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I haven't touched this blog since Christmas of 2013.  But so much has gone through my mind in the past few weeks that I can't help but think that the most appropriate place for me to get it all out is here.  The place where I started to share my family's crazy journey.
In the past 3 1/2 years, I've met so many more friends and had so many changes in my life that it got to the point where I was exhausted retelling my story.  So I didn't.  I was really really over being the girl with all the drama.  My poor family had enough and I've made it a point to simply move forward.  But given that, there are a lot of people who may be reading this who don't know why us moving into our house is such a big deal.  I'll try to catch you up with the Readers Digest version.

April 2010: My family was home, playing in the living room on a morning we had off of work.  9:30 am, we looked outside and thought, "huh.  The sky looks really ugly..." And then the storm hit that we didn't know was coming.  It was loud and scary and the windows "honked" from the pressure of the wind.  We were paralyzed in the middle of our living room huddled with our kids and the thought never occurred to us to follow through with the tornado drills that we practiced hundreds of times growing up.  It was over as soon as it started, practically.  Once the storm passed, Matt & I went outside to assess the damage.  Family was fine.  Inside the house was fine.  ::Breathe::  Damage to the roof for sure, damage to the cars, 30 foot evergreens twisted and ripped in half, barn standing on a splinter, patio furniture and grill lifted up from the back porch and flung up then slammed down nearly a half of a mile away in our corn field.  Luckily even the dog, who was outside at the time, was fine.  This wasn't fun, but we were going to be okay.
May 2010: 6 weeks have gone by and our insurance company still won't help us.  They've given us zero dollars so far, partly because they have yet to confirm a tornado entered our area.  (?!)  Which of course we fought daily and valiantly.  Meanwhile, we're furiously tarping our roof and consolidating our furniture to one end of the house as the ceilings are starting to fall in from all the water.  Matt has a video (on an old phone- this was pre-iCloud days) where there is a literal waterfall coming through the hall closet.
Finally, Matt got a supervisor from our insurance company to come out to our house and assess the damage.  As soon as I arrived to the house he met me at the door and said "yeah, this house is not livable.  We need to get you out."  I cried happy tears!  Servpro was already there packing up our stuff.  Finally we were going to get help!!
NOPE.
May 2010 - August 2011: We moved TEN TIMES.  From rental houses, to friends houses, to multiple multiple hotel rooms for the five of us.  Work was being done to the the house, but we got pennies on the dollar from insurance.  They claimed that they wouldn't pay for the majority of our damage expenses because it was due to water & mold.  Duh!  The mold wouldn't be there if you didn't let the water get in in the first place, or if you helped us clean it up and rectify it before SIX WEEKS had gone by!  I had enough.  I completely broke.  It got to the point where going to the property made me physically ill. Matt had been begging me for the past decade (not even exaggerating) to move to Vermont.  I finally caved.  We had nothing to lose and whatever picture I had in my head of living so far from "home," nothing could be worse than this.  (Which, for the record, it was the best decision we ever made.  No qualms admitting that one).
August 9, 2011: My 31st birthday.  We sign a contract on this house that my crazy husband has been in love with this whole time.  An abandoned, neglected, historic home that needs a complete gut job.  Because we're insane.
September, 2011: We move to Vermont.  We move into a tiny rental house with a one year contract because surely it won't take more than a year of exclusively working on this house to make it livable.  HA!!!!!!!!!!!!
August 2012: We move into another house with a month to month rental agreement because surely it won't take that much longer.
HHHHAAAAAA!!!!!!  5 years later...
July 24, 2017: Come hell or high water, after a major surge to finish some major things on the house, we move in.
 (PHEW!  Even the Readers Digest version is lengthy!)

So now you're up to speed on the basics of our life for the past 7 1/2 years.  Now comes the part where I need to vent all of the heavy emotions that I've been experiencing for the last 2 weeks.


Have you ever felt extreme elation, anxiousness, and grief all at the same time??  Because that's been me.  On loop.  For two weeks.  I feel like everything has been on pause for the last 6 years since we moved here. And as all of our belongings have been in storage, so have all of my emotions from our ordeal.  And as we opened the lock on our storage locker and had to go through all of our stuff, it opened up this wound for me that I tried to pretend was healed.

