Wants vs. Needs

A few years ago (or so?) there was a blog-based challenge of sorts to tell interesting/quirky things about yourself.  You were probably supposed to say a certain number of things - 10? 100?.  Was it on your blog, Jeanette?  Anyway, I've had in the back of my mind, for a few years now, the question on what sorts of things I'd say about myself.  At one point I had reached 3 weird things about myself, but only remember one really... and it drives Will (somewhat) crazy... hahaha

I have this weird need to scroll back to the top of a page before I leave it.

It can be via keypad, scroll bar, scroll wheel, etc, but I NEED to get back to the top before leaving the page.  Why?  I don't know.  I guess it just feels more complete that way.  It bugs me if not.  So if Will is watching me navigate, he knows it's coming so he can question my sanity, and he reminds me that I really don't have to go all the way back to the top, you know.  But it doesn't take that long and I just feel better!

I think one of the other things was that I need to have my hair pulled taut upward while lying on my pillow to fall asleep (while I'm conscious and can feel it).  To have your hair just swimming all around underneath you is just weird and not comfortable.

If I remember that third thing I'll definitely let you know.... : )

Where are your eyes?

Sometimes Andrew notices that his toy or a picture in a book has eyes and he'll point them out.  You can ask him where his eyes are, but he's not very likely to show you.  He does, however, point to mine (or Will's).  More accurately, he pokes me in the eye.

Sometimes he will also show me my hair, or maybe my nose or ear. These are less common, though. The eyes are much more interesting for now.  For the most part, the one he's most willing to show you of his own is his head.

Since Will and I both wear glasses, Andrew gets told a lot that we don't play with glasses or pull them off someone's face.  He's getting pretty good at reaching under my glasses to poke me in the eye when we're talking about eyes.

Yesterday he was showing me, again, the eyes on a toy.  I asked him where his eyes were.  He reaches toward my face, per usual, and I close my eyes, ready to squint to protect myself from the poke. Then what do I feel, but a little finger go straight up my nose!! Ha! Quite the sensation when unexpected.  We'll keep working on our body parts : )

Cook book

Here's my next million dollar idea: a book (or website, whatever) that gives directions to make a meal with multiple recipes and tells you the order to do things across recipes.  It's hard to put it into words...  I know, I know, I just have to use a little critical thinking and analyze the recipes before I start and think about efficiency, but that doesn't always happen.  Real life always happens though.

I'm making two new-to-me recipes tonight.  Because I want to and that's fun to me.  But they're for feeding to other people, too, so there's a time deadline.  I've tried to think about what I can do ahead of time, as both of them are to be served right away so I want to get the timing right.  I'm still a little unsure when exactly to start and how I'll decide to go back and forth between the two.

Maybe my book would also have tips that tell you that it's ok for something to wait a little bit longer while you attend to this other thing, or if that would surely give disappointing results.

Maybe the answer is don't make new recipes for other people because you don't even know if it will be good! ha!  And that doesn't even include the gluten-free brownie mix.... (at the request of one for the other as a birthday surprise... even though her birthday isn't for a couple weeks, but she's going home next week...)  But (un?)fortunately I can mix a brownie mix in my sleep, so I'm not worried about that!

Toothpaste Chicken

We're really "money's-worth" and "bargain" kind of people.  We try not to be wasteful either.  When someone might classify a food container (peanut butter, for example) as empty and toss it, I would feel remorseful if I hadn't used a scraper spatula to get the last bits out before taking care to recycle it.  Waste not, want not, right???  I was taught well. : )

So someone else likely would have tossed our tube of toothpaste days before we did, but it just kept on a'givin!  You think you've squeezed it enough, but have you re-squeezed from the bottom and sides??  And then re-re-squeezed?  There are more little crevices to pinch and squeeze than you think!  It got to a point where I thought surely it must almost really be all gone every morning and night.  It became a game of toothpaste chicken - who was going to give up first?!  I think most people make a good effort, but this time, for whatever reason, it seemed to stretch out for many days.  Finally on Saturday night I found the new tube of toothpaste waiting for me.  I could say that I won, but we both got clean teeth out of it : )

On a related note, please send all your tried and true methods for successfully brushing a toddler's (what??!) teeth -- short of strapping them to a board.

