or 9 models, some of which were very similar to each other. I then realized that an rv show would be held in just a few days. It was several hours away, but would give us the opportunity to check out some of the trailers on my list and talk to some of the dealers across the state (there's none close to us).

So we took a road trip to the rv show and had fun walking around looking at the trailers and rvs. LMS wanted to go inside every. single. one. I managed to distract her enough to do every other one :)  After you look at several, you realize that the floor plans don't vary that much between manufacturers- the basics are the same, it's just the details that differ. There are some cool ones though- the coolest was the fifth wheel with the elevated porch that folds down from the side of the trailer. Very cool.

We also realized that a lot of the rvs and trailers are bigger than our first apartment, which was tiny  :)

The show was close to the coast, so we headed to the beach the next morning. LMS was all ready to start building sand castles, but I convinced her it was too cold and windy for that.

We walked along the waterline, instead, looking for shells. We found a few, along with some crab parts, which made for an interesting discussion on the life cycle of a crab. We also noticed that seaweed on the east coast is different from seaweed on the west coast. East coast: short and stubby, green and red. West coast: long and ropey, green and yellow. I'm sure that has something to do with differences in water temperature.

It was a fun little road trip and we narrowed our search down to one trailer. Now the hard part is finding one we can afford: it happens to be a popular floorplan, and there's not a lot for sale, new or used.

Help please!

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Does anyone have cute ideas of things to do for Easter?

We can't do the hard boiled eggs, jelly beans, marshmallow peeps, and chocolate eggs and bunnies thing anymore, and I'm at a loss as to what to do this year.

What do you put in an Easter basket when you can't eat eggs, milk, or refined sugar/corn syrup?

(and we don't need any more stuffed animals)

I'm totally open to cute craft ideas or anything else you can come up with. Whether it's something you've seen online, or something you came up with yourself, I'd love to hear about it!

Sunday Funny

Back in December LMS wanted to watch a movie, and I told her no, we were listening to pretty Christmas music.

After a few minutes of mumbling and muttering to herself, she told me "I don't want to listen to pretty Christmas music."

She'd rather listen to ugly Christmas music?

Playing in the only snow we got this year. It melted off within a few hours.

Black Heels to Tractor Wheels

I read Black Heels to Tractor Wheels this week. Have you read it? The Pioneer Woman had posted parts of it online a while ago, and I read them a couple months ago. Awhile ago she stopped posting it online, finished it writing it, and published it in book form.

If you haven't heard of it, it's the story of how she met her husband, their romance, marriage, and first year of marriage. I enjoyed the story, but I'm soooo glad I never had morning sickness like hers.

After I finished the book, I got to thinking, and realized that we each have a story to tell. How we met, the funny/sad/quirky things that happened along the way to the altar, first apartments, etc.

So I've started writing the story of Mr M and me. It was actually already on my list of goals as part of my life story, but I'll stick with this part for now. I think it's especially appropriate since we're approaching our tenth anniversary this summer and it's nice to revisit the beginning of us. It's also a good activity for me to stimulate my brain and dig up memories that have been hidden in the fuzzy cobwebby corners of my brain, stuck there by years of mental fog brought on by undiagnosed celiac disease.

Anybody else want to write their story?

Siblings

LMS has decided she needs siblings.

She's talked about it before, but she's holding onto the idea a lot longer this time around. In the past I told her she needed to talk to Heavenly Father if she wanted siblings, but that was it. This past week when she brought up siblings again, and I gave her my standard answer, she headed off to her room to pray that Heavenly Father would send her a sister, a brother, and a baby sister :)

The next day we had a discussion about prayers, mainly that we should pray in the morning and at night, and she has now taken to saying her own prayers in the morning. I believe this is so she can pray for siblings. Though she's now just praying for a sister and a baby sister. She told me she didn't need a brother because he would probably break her toys.

She's in for a rude awakening when she realizes that sisters break toys too :)

She was requesting an older sister, by which she means a sister close to her age that she can play with, and a baby sister, but then she decided she didn't need a baby sister, just two sisters to play with.

We've talked to her about adoption and she's asking more questions about if we're going to adopt some sisters for her. Luckily we're getting closer to the point where we can start the process, but we're still not quite there.

When we were at the grocery store the other day she told the checkout people that we were going to adopt some sisters for her.  :)

The main question we need to answer right now is should we pursue an adoption through LDS Family Services or a local agency. If we go with LDS Family Services we'll be paying a big chunk of money, we won't know when we'll get a baby (birth moms do the choosing), and infants are usually the only ones available for adoption. If we go through a local agency the cost should be less (we need to do some more research on this), we won't know when we'll get a baby/child, and we might be able to adopt a sibling group, which we're open to as long as they're younger than LMS. There could also be issues such as abuse or neglect that we would need to help them deal with. Lots of things to think and pray about.

If you know anyone who's thinking of putting their baby up for adoption, let us know!

Little Miss Sunshine's glasses

In January I took LMS back to eye doctor for a checkup. I was more than willing to do so, since she'd been complaining that her left eye was blurry, even with her glasses on. I was concerned that she needed her prescription changed already.

The eye doctor checked her eyes, then we discussed how her eyes are doing. He said that LMS noticing that her left eye is blurry is a good thing, since before she wasn't even seeing out of that eye. The eye patches are re-training her brain to use her left eye, so now she can actually see out of both eyes, even if one of them is blurry.

I hadn't realized that she wasn't using her left eye before- I just figured everything was blurry in that eye. So I'm really glad we went in and discussed the situation.

The eye doctor also said that the prescription in her left eye isn't as strong as it will be eventually, but we have to gradually increase it as she gets used to seeing out of both eyes. So we'll go back in May and again at the end of summer before school starts.

I went home and thought about what the eye doctor had said and thought about some of the things LMS has done.

The major thing that stood out is her clinginess when doing active things. I just chalked it up to normal clinginess, but I think the problem was that her depth perception is off because of only being able to see with one eye. She was ok walking during soccer, but she was always very hesitant about the running part. She was the same with swimming and ice skating. I'm really curious to see if she does better when soccer starts up again in a few weeks. I'm not expecting huge improvement since her vision is still blurry, but hopefully it helps. And we'll probably have to get some prescription swim goggles for her so she can feel more secure in the water.

We tried out a dance/gymnastics class this week and she did really well in it. I was a bit concerned about her falling over or crashing into things, but that wasn't the case at all. I'm not sure if we'll actually take the class just yet as there may be a schedule conflict. She had a lot of fun, though, so we'll see what we can work out.