Here's the thing: First and foremost, I am SO THRILLED to finally be "home."  To finally have the opportunity to settle and feel like we can start again.  Everything for the past 7 1/2 years has been temporary.  And for a couple of years, Natalie didn't even say the word "home."  The only life she knew was in addresses.  It's not done yet, but it's so close to *beautiful* and this house is going to be something to be admired.  We are SO GRATEFUL to have all that we do.  Truly.  I can't stress that enough.  And we also acknowledge that this is a path we chose for ourselves.  We could have picked any little house, moved in, and made it work.  But we chose the difficult route for the end game.  This house is going to be amazing very soon and we are so happy to be in.

But moving day was so much harder than I bargained for.  Working full time with three kids busy schedules while trying to pack didn't work so there was a huge scramble to move out.  Okay fine.  Stressful, but whatever.  Round one of stuff gets to the house, I'm met by some amazing friends who are happy to help, and although the house didn't get clean before we started to move in our stuff, I'm happy.  I'm seeing where things are going to go, excited to have our furniture back that I haven't seen since 2010, and thrilled to unpack the new.
Next we get to the storage facility and I felt like I was punched in the gut.  Tears flowing down my face and I couldn't control it.  Pretty sure the moving guys thought I'd lost my mind! lol  #1: there is So.  Much.  Stuff.  Oh holy shit what are we going to do with it all?  More on that later.  But next, as we're digging through and putting boxes and furniture into the truck, we're noticing there's extensive water damage on a lot of our stuff.  We've learned later that there was a flood in our storage facility 3 years ago and we were never told.  Awesome.  Insult to injury.  So I'm looking at boxes labelled "Persian Art" or "photos" that are soaking wet.  And the bottom third of my dining room furniture that's covered in mold.  My father-in-law's chair destroyed.  My table broken in the cross-country move.  FUUUUUCCCKKKK.
Meanwhile, my husband is making a pile of things he already knows to get rid of.  One of which is my child's wagon.  Because she was a toddler when all of this started.  And my life's been on pause.  And now she's in the third grade.  And it hit me like a ton of bricks.  On one hand we've bent over backwards to make sure that the kids never felt that any of this was hard in any way or that they've gone without or missed anything.  But I have in front of me what I had for my child and she missed.  It's so stupid I know, but it started this grief process I didn't know I needed to go through.  Gavin has since disclosed to me that he just doesn't remember those 15 months in Kansas before we moved.  He's blocked it out.  This was much harder on my kids than I ever realized and that kills me.

So... we get all of our stuff moved into the house.  SO.  Much. Stuff.  First of all, we had a 5,000 square foot house at one point.  Our house now is half that size and our furniture is Midwest big, not New England conservative.  We can figure that out.  But what the hell is up with all of these boxes?!  This is insane!
After the first week, I was going to take a week off of work to unpack and settle in.  So we can deal with this. I think??

But first lets get to the house.  Pretty?  Yes.  Ready? Noooo.  I wasn't aiming for perfect.  I was aiming for functional.  After moving in we discovered that there was a problem with the wiring.  Outlets in the kitchen, with the exception of the oven and refrigerator, don't work.  We still haven't figured out why.  The oven, turns on so we take for granted that it's fine.  But turns out, NOPE!  It doesn't actually heat.  The manufacturer has no idea why it's not working, and can't help with a warranty because, guess what?  It's past it's warranty as it sat dormant in storage waiting for the kitchen to be ready.  We need to buy a new fucking range.  GAH!!  Sink: Plumbing not yet installed.  Can't get a drink of water let alone wash a dish.  Laundry?  Also brand new and doesn't work?  WTF.  A week later we come to find out that drywall got placed before the plumbing was finished- so the washer wasn't getting water! LOL!  Okay, so that one was an easy fix, thank God.  But now we've been in the house for over two weeks and the most I've been able to do is make stew in my crockpot in the laundry room.  I'm really over it.

