Settling In

Well, I couldn't figure out how to put pictures at the end of the blog so here they are at the beginning. They are in order as if you are walking through the front door.
This is the entry way. The closet on the left is a coat closet and off to the right is the office with double glass door.
We are using it as a music room.
This room is kind of a waste, but we have the family computer in the hutch.
Family room.
Kitchen is behind the family room.
View from the back door.
Now, don't be too judgemental. The kitchen is still being worked on. We have to get a few pieces of furniture to finish putting this mess away.
The appliances are stainless steel and there is a lot of cupboard space.
Now we travel up stairs to our master bedroom. It's huge!!! It looks so empty. We are still working on this room too. Why is it that my bedroom is always neglected??? Oh well, we will figure this one out too....
This is my closet. Yes, all mine....:)
It is soo big it even has it's own window!
Out master bath. We don't have much storage space in here, so I'm still trying to figure out what to do with the medicine.
The view from our bedroom. It is just at the top of the stairs. What you see here is the game room and little girl's room. Matthew's room is around the corner on the left and Abby's is around the wall on the far right.

Little girls room. Delaney is on top and Rylee and Macy are on bottom.

The kids bathroom is the door on the left and Abby's room is straight ahead. The room in the back is the master bedroom.
Kids Bath
Abby's room. It's a little empty also.
Her closet is big enough for her dresser.


This is Matthew's room. He makes me a little crazy because he just can NOT keep his room clean. I don't know if this is a boy thing or not, but it is a major battle for me.


Now the tour is over, I can give you an update on things here and I'm please to report they are going a LOT better now. We got the water running on Friday (thank you front loader washer for being able to get me caught back up!), cable, phone, and Internet running on Saturday. I made my first real grocery shopping trip on Saturday and I'll go into more detail about that later. Sunday was Stake Conference so I have no problem telling you we stayed home and finished unpacking. During the time we would have been at church, I had a lovely (hot) bath in my new garden tub. It was a spiritual experience. :) Later that day we went to my brother's house for a Super Bowl get together. The kids are really enjoying being around cousins. Delaney and Macy weren't feeling very well, but we still had a nice time. Thank you Brandon and Shanna! Yesterday I was finally able to get the kids registered for school. I went to the wrong school first and was pointed to a brand new school actually in my neighborhood. The kids loved it! It is two story and has hallways!! They think it looks like a high school. It was cute to see their faces. They start at 7:30 and get out at 2:30. That will take some getting used to, but it gives them more free time to play after school so I think it will work out better in the end. In the afternoon, I got to go to our first doctor's appointment. Delaney has double ear infections, but was hilarious at the doctor. She is probably my funniest child and was working it pretty good yesterday.

Anyway, the grocery store......Apparently I have lived away from TX long enough to forget how proud these people are of their state. That or I was just too little to pay attention or care. There is TX stuff everywhere!!!!! They have pasta in the shape of TX, every kind of bbq sauce possible with TX all over it (including Dallas Cowboys sauce!), cheese the shape of TX, even party platter veggie trays in the shape of TX. It was really quit comical. I'll bring my camera next time to capture a few of the more unforgettable ones.

After rereading my first entry, I sounded really whiney. I didn't mean to sound that way and I will not use this blog as a pity party. I have been thinking about how spoiled we are in general to have things like the Internet and running water. I clearly was not cut out to be a pioneer and I am even more grateful to my ancestors for being able to forge through and settle things for me. We are very blessed here in San Antonio and we are looking forward to new things. I just found out the ladies of the ward play volleyball on Wed. morning on half the court and have a music class for the kids on the other half!!! I can't wait. I definitely need the exercise and Rylee and Macy will have a blast. So here goes meeting the new ward!

Anyway, I'm excited to get back on a schedule. We all handle things better that way. Until next time...

Where to Begin??

Hello, Sunshine!! As we speak I am sitting in a hotel room with my family waiting for the laundry to finish. Why am I in a hotel you ask?? Didn't you just move to TX?? You betcha, and I think I'll start at the beginning. I am trying to stay positive about everything and laugh as much as possible.



Let's go back to Thursday, January 27Th. We were able to pick up the moving truck and trailer a day early and were super excited to start loading early. The Penske guy helped Todd get his car loaded onto the trailer and Todd drove home pulling his car. When he got home, we had to unhitch the trailer to load the moving truck. While unhitching the trailer, we broke the jack. We called Penske and they promptly sent someone out to replace it. So, we thought that was the one hiccup in move and we were done. Oh wait, that was just the beginning.

Friday and Saturday were normal packing/moving. We were sad and were missing our friends and family already, but were busy so we didn't have time to really think about it. We did end up running out of room and had to leave a few things behind, so that was a bummer.

Sunday, we wake up with intentions to be on the road by 9:00. We get everyone up and dressed, head out to up things into the car and notice there is a flat tire on the trailer carrying Todd's car. So...we call Penske to come fix it and the tell us someone will be there within 90 minutes (starting to get a little cranky, let's get the show on the road already!). Around noon we are finally on the road and very emotional. Todd had Macy in the moving van with him along with Matthew and things are moving along. We trade kids somewhere along the way and Macy is now in my car. We are about 30 minutes out of Las Cruces, NM (our stop for the night) and Macy has had enough of traveling. She is screaming for me to hold her and wants out. After being told she can't get out for a few more minutes she begins to take of her car seat buckles. It is dark outside and I can't get a hold of Todd to tell him we need to stop so I can address Macy, so I have to keep following him with Macy screaming behind me trying to climb out of her seat. Needless to say by the time we finally stop, I am ready to leave her in NM!!! So we get all of our overnight stuff out, try to check into the hotel only to fund out we are at the wrong Marroitt!!!!! So we load up all of our pleasant kids and the even more pleasant parents again, dive a few miles to the other hotel and call it quits for the night!

