Checking In, Catching Up & Settling In~

How is everyone? Not online much these days. No time. However, be warned, I have a little time this AM while drinking my coffee so this will likely be a marathon post!

We got moved. Load day was a little difficult as it poured rain. However, everyone worked really hard & did the best that they could under less than perfect circumstances for a move. Nothing got damaged & other than us all being a little wet behind the ears & damp down to our socks no one & nothing was any worse for the wear. The next day we met the moving truck to unload at our new place. It was a chilly & brisk morning, but sunny! We unloaded without any problems. Over all, the move as far as a moves go, I would have to say was pretty uneventful.

We are attempting to get settled. What a process! We are planning to paint every room, so there really isn't much that we can do until we start that process. We sold a lot of our furniture prior to moving & have plans to make some purchases, but again until we choose paint colors & get rolling with that we really can't make many choices. The house is fairly empty right now & we would like to keep it that way until we get a lot of these initial projects underway. It will just make them easier to complete. Right now, our main focus is to just get the boxes unpacked & get somewhat settled with the way things are & what we have now so that we can live fairly comfortably in our home as we begin to tackle projects one at a time. It is difficult to even choose blinds or curtains until you know about paint colors. It is slow, but we are making little bits of progress every day.

The house was a new construction & had never been lived in before. It was completed, other than the flooring, for a while before we moved in (almost a year actually). There are certain things that you just don't know/find until you move in & have lived in the home that needed to be finished off or that should have been done differently. The house is good. We really like it. "My list" is all just cosmetic issues mainly~but, the list is ever growing! I am so picky & pretty close to being neurotic about stuff like that. I just get focused on something that I see that needs to be or that I want done & I want it done right now. I have no patience for waiting around on stuff like that. So, I am learning that it isn't all going to get done in a day & that I need to just relax. It will all eventually get done.

The breakfast nook & most of the kitchen is open to the family room which we absolutely love. That is our favorite part of the house. I have finally been cooking in the kitchen. (Now that we can see the counter tops!) There are so many windows on the back side of the house & just like the family room being right there by the kitchen the windows run that back wall of the house right by the kitchen. I love that. We purchased a new television for the family room. We really like it. It is the biggest t.v. (52 inch) we have ever had & has the best picture. We haven't had much t.v. time, but when we have indulged ourselves with a little down time in front of the t.v., we have really enjoyed it! I don't generally get too into the whole electronic scene. That is usually Thomas's thing, but I must admit that I was pretty excited about this purchase too.

We really like the area. We love all of the options of so many places to shop & lots of activities & events always going on. We really like our neighborhood as well. We have already been invited over to a bonfire at a neighbor's house. We are looking forward to that! Everyone is so friendly & we have found the service in the area to be exceptional. We weren't sure how the people would be in a metro area, but we have been very pleased to find that the people that we have come in contact with so far have been super.

I have been venturing out on my own more & more. For those of you that know me, you might know that I can literally get lost in a cardboard box! Thomas is insisting on getting me a GPS. So far I have resisted. Mainly because I think I will probably just crash the car while trying to work the crazy thing while driving or that it would be a waste of our money as I would get so frustrated with not being able to figure it out that I might be tempted to throw it out the window at some point! (Also not great with electronics either!) I haven't gotten lost yet. Driving I will say though is a whole different experience here. People flat drive & if you don't they honk to let you know about it! Thomas & I just crack up. We still have Missouri plates on our cars & can only imagine what they must be saying about us Missouri drivers! There are so many stop lights, but the speed through them is 50 & 55MPH! We have been use to 30-35 MPH through areas with a lot of stop lights. Plus, there are business's everywhere & people are always stopping & turning. I won't even hardly talk on my cell phone while driving any more as there is just too much going on!

Our home back in Missouri hasn't sold yet. We really don't expect that it will now until spring. It would be a great surprise if it did. We really hate to have the burden of worrying about the care & maintenance of it through the winter months, but we have some great neighbors checking on it & our realtor is watching it as well. It has only been on the market a very short time & in this market-well, we won't even go there with that conversation. We have all heard way enough about "the market", haven't we? (Stock market, real estate market & grocery market...& any other market that can be gone on & on & on about!)