Okay, so now back to the unpacking.  This is what has really gotten me.  And at the same time I feel really stupid for it being so hard.  As we've unpacked, there has still been a number of silly boxes that were packed by Servpro with next to nothing in them.  That's been fun to unpack as it eliminated clutter in a big hurry.  (Matt went through a bunch in storage 5+ years ago, but not nearly enough).  But unpacking has hit the "play" button from our paused life in 2010.  Can you imagine taking everything off of your refrigerator right now- bills, photos, kids art, reminders- and pack it up only to unpack it over 7 years from now?  Super weird.  A lot of stuff we've looked forward to having again has been wonderful to see.  A lot of our Persian art, my Kitchenaid mixer (!), and photos!  Baby books!  Scrapbooks!!  Ahh.  That stuff made me so happy.  I don't know where I'm going to put it, but I have the stuff back that makes it our home!!!
But so much of what we've unpacked has been overwhelming.  For one thing, tons of stuff that were packed, if we had packed ourselves we wouldn't have brought this stuff here.  First of all, Matt had recently closed his mortgage company before things happened.  We had a ton of stuff from his office in our basement that got packed up (anyone need a fax machine?).  And Matt, being the crazy guy I married, was planning on starting this retail store in our town before we moved.  Thousands of CD's, t-shirts, toys, collectibles, etc were packed up and brought to Vermont and now we don't know what to do with it.  Ebay to the rescue I guess!  Then there's that "unpause" thing we talked about.  It's a little entertaining and a little sad to unpack the technological stuff from 2010 now in 2017.  I've unpacked thousands of CD's, a ton of DVD's, a number of flip phones, gigantic computers, a video camera, and a freakin' palm pilot!  Granted, that was probably sitting in my desk drawer from a couple of years beforehand, but holy crap!  It's amazing how much has changed in that relatively short span of time. WTH do I do with that stuff?!  And my babies.  Ugh.  Every box of toys and dress up clothes I unpack I want to cry all over again.  I have teenagers with deep voices who shave and date, and I'm unpacking their Mr. Incredible costume and ninja turtles.  My baby girl is up to my shoulder in height and is too big for me to hold anymore, but I've unpacked her alphabet caterpillar and little lambs that decorated her bedroom.  It's hard to accept how much time has passed since everything happened and to realize how long it's been since we've felt home and secure.

So, yeah.  I've been dealing with a lot of emotions over the past couple of weeks.  It's like the last hurdle we have to power through for us to heal.  But it's the last one.  It really is.  Soon we'll get through all of this stuff that's taken over our house.  (we appreciate your patience as you wait for pictures!  It'll get there!)  Soon we'll fix all of the problems that are making living hard now and soon we'll finish all of the last details that will make our home complete.  And as my birthday approaches tomorrow, it marks an important date in our story: 6 years since we've bought this house and we're finally in, making it ours.
For now, we're home.  We're together, and we're healthy.  And despite all of the "difficult" we're getting through right now, nothing will ever be more important than that.  We're just very ready to start our next chapter.  Hopefully they next one will be boring.      

Our Vermont Christmas

We love where we live now, but sometimes it can get a little lonely.  The only thing that would make it perfect is if our family lived nearby.  1500 miles is a very long way away & it makes visits few & far between.  But thankfully, Mathew's brother Martin & his family were able to come this Christmas!  We stayed with them when we visited in St. Louis this summer, & it was our turn to reciprocate.  They'd never been to Vermont before!  So for ten days our two families got to spend time together.  It went by so fast I can't believe they're gone already! :( 
The bummer part was we had some very unusual weather for Vermont this time of year.  It rained for the first three or four days!!  Put a bit of a damper on a few of our plans.  But we made the most of it & I hope we were able to show them a good time.  Here are a few highlights of the trip!

First day, the kids had their Christmas concert at school.  It was nice to get to share that with family for once!  Even in Kansas I don't think we got to share those experiences with many family members.  This time though, not only did Martin & Sarah & the girls get to come, but PaPa got to watch live on the web too!!  Too cool!  I heart technology.  ;)

Natalie wasn't a huge fan of being on stage.  She was a cute little drummer boy anyway!

A classmate of the boys made up a play about kindness & the Christmas spirit.  Too cute!

My handsome guys.  Who forgot to bring a change of shoes...  Doh!

