New Year... New Life

I have been missing my blog... and my bloggy friends! Do you guys even remember me? Things have been so crazy busy lately... I barely have time for anything. My list of things to do is always filling up faster then I can mark things off. So many things have changed in our lives recently and I have been feeling so displaced and overwhelmed. Where to start...

We moved into our new villa on the 11th. We were a little nervous about moving out of our home before we had sold it, but have you ever had a house on the market with an infant? It's impossible to keep things ready to "show" every day. Each night after putting the munchkin to bed, I would have to have then entire house cleaned, and ready to go incase anyone wanted to stop in for a showing while we were at work. It kept me up very late and ofcourse, I was still getting up through the night to feed the baby. The day we moved it was about 5 degrees outside. Our helpful friends were loving us, I'm sure. Luckily we had about 8 guys and 4 girls, so things went much faster then we expected. And since we were only moving 2.5 miles away, that made things easier too.

Here we are, all bundled up getting ready to move!

So we are now in the villa, along with all of our worldly possessions. We are anything but unpacked and settled. Having an infant also stunts the progress on this as well. I try to complete atleast one project per evening, if I can accomplish anything more it's a bonus. I have to get everything done at some point this way, right? Also trying to fit an entire 3 bedroom house into a 2 bedroom villa has been a challenge as well. Still at the old house, I have a huge pile of things headed to a friends for a garage sale we are going to have in the spring and an even bigger pile of things to be dropped off at Goodwill. There are various piles of things placed throughout the villa that I have yet to determine where the heck they will end up. Luckily we have a basement, but it is about a 1/4 the size of our previous basement.

Our bedrooms our now upstairs as opposed to our ranch. This has me all mixed up. I have never lived in a 2 story home. I have never wanted to either. I like having everything on the same level. Especially with a baby... everything is just so much easier to access. And with our laundry room now in the basement, the clothes have to be taken down 2 flights, and then back up 2 flights. This is a huge adjustment! My husband has already lost 12 lbs since we moved. Seriously. His office is set up in the basement too, so he is constantly climbing stairs.

Yesterday we finally got an offer on our house!! The closing date is set for March 29th. It's farther away then we would have hoped, but we certainly aren't complaining. There's finally a light at the end of that tunnel!

So the same week we moved into our new place, the munchkin's babysitter tells us she couldn't watch her anymore. We were devastated. With everything else going on... I thought I was going to lose my mind. We had based the location of our villa and how much rent we could afford on where her babysitter lived and what our budget was with how much she was charging us. Which was less then your average daycare. We thought she would be there for a long time. For a couple of years... till she went to preschool or even till kindergarten. Definitely longer then 1.5 months anyway. When we first found out, my husband thought he was going to have to put off starting school, and probably get a 2nd job so that we could either afford to send her to a new daycare/sitter or so that I could stay home full time. That night I called my friend Laura, who had offered to watch the munchkin while I was pregnant. I told her what was going on and she (thank god) offered to watch her for the same price. We were so relieved. I was very nervous about switching her to a new place. Munchkin really seemed to like where she was and with all of her reflux issues, and all the other major changes going on.... I just wasn't sure how she would react.

So far so good. She seems to love Laura. Laura couldn't watch her on Wednesdays, so I have added an extra hour to my work schedule on the other days so that I could now have Wednesdays off. I am loving this new schedule and so far the transition seems to be going pretty smoothly. She doesn't babysit any other kids right now and recently quit watching a little boy she had for 4 years who she lost to preschool. She misses him terribly, so the little munchkin is coming just in time to cheer her up and steal her heart away :)

Here she is meeting Laura's kiddos for the first time. She has 3 kids all in junior high.



Joe just started back at school this week. He has to start with some basics and then will be starting the nursing program once he is finished with that. He has classes Mon through Wednesday so by the time Thursday got here, I was really missing him! Its another big adjustment....

So there's a quick update on our crazy lives lately. I am hoping things start to calm down soon. I am going to try really hard to write a blog in the next day or so with some more pics and an update on how the little munchkin is doing. She has changed soooo much in the last couple of months. She is getting so big so fast, I can hardly believe it sometimes. Here's a few pics till then.

Joe with the munchkin and her cousin.

Me holding the babies.

Merry Christmas!

Giving her monkey a big hug.

Okay... back to work!