Thomas's job could not be going any better. He has fallen in love with his career all over again. He is very pleased with how things are going & is filled with anticipation for the future, especially in regards to the grand opening of his store that is tentatively planned for March. He is very happy. The other day we were of all things bagging groceries together at a discount grocery store. He looked at me & said, "I love my life." I smiled at him, winked & said, "You love your wife? Isn't that what you said." He laughed & responded that since I am after all a huge part of his life, that yes, that was exactly what he said. Right now he is with work having to do quite a bit of driving. This doesn't thrill him. He is use to living less than five minutes from the front door of our home to his store. Lately, he is about twenty to thirty miles away from our home to his work plus he does a lot of back & forth meetings. He is working in one store & then has to go to meetings in the town where his store is being built. Plus, living here it isn't like twenty miles=twenty minutes. Oh no! Can you say traffic!?!?! & usually lots of it! This also means that he doesn't get to come home right now for lunch either. Other than that, all is well for him at work. This is not really a problem. It is just a new part of our life that we are not use to. When his store is finished though & he is working in it full time, we will be about five miles from our home to his store.

I have been only working in the home keeping things running around here. I am thinking of picking up some PRN or part time hours somewhere though. Haven't decided what or where yet for sure, but I have been thinking about it & have spent a little time researching some of my many options. I don't know that I will go back into the hospital setting, but if I want to there are many to choose from. It is very different here though as everyone in the patient care field is required to be licensed with the state whether you are a CNA or Tele Tech. It is no different than being an RN. Obviously, it is a different education level & is a "license" with the state verses a degree, but it is impressive to me that they consider all patient care staff positions very seriously & require the utmost commitment & education from all positions. You must pass the state accredited course & be licensed. I think that is awesome, especially from the point of view of a patient!

We really like the gym that is available to us right here by our house within our subdivision. (I don't know if you can call what will soon be 2500 homes a subdivision. Maybe community would be a better word.) They have great drop in classes too & a lot of activities going on in the community center as well. (I am headed there after I am finished with this post.) I have been trying to get there as many days a week as I can. It is really a great break. They have flat screens all across one wall. You plug your ear buds into a jack on the machine & set the jack to whichever t.v. channel you want & you can hear whichever t.v. you select. It is a great place to meet people too. I have made a couple of friends there already. They also have activities & drop in care for children of all ages.

For those of you that have been asking/wondering, we haven't heard any more as of yet about the possible twin adoption. That is not a surprise. She will only be four months along on November 9th. She said weeks ago that it may be several months before we heard anything more. And then of course, we may never hear another word about it. As most of you know, you just never can tell about these situations.

As for China~no news really there either. It will soon be time to begin our renewal for our paperwork. We are not looking forward to that process again, financially or emotionally. Having moved to a new state it will be double the fun, no doubt. When we started this process & went through the initial "paper chase" the first time around we just kept thinking that if we just could get through it once we would be home free. We never dreamed that we would be doing it over & over due to lengthening wait times. They are telling us now that we could potentially wait a total of four to five years. Some speculate even longer. As of today it has been one year, three months & ten days since our log in date. So, that gives you an idea of the wait that could still be ahead for us. We are prayerful that something will change & that wait times will shorten. As we are faced with this timeline, we continue to pursue other options domestically, as well as we are strongly considering InVitro in the future. There is a great fertility clinic nearby our new home that offers a shared risk program. You pay initially $18,500.00. This includes everything for three fresh & three frozen cycles. At the end of the entire program if you have not had at least one live birth, they refund you 70% of your money. They of course have to qualify you to be a good candidate for the program first, so we will see. Also, the state in which we moved is one of the few states that requires employers who insure over 25 employees within their company to provide Infertility coverage. However, since my husband's company is not headquartered in the state in which we live, they may not fall under this requirement. We are still doing some research on this.

As a lot of you know, our email hasn't been working properly. Our Internet provider is working on it & tells us that it will be up & running by tomorrow (Friday/Halloween!) morning. If & when it is working our email address is:
thomasandjennifer@comcast.net

Don't forget! Sunday is Daylight Savings Time. You get to sleep an extra hour or have an extra hour in your Sunday to get in some R&R, however it will get dark way early which I don't love.