Once we were able to venture out, we took them on a couple of tours of local businesses.  First we took them to tour Cabot Cheese.  If you haven't tried Cabot cheddar... oh holy cow you're missing out.  Best.  Stuff.  Ever. 

Next, we had to take them on a tour of Ben & Jerry's.  You just can't come to Vermont & not see Ben & Jerry's!  (And it never gets old for us either. ;) lol) 

Silly girls!

There's just something extra precious about a picture of a kid & an ice cream cone.  Too cute!

Yummy!

Five happy kids with ice cream faces :)

A quick twirling interlude...

On Christmas Eve I finally had a full morning to bake some Christmas cookies.  It's a tradition I carry on with my kids (though for the moment Natalie's the only one who enjoys it.  I'm hoping the boys will like to help me again before long!).  And I was hoping the girls would like to join me.  Well they put on their new matching aprons & hopped onto a few chairs & were very big helpers!  For one batch.  Then they got bored.  Ahh well, we tried! lol  (Though Natalie hung out with me for a little while & helped for a few others.)

The best part of baking!

TWELVE dozen later & they were totally worth it!  (And yes, 4 out of 5 pictured are gluten free.  You'd never know!  They were a big hit! :))

That evening, we celebrated our Christmas.  I think the kids were pretty happy!

cousins

Martin & Sarah with Isabel & Ariana

Our family! :)

The kids & their loot

Goofy Uncle Martin ;)

Christmas morning, Santa came.  I won't bore you with *more* pictures of kids opening presents, but they were pretty darn happy!  Mark got a new camera, Gavin a new guitar, & Natalie got an American Girl doll!  Santa brought a few things for the girls too, PLUS sent a text to their mommy that he visited their house with the rest of their presents!  They were pretty excited to get home at that point. ;) lol  The rest of the day we celebrated Mathew's birthday.  Yep.  Christmas baby.  Every year I manage to mess up his cake.  Seriously.  Every stinkin year.  I guess it's because I'm so tired from the rest of the goings on with Christmas?  Or the fact that I don't plan well enough to account for closed stores?  Or the fact that I try something new because I don't want to make a cutesy cartoon character like I do for the kids so I end up failing miserably.  Hell I don't know.  Combo of all of the above I guess.  This year I made fondant & tried to play with that.  Ran out of powdered sugar.  So I tried to half it & it ended up too wet to work with properly.  Then I tried to dye it red.  It turned pink!  Then it didn't roll onto the cake quite right due to the lack of sugar, so I tried to cover up the bad spots with polka dots... so it ended up looking like a baby girls horribly done cake.  Awesome.  I nearly cried!  But thankfully my husband loves me anyway & didn't care.  (Or at least he said he didn't!)  Plus side was the chocolate cake with chocolate icing on the inside was pretty darn delicious! ;)

See?  Horrible! lol  This means I need more practice. ;)

 So finally, after Christmas, mother nature decided to snow over Vermont.  Yay!  Play time!  The girls are a little young to take to the mountain & go skiing just yet, so we went sledding instead.  Still super fun!  Plus, the kids had a new sled they needed to break in from Christmas! :)

Mark had the most fun I think!

The new sled was super fast!

This kid had no fear!  She just jumped right in & flew down the hill luge-style! 

Whee!

Mark practicing his mad snowboarding skills

 

Mmm... snow...

That night, we got to have a double date night.  God bless our babysitter who is so incredibly patient.  She agreed to watch all five kids for us so we could get a break.  Yay!!  We went to a really bad movie.  Really bad.  (Seriously, I love Will Ferrell, but Anchorman 2 was awful! lol)  Then we went to one of our favorite restaurants, Junipers.  Martin & Sarah missed out on the incredible view due to the dark, but the food was spectacular as ever.  It was so great to have a few cocktails, a nice dinner, & actually get to visit with each other.

 

Finally, on our last full day together with a new layer of snow on the ground, we were finally able to fulfill our surprise activity for our guests: a sleigh ride!  We won the ride last April at an auction to benefit our kids' school, & we'd been saving it just for their visit.  We were so happy the weather finally cooperated!!  It was a little cold, but such a beautiful day.  The kids looooved it!  It just might become a Christmas tradition for us! :)

 

 

We had such a great visit with our St. Louis family.  Although it was a little crazy having all nine of us in our little house, it was so nice to have them here & we miss them already! 



