The BIG Move

Guest Blogger Christopher reporting on Big Move '09:

I know I am going a little bit out of order as Jin likes to do her posts in the order that pictures were taken, but I'm going to recap our move.

Last Tuesday is when it all really started, this is when the packers (not the football team, just Sisco and Benny) came and started boxing up our house. Izzy couldn't quite figure our what was going on, but she is so easy going that it didn't seem to phase her. She even napped while they were working which is a miracle because it seems that Benny was born without volume control and only knows LOUD!

By Thursday the only thing we had left in the house is what we were packing in the U-haul to bring with us. Jin must have developed about 37 different comprehensive lists of what to bring with us and even then we were not sure that we would have enough room. Needless to say the house was very empty.


Friday was cleaning. We had a cleaning lady come and she did most of the inside work for us (big shout out to mom for helping flip the cleaning bill). As it turns out we probably could have saved some money and had Izzy do the cleaning. I have the feeling that this would have not have been as cost effective in the long run.


Saturday it was on the road. After loading the U-haul we headed out. It turns out that list number 37 must have been the magic list because everything fit, but not by much. We had to get the car and trailer weighed on the way out of town and it turns out that the poor little Santa Fe was towing about 2300 lbs. Because Jin will be making a similar move in a couple of months, we may follow the Jennifer Starr Guide to Surviving a Deployment and purchase a newer, stronger, roomier vehicle. While we weren't the fastest car on the road, we weren't the slowest either. The first day we passed one other car, the second day four and the third day back down to one. See not the slowest.

Izzy got a little feisty at times but that is what you would expect when you travel with a 17 month old. We found a solution for that though:


As it turns out, she didn't mind because she was apparently just conducting business on the road.


We arrived in Colorado Springs on Monday and have spent the last couple days getting settled. There are new and exciting things for the dogs to see and bark at like trees and deer. Deer that come right up to our window and eat off of our neighbors back porch. Our first morning here we got quite the wake up. First it was the skunk that we are pretty sure spayed under our front door at 4 AM. Then when Jin took the dogs out at 6:30 (I had already been out with them 3 times between the hours of 11 PM and 3 AM) she was greeted by 4 or 5 deer 10 feet from our door. As you can guess our ADD pointer loves the deer.






I'm sure that there are details that I am leaving out (or conveniently forgetting) and Jin can cover those, if she chooses.

1 1/2 months later...

Soooo...what can I say...I was on a slight ANTI-blogging run. But now (for now), I'm back. Here's a quick update on what's happened.

Izzy got a great sock monkey for Christmas from her Godparents, Josh and Kal.


But at first, it scared her. So she played with the box.


And the box became one of her favorite places to sit. Until we used said box to ship something. Izzy was not still sitting in it when we shipped it.


And Izzy's obsession with boxes continued. She also developed a love of putting things on her head and walking around (i.e. towels, jackets, sweatshirts, and (of course) boxes.) She only walked into things a few times.


She seemed to think that holding the box up and peeking while walking, was somehow cheating, so she often would walk with her head up really high, and (I think) her eyes looking out the bottom.


She also has gotten even more cozy with the dogs (if that's even possible). She likes to sit by their stomachs, in between their front and back legs. She also likes to sit in between their front paws and lean back on them. And her newest thing is to sit ON them, bouncing around, while singing "duh duh duh duh" as if we were bouncing her on ours knees. The dogs LOVE that one.


She has also learned to pull open doors (no pushing yet), loves to play in the backyard, likes walking around outside with Chris to get the mail, and throws hefty temper tantrums when she doesn't get her way. She has also developed a terrible habit of refusing to have her diaper changed unless she gets gummi bears. Oh well, can't win them all!