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From both of us:

Day -2: pack most of van with incredibly helpful friends (Shayne, Stephanie, Brandon, Karen, Brett…thank you!!). Realize will need trailer. Make reservation for trailer and installation for trailer hitch on car. Dads arrive. Toby goes insane with excitement.

Day -1: pack more with dads’ help. Start to attempt to get rid of many belongings before deciding to get second trailer. Dinner, thankfully, with helpful friends (Shayne and Stephanie…thanks once again!). Also decide that getting to Orange County in two days is nuts. Add a day to trip.

Day 1: of course start late because of aforementioned trailer hitch installation. Emily starts to lose mind. Luckily Stephanie is there to pull loose ends and even clean the floor (!!). Dads and we are exhausted in every conceivable way.

Stay in middle of nowhere Oregon. Basically a truck stop but not too bad.

Day 2: Emily says famous last words ‘driving will be the easy part. I just hate packing.’

Stop for lunch in Yreka, CA.

Leave two days later.

(Get to know local Walmart and hotel laundry facilities since clothes are in the one car that was ahead and made it through the pass. The fact that we DO have plenty of clothes but they’re buried behind other household goods in the truck is a wee bit annoying. Spend lots of time on road condition websites, listening to radio, and talking to people.)

Day 4: Snow stops long enough to break out of town. Thrilled to be anywhere south of Redding.

Have realized that we cannot get to OC at all because of insane weather and a southern section of the 5 is closed. Plan eastern route.

Stay in small town central CA, approximately 15 feet from the freeway AND train tracks. Room shakes when large trucks go by. Promise self to never stay at that particular brand hotel again.

Day 5: Plan is to stay at AZ border, knowing that we’d arrive in Phoenix too late to get keys etc. Hit more snow on the 15. Starting to lose all humor.

Check engine light goes on as we leave Barstow. Transmission sounds normal and there are no odd smells. Cross fingers and ignore it.

Start calling Blythe hotels. Am confused when many tell me they are sold out. Start getting really frustrated. Even try hotel recently promised self to avoid. Find out a nearby ‘city’ has a large rock and mineral convention and all hotels are full. I am not joking.

Give up and book hotel in Phoenix after helpful hotel employee tells me that’s where the next hotels are.

Get to much nicer hotel where we are given two poolside cabana suites. Ahh. Now THIS is better!

And now day 6…
Hopefully we’ll be able to actually take care of everything today and get at least a little settled. Thankfully our families have been helping us and though we’ve had plenty of changes and odd experiences we’ve had a good time with our dads. All is well. It’s all just a big adventure, right?

…after I only wrote a single post in December. Hehe. Even this one I’m actually writing from my phone, which is pretty neat. There are moments I feel guilty about that and then I realize it’s probably not the most important thing in my life.

So, a quick update (with no pictures because we updated wordpress and haven’t got everything synced).

-Christmas and New Year’s were good, as was my birthday. We all got sick the week before. I finished not a single gift I was making, didn’t make the cookies I wanted, and failed in working on some traditions we want to create. It was sort of an odd year. Lots of things up in the air it felt like. Oh well…try again next year!!

-Morgan is fantastic. She has eight teeth (did I blog that already?), is starting to get into things more, loves light switches, and is generally hilarious. She started clapping and knows it will always get a response out of us, so she does it at random times. Like when we’re pretending we’re asleep in an effort to get her to go to sleep. And then you can’t just ignore her when she’s clearly trying to get your attention. Hehe. She’s pretty great. Last night she pulled her sock off and then appeared to be attempting to put it back on. I watch in amazement at all she learns.

-I survived my first Sharing Time teaching the little kids at church last week. I think I did okay. But it’s hard to keep the attention of a big group of kids! I sure enjoy them, though. I get to try again this week, so I guess that’s good? Even if I’m already a little nervous.

-If you’ve read this far, good job! Your reward is to learn that we’re moving to Phoenix. In, um, a week and a half. To a house that we have not yet found and will not have seen by the time we arrive. Adventures are fun! And we’re excited for sunshine (oh so much sunshine…). So the house is already somewhat dismantled. The few pictures we had up are now down, our closet is half empty, the books are all gone and added to the twenty other boxes of books in the garage, and I’m thinking I should just pack up the kitchen (which is my biggest stress point packing-wise–the fact that we have nowhere to live would be the actual biggest stress) and forget any more cooking. Adrian started taking apart our chairs (we’re a little nervous about room on the truck) but I convinced him that we needed a table to eat at for at least another week.

We’ll get there. All too soon. I’ve started feeling very nostalgic. This house has been good to us, and we’ve had so many opportunities up here. This is where our first baby was born, and where we learned so much. We’ve met some really great people. And I’m excited, because anything that I feel propels us forward and out of limbo is a good thing, but I can’t help but feel a little sad too. Any change in life is that way, and it’s why it teaches us. Onward and upward!

Morgan is getting so big. She wants to explore everything and is always interested in whatever we’re doing. She crawls right over and pulls herself up or climbs all over us. It’s a lot of fun. I personally think she’s hilarious.

Look at that squished up nose! It’s been so dark (and cold!!) that I’ve taken to using the flash on my camera. I know–it’s so unlike me. But I’m so tired of having blurry pictures inside that I don’t even want to take them sometimes, which is even sadder than funky flash shadows and washed out everything. So there you have it.