Are you all ready for the trick or treater's? In our community the kiddos are only allowed to knock on doors from 3PM-7PM. The weather is suppose to be good! Be safe everyone!

We actually had some snow the other day. No accumulation, but snow for sure. It started spitting ice. Sort of like hail, but quickly turned to snow. And let me tell you, when they say "the windy city" they are not kidding! My goodness, the wind is really something here!

Are we ready for the election? I am pretty excited. I am not 100% Obama, but I just can't get behind McCain for a variety of reasons that I won't drudge out here. (Mainly one word mainly explains it all where I am concerned, or rather one name-Palin. Ugh.) Regardless of your political stand, let's hope for a fair election & a new President that will bring our country the change that it needs!

It has been somewhat difficult & a really odd experience not knowing even where to get a haircut, where to go to the dentist, who to choose for a general physician etc. Our realtor & the people that we have met have been great to give us some referrals. I find myself very indecisive these days about the simplest decisions. I think it is because all of the sudden I have so many options. Instead of one Lowe's we have four (not to mention Home Depot (several), Menard's (several), umpteen hardware stores & a litany of other places that sell the same stuff that I had never heard of before. Instead of a couple of salons we have fifty plus, instead of a handful of dentist there are pages & pages in the yellow book, instead of one hospital there are six within driving distance, instead of a Wal-Mart & a HyVee~now we have at least twenty grocery stores & I don't even know how many retail shops (mind you~NONE even coming close to the awesomeness of Wal-Mart!~no favoritism there, huh?). And don't even get me started on the churches~we could visit one every Sunday & never go to the same one twice I think! Thus my indecisiveness. I finally chose a salon & have a appointment on Saturday to get my eyebrows & hair done. Thank goodness. I am looking pretty shaggy!

Speaking of choices~how many of you have an Ikea? Where has that place been all of my life!?!?!? A lot of what they have is a little modern for our home. Some of it is more for what we imagine in like a loft in downtown, but oh my goodness! They have everything! And the prices~wow! We love it. We have only been here a couple of weeks & have been there like three times already & it's about fifteen-twenty minutes from our house! Oh & Costco~never been there either. Now we are members & really like it too. And Laurie~your post about your frequent trips to Red Robin with the family prompted us to check that out shortly after arriving & YUM is what I have to say about that! Also, "The Weber Grill" restaurant~if you have the chance to ever try that out, do so! The smell is amazing. When you walk in there are about twenty Weber Grills lined up in a row in their open kitchen in which they do all of the cooking on. For those of you that know Thomas, this was a near Heaven like experience for him. He is a Weber Grill fanatic. I got him for our anniversary a few years back the big daddy of all Weber Grills & he loves that thing! He won't use gas, even though we all know it is much easier he is a charcoal man & it must be a Weber. The food? Awesome! However, get one entree' & split it. The portions are hugely ridiculous! Oh & you all know about our love for good coffee~Starbucks on every corner just about! I have put myself on a Starbucks budget. Really. It may be good, but cheap it is not! At Costco they sell $100.00 in Starbucks gift cards for $79.00. We are thinking about doing that. That is a good savings.

So, all in all it is starting to feel like home. We are getting into a routine, finding our way & are beginning to settle in a little. Some have asked for pictures of us "getting settled" to be posted. Uh...not yet. Firstly, I have no idea where my camera is & even if I could find it I doubt the batteries are charged. Second, I have no idea where my USB cables are & third-to be very honest although I may sound like this is all somewhat coming together, honestly most mornings I am fairly certain that I may very well lose my mind at some point in the day from the utter lack of disorganization & chaos in our home. (You know my type A, control freak, organizational, planner, almost neurotic personality at times has not went away just because we moved!) Really, believe me. You don't want to see photos of boxes stacked in the garage or my hair standing on end from the stress of it all. (As Thomas will tell you it is really not all that stressful, I just tend to get amped up about clutter & disorganization-thus, my utter fascination with all of the organizational components at Ikea!)

Not far from our home is a brand new GoodWill. A lot of you know that I love a good second time around store. Tomorrow is the GoodWill Grand Opening. I suppose you can guess what I will be checking out in the morning.

Okay, the gym & the boxes are calling my name~