Happy old year! Happy new year!

2015 was a good year for our family.  Andrew's adoption was finalized and we were all sealed together to be an eternal family in the Oakland temple.  Those two things were by far the best parts of our year.  Though every moment wasn't rosy, there were plenty of other good things that happened that we look back on fondly.

After putting off recruiters for well over a year (because we knew it wasn't the right time, especially after Andrew was born), Will surprised them by applying for a job early 2015.  The next several months brought hours and days of preparation and sacrifice for the whole family.  (I wondered how my friend could be surviving having her husband working full time and in school and gained a greater admiration for her.  Lucky for me this wasn't a semesters or years long commitment.)  It helped that we both knew that it was all for our good.  After many interviews, other proceedings, and just plain waiting (sound like adoption, anyone? : ) Will was offered a job different than he had originally applied for and certainly a different location.  Rural New Mexico vs. New York City.

We made all the necessary preparations to leave California and begin again on the East Coast.  We were really excited to experience new surroundings and it's proved excellent so far.  There have been many adjustments, but we're loving this grand adventure so far.  Never having moved growing up this has been my first real experience moving away from people and places and not really having plans to return to visit.  I'm still trying to wrap my head around that.  BYU was different, I guess, because everyone planned to move on.  I have some dear friends in Tracy that I miss a lot, but thanks to the internet and phones I can keep in touch easily.  Now we're working on getting to know new friends out here.

Adoption/sealing, new job/moving.  Those are the main ways we'd sum up 2015 and it was all totally awesome.

Now, the new year is here!  I always love the talks and lessons in church about goal setting and the new beginnings that everyone thinks about with a new year.  Looking forward to new opportunities and planning to become better is exciting!  It's true that through our Savior's Atonement we can begin again and try to become better at any time - what a blessing!  But I also think it's great that we can collectively reflect and look forward to improvement with a special time of year.  All that along with enjoying the life experiences that come our way makes the new year an exciting time!

Here's to the next happy year!  We haven't lived it yet, so we can't give any spoilers as to how it turns out... But we can say that we celebrated the new year eating treats and making it to midnight.  Except Andrew.  He went to bed as usual, and then woke up at about 12:05 (thanks neighbors? who are really very nice!) so then got to sleep in mom and dad's bed snuggled up with us and made sure we didn't sleep in the next morning.  We hung around home new year's day morning, then in the late afternoon/early evening we went to see some mini "homes" that were decorated as different homes or other buildings from A Christmas Carol.  They were neat, but it was pretty cold.  Those were only about 15 minutes away from a zoo we went to see the holiday lights at after.  Of course it was even colder there, but we had a good time seeing the handful of animals we could and the lights.  We also got to ride on their cute little zoo train with lights and Polar Express music.  Andrew loves trains, so that made it fun, but with the breeze I think we all haf second thoughts once the train was going.  When we couldn't stand the cold any longer (and we really were done otherwise) we left.

Yesterday's fun was satisfying our (nearly) life-long curiosity to see the Harlem Globetrotters!  Will said we were going to see a game.  I said we were going to see a show.  We were both right : )  Not exactly what I had expected, but we had a good time.  Andrew just thought it was great to see so many basketballs!  We got to go to the new arena in Brooklyn to see it, so that was nice.  And how convenient that there was a Shake Shack right across the street!  We're looking forward to the rest of 2016!

