Can I still access this?!

So I was wondering if this blog was even still accessible... since I've neglected it for so long!! Alas, it 'tis!

So I guess I should update! 

Lived in BFE for a year and a half. There are some pros and cons to that. We were waaaaaay the crap out there (an 45 min drive to the nearest Walmart and an hour away from any decent shopping/eat out).

Pro: Met an awesome family that moved out there at about the same time, their eldest son was in Turbo's class in Idaho Falls and in his class again in Aberdeen. They are amazing people and I think the fact that both families were pretty displaced gave us a good bonding point. Both families have since moved out of BFE... because it was BFE and neither family was happy there. 

Pro: While we are not okay with living so far out in the sticks, we are much more agreeable to not living directly in town. 

Pro: The kids got adapted to public school smoothly because the schools in BFE are very small and once we moved back into Idaho Falls (Yup, back where we came from, but we are good with that. It's nice having grandparents and friends so close by) they moved smoothly into the larger public schools.

Con: Jer tried to get transferred back into town, however the lady in charge of hiring in Idaho Falls seemed to have a vendetta against him and ended up getting him fired due to a misunderstanding between his boss and himself. His boss was very apologetic, but corporate insisted. So Jer managed a Burger King for a short while and found that he was way overworked (60-70 hours a week) and underpaid (less than Maverik). He lost 20 lbs in a month due to stress and was not able to make doctors appointments etc due to employee flakiness and so quit and is not working at an inbound call center (and he is much happier for it).

Con: I had to move mid semester. Ew. Due to this I wasn't able to actually organize anything until I finished spring semester just over a month ago. I don't handle clutter etc well, so this was a challenge for me. Especially considering the difficulty of my classes (Junior level courses in mechanical engineering... going to be graduating in the spring of '17... WOOOT! Can't wait to be done.

This summer is my first real break from school in over a year as I took classes straight through last summer. It was exhausting, however I'm glad I did it so that I can graduate sooner. This summer I technically have an internship with a collaboration between 3 universities and the INL. It hasn't really gotten going yet as I'm waiting for them to complete the electrically components on a system before I can do my part. I find it amusing that I'm technically employed in Virginia (I represent a university from there) even though my location is in Idaho.

So, yeah. That is where we are currently at.

hm. so. yeah. 

Moved to BFE

Hi all. Long time no write.

Well, Jer got promoted at his job to store director, which means he is in charge of one of the Maverik stores. The one he is in charge of is in.....

Aberdeen, Idaho.

Don't know where that is? I didn't either and I have lived in South Eastern Idaho since I was 7. Let's just leave  it as it's out in the middle of BFE, has only 2k people and is a major adjustment.

I'm currently on summer break from college but that will end in a couple of weeks.

Goober is starting in Middle School, which is an eye opener for me at least... I really hope the adjustment goes well...

My adjustment isn't going so well so far. Without a congregation to lean on to make "friends" I find myself at a loss... if the town were bigger I might be able to join or gym or something, but there is no gym. There is a grocery store, a brand new Family Dollar, A Mexican restaurant and an American Diner, an tiny Ace Hardware and a Maverik.

I have one potential "friend" here and the only reason I met her was because she works for Jer. Sigh.

To be honest I was somewhat tempted to attend the local LDS church... but I felt that would be disingenuous, as I don't believe any of it. In fact I was pissed... PISSED! When I found that our records had been moved within 2 weeks of myself and the kids moving out here. I wanted a clean start, no preconceived notions. But alas, the bishop and the Relief Society President along with the sister missionaries showed up on the doorstep.

They are nice enough people. They seam less judgmental than those who were in Idaho Falls, so that is a plus. However I hate to throw an official resignation at them right after I move here, because... the stigma that comes with being a former member is a strong one.

Why would I resign? I don't want my actions to reflect on the church or their actions to reflect on me honestly. That and it's really hard for me to answer the (very personal) question of "Are you LDS?" ....Well.... Yes, technically... ish... kinda... not really?

I'm no longer angry, though I was at one point. I'm grateful that the people who surrounded me allowed me to work through that stage instead of forcing it in my face constantly... I truly believe that is how angry Anti-Mormons are created.

About half to populace here is LDS the rest is mostly Catholic (large Hispanic population) with some Klawssonites (sp?) and Mennonites thrown in for good measure.

Apparently the Klawssonites are their own religion started by a local guy that is hugely into Naturepathy (has his own "Biomechanics" shop... PS I'm not a fan of him using that term as it gives his pseudoscience the sound of actually having some clout). Apparently he has had trouble with the law a few times?! I dunno... weird stuff.

Anyway, The kids and I moved here in June after Jer had been living here since January and we are trying to sell our house in Idaho Falls now. Sigh.

I've been pretty conflicted as to if I should be dreading school (hard classes) or looking forward to it.

I've decided to look forward to it. I'm tired of having little to nothing to do, no friends locally, no people to potentially make friends out of, and nothing to do outside of laundry, weeding, mowing, and refereeing fights between the kids because they don't have friends here yet.

I may regret that decision though.

A New Face

So excited for Missy to come home! She has been at Girl Scout Camp since Thursday and should be home tonight.
   for a long time she has wanted a cat, and this weekend we got one. We aren't naming him until she gets here as I want her to have some input on it. But he came with the name Zorro, we don't know if we will keep that name or not, obviously. He has already been neutered and had his first set of shots so everything is on a good track.