Also, this picture was taken at the end of our week with intermittent hot water. The laundry situation was pretty bad. I feel like I have to put that disclaimer in because of the shorts and my pasty legs. Not that my legs are ever not pasty, nor do I care, but I’m just saying. Happily we have a new water heater and all is well. And I still get excited when I feel warm water coming out of the tap.

I was chain piecing a giant string and of course Morgan was happy to play with it. She likes to sit and sew with me, which usually I like. Last week., though, I actually sewed THROUGH my finger. It was not my most brilliant moment. I was trying to nurse her at the same time (likely the problem) and just somehow got my finger in the wrong spot. Luckily it went through right next to my nail and not through it. I was half annoyed at my dumbness, half sad that I broke a needle. The damage wasn’t nearly as bad as I first thought. Had I not been so worried about getting it out–and listening to an unhappy baby who suddenly was plopped on the floor when she thought it was nursing time–it would have been a good picture. Hehe. It hasn’t stopped me from pushing forward on present-making, though, even though it’s going pretty slowly.

Playing with Daddy’s new golf club as he unpacked it. Of course as soon as she sensed his excitement she had to get right in there! I think she knows which things interest us, and she figures it has to be good. There’s no fooling kids.

She’s reached the “pull everything apart” stage, which includes books on the shelf or clothes I’ve just folded. It’s hard to mind, though, when she smiles like that. Plus I enjoy her exploring, which is all she’s doing. There’s very little that can’t be refolded or reshelved, so it doesn’t really bother me.

The big news of the week? Teeth! She’s had four for a while now, but it sort of stopped for a bit. There was one that has been visible but not through the gums for about two months. A couple days ago we noticed that it had finally broke through, and then last night I felt the one next to it also. Then today I poked at her bottom teeth and noticed another one that’s actually pretty far in already. We just hadn’t been watching for those yet. So that’s seven teeth! Crazy. That also explains, probably, why she’s been super clingy for the past week and hasn’t been sleeping well at night again. The teeth, the teeth… and three at once!

Going along with the teeth, she’s eating lots on her own, which is tons of fun. She makes a mess sometimes, but she actually does a very good job of it and clearly enjoys it. The biggest bonus is that I actually get to eat my dinner more or less like a normal person now, so I’m loving this new development.

Taken out the window. Hello rain and grey skies! It has become suddenly cold and wet around here. (Really this started awhile ago and I took these pictures weeks ago but I’m just bothering to post now.)

This is a bad picture. That’s intentional. Also please ignore the mess that is the counter (actually, at least most of the dishes are in the rack, which means they’re clean). This is to show how dark it is inside during the day. This was taken at noon. Note how the blinds are nearly as open as they can be. It’s kind of funny to need to have lights on all day, but that’s just life around these parts, I think. Let’s just say it’s… odd. I’ve noticed, though, how little I feel like taking pictures because there isn’t even enough light during midday to get decent ones. Hrumph! Oh well. That’s life.

Mommy guilt/stress/worry is a powerful force. Most of the time I am purposely pretty relaxed about things, or at least I attempt to be, but it still creeps in. Is she eating enough? Is she sleeping enough? That’s the biggie really because everybody tells you how important that is, so she could probably sleep fabulously for 20 hours a day and I’d still be worried. You know what I’m saying? Adrian has to remind me that she’s growing and I just don’t need to stress about it. I try to remember that when she wakes up when we’re ready to head to bed and doesn’t go back to sleep for an hour. Hehe.

On most points I feel pretty good on the mothering front (okay, depending on the day). We have so far been successful vis a vis the house ban on battery operated toys, and she enjoys playing with my fabric scraps as much as anything else. So of course that makes me happy. Ideally I’d like her to have a little less ’screen time,’ but even that isn’t much. We watch a few shows as a family, but mostly after she goes to sleep. She likes Michelle Duggar (I swear she smiles biggest whenever she’s on the screen), and if that’s her TV I don’t feel too bad. Who wouldn’t love them, seriously? I want to be Michelle (though perhaps with less children–I just mean the way she speaks and acts), so it doesn’t surprise me Morgan is drawn to her, too.

Anyway. I didn’t mean to get on a Duggar tangent. The other big thing is the computer, which I am personally trying to use way less of. I keep it off during the day and make myself turn it off when I’m finished. It’s a time waster, and I don’t like feeling like I’m squandering my time. So far I’m feeling good about that. I spent a crazy amount of time in front of the computer watching shows on Hulu when she was small and we spent half of every day nursing. So it’s good to break away.

The computer lessening is more possible because I use my phone, which means I’m also trying to limit how much I’m staring at that. Adrian saw something from…Jimmy Fallon?…about how the kids just want their parents to pay attention to them instead of their iPhones. Yeah. Guilty as charged, at least a little. So we’re working on that a bit, too

Of course, all my efforts to give her a commercial free childhood (or some degree of that) with less noise and electronics is prettymuch negated by the fact that her favorite toys are our phones. Haha. What can you do?

And now for a few pictures for those people who only scan for pictures and don’t actually read what’s written…

She’s getting hair, and even some possible curls, which is what I was attempting to capture here.

P. S. Yes, I’ve been crafting a lot with the new sewing machine. See, even Morgan has been in on the fun:

Danger alert! Yes, I know she probably shouldn’t play with bobbins because she might choke. But I was right there watching and if she tried to put one in her mouth I’d pull her hand away. So don’t worry.