Moving to our house

Welp, we bought a house!  We thought we'd buy in Tracy and tried to a few years ago, but as soon as we started trying the prices and competition went way up, so after a good effort of overbidding like 20+ other people on each house for a few months we were exhausted.  We were not willing to bid sight-unseen like many of them, and were often too slow even when we made an effort to see an offer within a couple days.  Our associated experiences were part of what helped us know that we were not to stay in Tracy long-term.  We happened across a small house for rent near the end of our (relatively short) ride on the California real estate roller coaster, so at least we were out of the apartment for the next couple of years.  We weren't sure how long we were supposed to be there, but knew that that was temporary, too.  When we knew it was time to move away from Tracy and come to the East, we were also ready to try buying a house again.

We found the house on a short trip in September before we moved.  Will flew back out to be present for the inspection just about two weeks after that.  He flew out of San Diego where we'd been partying once more with cousins and going to Disneyland.  The very next day Andrew and I drove home together, I fed him and put him to bed, then had a friend come rest on our couch (so Andrew could sleep in his bed) while I drove out to San Francisco to pick Will up at the airport at midnight coming back from the inspection trip.  Whew!

As we started on the offer paperwork, etc, the sellers agreed to close about as fast as we could with all the legal requirements.  That was going to be awesome because we would close just about the time that we would have to move out of our short-term housing covered by relocation.  Before too long, though, they requested that we actually close two weeks later because they didn't expect the house to sell so fast and they wanted to have a place to move into themselves.  We said our side - coming from across the country and not having any family or friends to go to short term and basically they met us in the middle, closing just one week after originally planned.  We had another tender mercy as we were able to extend our short-term housing one week but absolutely had to be out just two days after closing.

We closed on our first house on November 12!  Some new friends in the ward who have a daughter pretty close to Andrew's age kept him happy at their house while we signed paper after paper.  When we were done it was approaching evening time and getting dark.  We had brought a few things in the car to drop off at the house so we made the stop.  Even though we'd done the final walk through that morning, of course it had a different feel then since it was officially ours (and the bank's... : )  So Andrew crawled around some and climbed the stairs, then we were on our way again.  Because we'd have to drive back down to Jersey City and it was getting later (and we had dwindling food choices at the apartment) we decided to just stop somewhere.  And where else would you celebrate buying your first house other than Boston Market??? : )  Probably the most extravagant part was that we actually, for the first time ever, bought Andrew his own kid's meal.  We decided that was a mistake... at that particular place, at least.  (I'd never been to a Boston Market before, btw (ha).)

The next day was Friday and Will was able to stay home from work to work on moving our stuff from the apartment to the house.  I know it seems like it shouldn't have taken that long.  But our car is only so big.  We had clothes, suitcases, toys, books, toiletries, food, diapers and wipes, Andrew's old car seat, booster chair, etc to take over.  We ended up taking two trips on Friday.  The traffic was moderate Friday morning and the first trip didn't take too too long (but still a few hours total at least).  The next trip took a lot longer because it was late afternoon on a Friday, so lots of traffic.  I can't remember what took so long, if anything besides the traffic, but it was late when we were headed back.  Like 8 pm?  Late for Andrew.  So we stopped off at Wendy's on the way to get a highly nutritious dinner.  Andrew didn't care for his chicken nuggets, but was interested in my hamburger.  Noted.  When we got back there was still a bunch of random things that needed loaded into the car.  We needed to be out by noon the next day, but at the time we thought it was 10 am.  On top of that, the Elders were coming with an investigator in the morning to help us move the old fridge to the basement so that our own fridge could go into the spot when the movers came Monday.  They said they could come at 9, so that meant leaving the apartment by about 8.  So we didn't want to leave much loading for Saturday morning.  Will had gotten a bad headache so while he rested on the couch I made a couple trips down to the car.  That entails: down the elevator, through the lobby (borrow the cart and go back to the apt to load it), up the other elevator to the parking garage, then drag the cart to the car, pile things onto the seats.  (We weren't sure how much space we needed to save in the trunk for an appliance dolly the next morning.)