Here are a couple of pictures of the little guy:

We are supposed to keep him in a small room and slowly introduce him to the rest of the house over the next couple of weeks. All he seams to want to do is be held though. I went into the laundry room (his area is the boys bathroom and the laundry room adjacent) and could not find him for the life of me. I thought I had looked everywhere, in fact I got worried and called Jer when he was at a friends house because I was a bit distraught. Turns out this is where he was:

Can you see him? Me either! Let me zoom in:

There he is! Holy crap he gave me a scare! He is a really sweet kitten though. Tonight one of my friends who has lots of experience with kitties came over and helped me put Kitty Caps on him so that he can't scratch anyone (or thing for that matter). I hope it works to teach him as I really don't want to have to remove his front claws if I can help it.

AWOL

Sorry I've been AWOL for a bit. :D We have been painting our house.

No, the renters didn't damage it any worse than normal wear and tear...

The carpet has always been crap, since before we moved in, so we decided to replace it, at the same time we figured "why not paint too? since we won't have to worry about ruining the carpet and all that...."

So alas, we started painting. And painting, and painting. We had to repaint the ceilings as the original builder was L-aaaaaa-ZY and they had painted all of the ceilings the same khaki color that the walls were. So we primed them, and painted them, and painted them again. Then we started on the walls.

Yes, all of the walls. Including the one above the stairwell (which freaks me out).

Then we edged the ceiling, again, and again. Then the walls, 2 times. After that we let each of the kids pick out a wall color for their bedrooms (only one wall though... I'm not THAT awesome of a mom).

Turbo picked green, like grass green. It took 4 coats to get it on smooth. The other two kids picked red and purple respectively. Those weren't nearly as bad.

Now? Well, right this moment I'm hanging out at our house while the carpet guys do their thing.

YAY!!!!  As soon as they are done I will vacuum (because there is always carpet bits spread around afterword) and then .... well, then I plan on starting to move crap!!!

Mwhahahahaha! So excited! (and the kiddos don't have school tomorrow... so that helps too!)

A Day in the Life of Me (this week anyways!)

I keep meaning to take a picture of the house so that we can have a (kinda) "before" picture and after ones... but I keep forgetting so now it would be an  "In progress" picture... which I keep forgetting to take.

Yay me.

So we have ripped up the carpet and the padding, today we got all the dumb little staples up off of the floor (that kept the pad in place). We purchased the paint and I will likely start on that tomorrow if I have a chance. I was kinda amazed that I even got over to the house today with everything I needed to do.

I'm going to make a list for kicks and giggles and because I want to give you a real idea of what my day was.

Up ready out the door,
Work at school until 11:30,
Meet with college adviser about next semester,
Meet with graphic designer about ad work for other job,
Pick up Girl Scout cookies for an order,
drop off Girl Scout cookies,
Pick up Turbo and Goober (and Girl Scout Cookies) from Gma S's,
Take Goober back to school to pick up forgotten homework,
Get Goober to start on homework in van while I drop off a bill,
Take the boys to get new pants,
Meet a friend to give her HER order of Girl Scout cookies,
Pick up mail at PO Box,
Drop off pants at house and use the little girls room,
Go to pick up Missy from Girl Scouts,
Go to house, (Goober finishes homework on way there) unload clean dishwasher and reload, prep dinner for kids,
Take out staples in flooring,
Vacuum bare floor.
Go home and get kids "quick showers" and off to bed.

Yup, a day in the life of me! Wahoo! Tomorrow is a new one! All I can say is thank goodness my math class was canceled this evening...

House Stuff

Do today I spent a lot of time at the house.

So did the kids.

The tenants left a mess, so I was trying to do some cleaning, and Joe (the guys that is putting a wall in downstairs) was going to try to start working on the basement tonight so we ripped up the carpet and pad in the basement and the crapet in the rest of the house.

I know that most people were doing Easter egg hunts today and dying eggs. My poor kiddos got hosed, but they didn't seem to mind too much as the were running around the house and yard playing an imaginary game of "Mario".

PS. does anyone know the real name of the "chompy plants" on that game? :D

The Bain of Those that Find that They are Too Nice

So as many of you know, our renter stiffed us for the last month of rent. She also stiffed most of the utilities and apparently didn't leave a forwarding address. Oh. The. Joys. At least the utilities aren't holding us responsible... which is good.

We warned her that we would be changing the locks on Thursday and therefore we did. However there was still some stuff there at the house. Including a very nice grill on the back porch. 

Today I was at the house trying to get a couple of things cleaned up (cause, yah, the water was turned off do to lack of payment so.... no cleaning done) and waiting for the carpet dude to come by because the carpet in that house is crapola and we needed an estimate. (Thank goodness for large tax returns... what can I say!?)

Last night we moved the grill inside because, joy of joys, the renter also thought my pot rack was nice and took it. I was not terribly happy about that. So figured that HEY we got a nice grill of roughly equal value! 

Well, while I was there one of her "friends" shows up to get the rest of her crap (and most of it was crap) and he thought he would take the grill at the same time....

and I let him....

I. KNOW!!!! I should have said "when the pot rack comes back you can have the grill." But I'm a softy and did no such thing, and now the grill is gone, and my pot rack is gone... and I'm fairly sure I won't see it again. 

Note to self: Stop being a push over in person. Thankyouverymuch!

So tomorrow... I get to rip up the carpet though! That should get some frustration out at least :D