And so it was...

We have been official Michiganders for almost 5 months.

I have somehow survived without having a car.  We got a new puppy!  I did not, in fact, kill my children and said puppy during Josh's "Month-O-Finals".  I miss my family, a lot.  I miss the beach, a lot.  I miss daily dialogue with people over the age of five...A LOT!

But...I love it here!  I love that it is just us and that we are forging our way.  I love the strengthening that comes through and after the trials.  I love seeing the moments that make it seem like our parenting is paying off.  I love seeing Josh absorb this experience at dental school.

Love it!

The only three pictures I could figure out how to get from my phone to my blog...

...pretty much sums up our time in Michigan thus far!

Settled

Well, we have officially been home-renters for almost a month.  Hotel hoppin' is cool and all, but it sure is nice to have your own bed...and address!

We are in a really nice little suburb with great schools and, from what we've heard, even greater trick-or-treating hot spots!  SCORE!

It's starting to get a little chilly for our liking, San Diego is in our bones.

J is killing dental school, and the boys and I are killing the community park scene!

I will post some pics of our house soon.

Peace!

Dental School is pretty intense, apparently...

...but this guy's always got time for crying babies!

If ever there were a blog update...

I'm currently sitting in a Super 8 in Lincoln Park, Michigan..

The AC is blasting a cool 64 degrees, and for the most part, is muffling the noise of the oncoming trains that pass by the hotel every 20 minutes.  There is a Lean Cuisine frozen dinner to my side and Axton is watching his second hour of Nick Jr. Sprout.  Anchor is napping.  We will most-likely venture out of the room after lunch to swim in pool.  This is bliss.

Pure and utter bliss compared to the NIGHTMARE of last week!

Last month, we sold almost all of our stuff and packed what was left into a U-Haul.  40 hours of cross-country-car-trippin' and 20 a couple McDonald stops later...we made it to our house in Licoln Park.  Without going into too much detail, the house was a mess and not livable for our kiddos.  The previous tenant moved out hours before we got there, so the house had not been cleaned or inspected.  Let's just say that we were afraid to let the boys walk around.

And, there we were.  Stir-crazy children.  Josh was starting school the next day.  We had no food, and the kitchen was not sanitary to keep any groceries.  The house wasn't safe for the kids to explore. We had to return our U-Haul truck.  So, we did what anyone in our situation would do...

...we got in our car and drove to McDonald's to regroup.

The past two weeks have been stressful and trying (and expensive!) to say the least, but we found an awesome house and are set to move in next week!  Not to brag or anything, but we have awesome family who have done so much for us during this whole ordeal.  We would be in an awful predicament had it not been for them...or our smart phones!

On the plus side, we REALLY do like Michigan thus far, and Josh is at an amazing school! And...the kids are now fully-acclimated to sitting in the car for LONG periods of time!   This is going to be a great experience and I can't wait to share it with everyone via this blog!

Now, if you don't mind, I am off to enjoy my Lean Cuisine, which, if I may be so bold, is WAY better than McDonald's!

Welcome to Michigan!

Tangled Web Woven

A friend of mine said something kind of genius...

"Christmas cards take too much effort.  Trying to fit all that 'pretend perfect' into a letter once a year is impossible!  Blogs are way easier because you have the whole year to try to fool people.  You can spread the B.S out a little bit more!"

Touché.

I think family pictures are pretty symbolic of this point also, at least when it comes to our little fam.  I don't know about your family pictures, but we normally take somewhere between 10 and 2,395 pictures in order to get ONE good shot where everyone is smiling and looking adorable...all the rest are the real moments when someone has either spit up or picked their nose...or chose what seemed like a cute outfit that would surely hide any love handles but, in fact, did the opposite ...cough, cough.  Those should probably be the ones that make it into picture frames because that is who we really are!

  Another friend of mine said, "I hate blogs.  People are either lying about their life being so perfect or they are funny about their life when it sucks."  (I'm paraphrasing there.)

This got me to thinking about these:

These are just a handful of pictures on our computer of me.  They are the ones that are hard for me to look at for one reason or another.  Pregnancy weight gain.   A huge spider bite in between my eyes.  What I look like when I wake up.  No make-up on and out of shape.  There are a lot more pictures (tons) that make me sad.  Everyone has them.  You should know that this is terrifying for me to give others access to.

But you should also know this...

As I was going through pictures trying to genuinely find the notorious ones that usually make me cringe, something happened.  Because the point of this was to find the "bad" pictures, I actually started noticing that there were a lot of good ones.  Pictures that reflected great times in my life, fun adventures, and wonderful moments with my children.  The embarrassing ones didn't seem as tragic to me, and I actually found myself thinking, "Ok, I don't look THAT horrible.  I could deal with other people seeing me at what I consider to be some of my worst photographic moments."

Then I thought outside of the realm of pictures.  I can be more comfortable with sharing the imperfect parts of my life too.  I can be ok with my struggles and weaknesses.  I don't have to try to hide who I really am, and I certainly don't need to be ashamed of the "bad" moments.  I can do away with the phony Christmas-card mentality.

So that's where I'm at right now.  We'll see how brave I can really be, because I'm not too sure how willing I will be to share that I just went to McDonald's after almost crying when I weighed myself at the gym the good, the bad, and the ugly.

*Staying true to what I just said about being more honest and blah blah blah, you should know that I am neglecting my screaming baby and have just yelled at my other child to be quiet so I could think and finish this post, and make all of you think that I am awesome.*

Progress.

 


   This has pretty much been our week.

           

     I'm not complaining.