Vermont Fall

It is perfectly acceptable to make a blog post about about the Fall & Halloween now, right?  I mean, as long as the pumpkins are still out on the porch it still counts... despite the fact that they were covered in snow the other day...  (Um, I should probably get on that! lol)

Anyway, even though it seems you Midwesterners out there are still enjoying the Fall colors, Fall has already come & gone for us here in Vermont.  This has been our third Fall since moving up here, & yet again I feel like I missed it!  On the beautiful days that are totally picture-worthy, I'm either working or busy running after the kids & catching up with life and the next thing I know the leaves are gone. :(  But next year, I'm totally going to spend a day on a photo safari & capture Vermont beauty!  I swear!!  (I'm feeling some deja vu here.  I'm pretty sure I said that last year...  Yep.  Yep I did.  Fail. :/)

I think everyone recognizes that Vermont is well known for its gorgeous fantabulousness that is Fall in the Green Mountains.  It's one of our biggest tourist attractions.  (The locals call our visitors "Leaf Peepers." he he!)  I mean seriously.  There are times where it's knock-the-wind-outta you, leave-you-speechless kind of beautiful.  Not even kidding.  But even though sometimes I get lucky in the photo department, I'm not super great at it. It feels like one giant Pinterest fail lol!  But I try!  Here are the few pics I did manage to get:

This is my daily drive to & from work.  Stunning.  I get 60 miles of this!  

This is right next to our house.  I'm standing on the bridge over the river to take this picture.

The view from the kids' soccer field.  Not bad at all! :)

 

Now I'm learning some of the best spots to capture some great Vermont Fall pictures as I'm getting to know the area better & better.  Next year.  I swear! ;)

But we did have a fun October.  First, Natalie had her first field trip!  She got to go to a farm that had it all: petting zoo, pumpkin patch, apple picking, playground... so fun!

Are these kids adorable or what!

On one weekend we took a trip to a local farm to go pumpkin picking (organic of course!).  The boys always complain when I "force" them to go to the pumpkin patch (they are way too cool for that sort of thing now...) but we always end up having tons of fun.

Such a pretty view for pumpkin picking!

He really doesn't have coffee everywhere he goes.  I swear!  There's just a cute organic coffee & pastry shop in the front of the farm!

Of course my boys see tiny pumpkins & think "lets chuck them at each other!" lol  Oh boys!  (No, they didn't really. ;))

My goofball.

I got this, Mom!

Mom & Dad ala Mark :)

My sweet three...

... then there's that... lol!

Oh she's so stubborn!  NO idea where she gets that from! Ha ha!

Gavin has got to be the sweetest big brother

Then of course we carved them.  This year Natalie got all into it & could care less about the goopy messiness of it all!

That's my girl! :)

Gavin... notsomuch.  Ah well, they all did a good job!

A Natalie Original.

Mark's I think was pretty hilarious.  We've been watching reruns of "Heroes" on Netflix lately.  Mark made his pumpkin into a Sylar victim! lmao!

Slit at the top with his "brains" spilling out.  LOL!  Love it!

Ta-Da!

On Halloween, I was supposed to get to go home half way through my work day & get to go Trick or Treating with them.  Unfortunately, in the nursing world you can't always just pack up your desk & go home & just pick up where you left off tomorrow.  I missed it.  Super sad.  But Dad did a good job picking up the slack.  I won't speak about how stressed out he was by the time I got home though... ;).  Natalie was Princess Sofia

Gavin was Sirius Black Prisoner of Azkaban,

Yep, I made that.  Fun with old scrubs! 

And Mark?  Well Mark *almost* didn't participate in Halloween.  He thought he was too big to go trick or treating & wanted to stay home & hand out candy.  (NO!!!  I'm not ready for him to be that grown!)  But thankfully at the last minute he thought this 20's Gangster costume was pretty cool, so he ran with it.  Yay!    

Sad I missed it all, but it sounds like they had a good time.

So now Fall is all but behind us.  Winter will be here before we know it!  Time to go dust off the skis! :)