Monday goes okay. We are on the road at a decent time and traveling the way we expected.
We pull into my brother's house around 9:30. We take Todd's car off, unhooked the trailer and leave it at my brothers. We had some stuff strapped to the car and the weather was supposed to be okay so we just left it all out for the night. We needed to go to the house tonight and unload both our cars as they are filled over capacity. So we head to our new house and I have major anxiety. We haven't moved to a place we are unfamiliar with in a long time. It's dark and I don't know where I'm going and can't really see. My brother is giving me directions, but I'm a little anxious. Anyway, we end up loving the house but are too tired to unload Todd's car so we just park it in the garage and unload mine. We head back to by brother's house to sleep for the night.

Tuesday, we wake up and head to our new house leaving Rylee and Macy with my sister-in-law while we make the other 3 help. We go outside and the temperature has dropped literally 30 degrees and it did rain so all of our stuff got wet (including my stroller). It was in the 30's in the morning and got colder from there. It is super windy and no one is looking forward to unloading the trailer. Anyway, we go to the house and it looks a bit different in the light. The walls are dirty in lots of places, cleaning supplies left in almost every bath room, hangers in the closets, nails left in the walls (in almost every room), just weird stuff like that. All we know about the owner is that she is in the military and has been stationed for away. It honestly looks like she left, hired a moving company, and they did a lousy job getting her stuff out. We spent the morning cleaning walls. Around 11 we start unloading stuff, trying to get to the bed frames so I can get them together before the elders quorum shows up to help. We get them out and we can't find the hardware. We look and look (finding the other screws and stuff), but cannot find the hardware. I called Kober's to see if we left them at their house (we left a few things at their house) and they they don't see them. So we keep looking and still don't find anything. A few people from the ward come and we get everything unloaded in the bitter cold. Some time in here Kober's call back to say they think they found the hardware and will overnight them to us. (Thank you Kober's!!!) The bishop shows up just as they are finishing, stays to visit for a while, then we go eat dinner and get our kids from by brother's house. We get back home, exhausted, set up beds on the floor and fall asleep while Todd is having a shower around 11:00.

We have the alarm clocks on for 7:30 because the cable/phone/Internet guy will be here between 8 and 10 on Wednesday. Todd starts working on stuff and I drag myself out of bed and head for the shower. I go to turn on the water and nothing happens. The water worked just fine yesterday. Did they turn it off instead of transfer service?? We start checking into things and realize it is freezing outside, literally! I called the water company to find out about the water and they confirm service is transferred and fine on their end, our pipes must be frozen. Yes, that's what I said, the pipes are frozen. It doesn't get this cold in San Antonio!!!! Now what?? We can only flush each toilet one time, we have 7 people in our family...you figure it out! Anyway, the cable guy shows up at 9:50, works for a few hours and can't get things set up because the pipe he needs to run cable through has a chunk of ice blocking it. Some else shows up later with a snake to try and clean it out and can't fix it either because he needs water to flush out the pipe (rocks and stuff). So today is turning out to be a crappy and very nonproductive day. By the end of the day, we end up checking into a hotel to get some showers, bathroom privileges, and a good nights sleep. We turn on the TV and see that the current temperature is 36 degrees with a wind chill of 7 degrees!!!!! The forecast calls for a low of 19 and high of 28. Sounds great!!!!

Today, we have a lot to do but are not very hopeful that we will have water service. We head back home just to make sure and things are still the same. We are able to do a little more unpacking, but very little. The cable guy shows up again to work on the pipe. He has brought 10 gallons of water with him, but offers to help with our exposed pipes (where we think it 's frozen). A few minutes later, the door bell rings again and he has come to tell us the pipe is busted. Because it doesn't usually get this cold, the people who put in the water softener used PVC pipes instead of copper (not code obviously) and that's where the brake is.Well, are finally able to call our property management company and tell them the situation (had Internet access at hotel to print out inspection). They have some guy that deals with this and they call him to come fix it. He can't make it out until like 3:30, finds out what tools he needs, and promises to come back tomorrow.

So, needless to say we are back in a hotel tonight (by brother offered his house, but he has 7 kids of his own and he has pneumonia) waiting for the snow to fall tonight. It hasn't snowed here in since 1985. School might be cancelled tomorrow, so I haven't even registered the kids yet. We are seriously trying to stay positive, but it is really a comedy of errors, just one thing after another. As I was typing the first couple paragraphs the power went out in our hotel room. I went to check on the laundry and noticed everything else was fine so I called the front office. Seems our breaker was tripped. Yep, just our room. What's with that!!!!??? It's like we cant' catch a break!!! I know you are all wanting pictures, but they won't be here until I can have a shower at home and do some laundry. I must have priorities. Anyway, San Antonio is really very pretty and will have great potential. We say a My Big Fat Greek Restaurant by the temple, so we are super excited about that.

Anyway, I will do my best to keep you all updated, but until I have Internet access at home it might be a little dicey. Hope all is well with you guys. We really miss everyone. Until next time...hope tomorrow things start working out!