Saturday morning we got up and ready and double checked all the nooks and crannies for stuff we'd forgotten.  We did our final arm loads and took out the garbage.  Once in the car we drove out of the building, then Will had to run back inside and up to the apartment to leave the keys and parking pass inside then lock it on his way out.  Then we were on our way to Home Depot to pick up an appliance dolly, then to the house.  We made it in plenty of time before our help came.  I cover my eyes and only peek a little when something is happening like the Elders' free moving service is helping us move an extremely heavy item across floors and through doorways that we just bought a couple days before.  Luckily with only a couple minor incidents they successfully got it out, around the back, and into the basement.  We did have to remove the basement door with the tools that our very friendly new neighbors let us borrow.  They had to get it at just the perfect angle to get it in.  I was about ready to say forget it, but they did it!  All the while Andrew was restless in his monkey footie pajamas and getting dirty as I let him crawl around the deck.  We didn't have a ton to do the rest of the day - made sure we had some food and a way to eat it the next day (Sunday), let Andrew play around the empty house (that I desperately wished I had my vacuum to use before any stuff came in, oh well...and you can only bug your brand new neighbors so many times on day 1), went on a neighborhood walk and checked out the library, and then went out to dinner again.  This time we went to.... Chili's (I think) to use a gift card we've had.  No kids meal for Andrew this time : )  He's happy to share, though.  And boy does he love drinking the water through the straw! Andrew could still sleep in the pack and play and Will and I slept on the floor that night.

We went to church the next day as usual and spent another day sitting on the floor.  And eating dinner on the floor : )  Monday morning the movers came with our stuff!

Well, I don't know what happened to my latest work - so we're missing the entire chunk that I know you're all dying to know about.  The part that due to a packing snafu (or two or three? : ) I ended up wearing only one sock for the moving fun Friday.  I accidentally ended up in Jersey City with a small amount of socks in the first place.  Then somehow for Friday I only had one sock... I kept forgetting to get another whenever we were at the house.  How could you forget something like that???  Weird, I know.  Finally Saturday when we were done running back and forth I was finally able to coddle both feet at once rather than picking one at a time.  Aren't you glad I retyped a new version of that fascinating detail????  I also ended up without flip flops in Jersey City, but that really only mattered the first few days before it got colder.   I forgot shoes for a family camping trip once as a teenager, but luckily that was a short overnighter in a not very primitive place (by the Clark County fair grounds?).

So here we are now!  We've been making progress on unpacking and organizing things, but Andrew makes sure that we don't go too fast.  Things are functional, but we still have a lot of work to do to get it how we want it (our stuff).  After having our old couches moved across the country we were a little disappointed to discover that they wouldn't fit where we had planned to put them (through doorways and around corners), but we're really not that sad because they were nothing special.  We gave them away to a nice guy who lives "up the street" who came to pick them up with his dad between his busy work and finals schedules.  Now we're back to limited seating options as the couch we bought online several weeks ago has yet to arrive... because of some mess-ups on their end.  Hopefully it will come this week!

 

Once the old couches were out we had room for a Christmas tree!  Also plenty of room to drive our dump truck and all other vehicles.

I said yes!

So, you were probably expecting this next post to be about moving to our new house.  Well, sorry, it's not.  You'll just have to wait a little longer!

Instead I'm making record of a dream I had yesterday morning not too long before I woke up for the morning.  I'd write it down in this one particular journal, but I don't know where it's packed...

Anyway, part of the dream was a ward campout (love those!) with people from Cascade Park ward and Hidden Lake ward.  (Hidden Lake ward doesn't do those though... at least not while we lived there.)  I thought it was awesome!  Then the setting was a little different (so maybe separate dream?), but there was a childhood friend who recently got engaged (in real life), Will, and me sitting at a table (maybe someone else?).  After a weird exchange in which I fed my friend a bite of eggs Will said he needed to pull me aside.  Then we were on this staircase thing (made of stone?) and he said he had wanted to ask me something before I said anything to my friend...  Then he asked me to marry him!!!  We were both so happy and excited!!

I woke up ecstatic and told Will : )

I know and love Will more at this point than I did when he really asked me to marry him 7 and a half years ago, so of course I was super happy! What an excellent dream! :  )