Moving Photos!

We finally got our internet working so I can share our adventure photos with you all. Hang with me because this will be a looong post but hopefully you’ll enjoy it!

It snowed the week before our move and stayed cold so nothing melted off but we had no trouble getting the truck in and out of our driveway. Here is Bella, a couple days before the move playing outside.

The beginning of the packing process. Kenny had actually flown to Colorado to pick up some furniture his parents gave us and drove back with his Dad making a stop over in Oklahoma to see Grams.

Several people came to help us move (sorry I didn’t get a picture of all of them together) This is Kenny with Pastor Brad from Faith Baptist Church – His wife, Sarah, also came to help and their dog Cookie but I didn’t get a picture of them somehow

This is Allison, also from Faith. She didn’t want me to take her picture :)

The guy in white is Soren, he came a brought the whole family to help and you guessed it, I didn’t get a picture of them either :(  His wife, Sabrina, my coffee buddy, brought their coffee pot from home so I could have some java and still pack my pot up, they also brought hotdogs for lunch. I really feel like I was in a fog all day, I had been preparing for this day for almost a month but I just felt to scattered as all my “life” was being loaded into a 16ft truck…

I’m still not certain as to how they got everything packed into that truck but my Father-in-law, (the guy in the black sweatshirt with the shorts on…) having been in the military, is an expert packer.

We said our goodbyes after the truck was loaded and headed down to my parents house to spend the night before hitting the long road to Florida early the next morning.

  Our View My riding partner

Wally’s riding partner!

We made it to the house about 6:30pm making our total trip in just over 13 hours. Kenny and Wally started unloading some stuff as Bella and I started to check out the house. People from the church came over after the service was finished to help us unload. I think they had everything off the truck and set in the different rooms of the house in about 15 minutes!

After they finished Pastor Brown (the only one in a jacket) had a word of prayer for us, our new ministry together, and our new house. They all left and us weary travelers headed to bed after grabbing a bite to eat in town.

Now for the pictures your all wanting to see… except these are the ones I took right after we moved in, you’ll have to wait til tomorrow to see what I’ve done with the place ;)

This is the front of the house from across the street, as you can see we live in a long row of houses that are connected together.

The walk way leading to the front door.

  Our Living Room is the first room you walk into (which faces the back yard) and if you walk through the door you see here…

…you go into the Master Bedroom. Take a right and that leads you into…

Our closet space (which is not pictured) and the Master bath. Now coming out of our room you go back into the Living Room to see…

…the dining room (your facing the street in case you’ve gotten turned around)

The kitchen is just to the right of the dining room if your looking at the picture above this one. Down the hall we go…

Into, what looks like a man cave right now but will become the craft room and home office. Across the hall…

…is the door to the Garage/Laundry room. Back inside and heading further down the hall (going toward the street)

is the spare bathroom which is right next to…

… the spare bedroom and the end of the hall.

Come back tomorrow to see how I’ve set stuff up and some of the plans I have for decorating.

Packing

I decided to take a break and show you some of our packing progress. To be very honest, at the moment, I feel like I’m doing all this packing but I’m not even making a dent in all of our stuff :/ what’s worse is I also feel like I’m in a non-stop mess! But don’t worry I know I’m making progress and things will look a lot better around here after the “Donate” pile has been hauled off and the “Sell” pile is going down. Any ways here are some pictures if your interested… and some helpful (at least I thought they were) moving tips I’ve gotten all over the place!

The “Donate/Sell” Pile – it pretty much takes up the whole room!

- My Packing Station -

  Former “Man Cave” now my stash for already packed boxes.

 

Now here are the Tips:

• Use small boxes to pack books. This may sound like an inconvenience to pack several small boxes with books but them being small will save your back later as you load and unload your truck! FYI we went to our local grocery store and asked for milk boxes and they gave them to us for free! Can’t beat that deal. – This back saver came from Pastor Mike Haley, being a Pastor he has moved a lot of books through several different moves so I think he would know how to best do that.
• Wrap/Pack glasses, dishes, and breakables in plastic grocery bags. They are way cleaner than newspaper and allow for a tiny bit of jiggle room in your boxes so things are less likely to break (of course you still want to pack things tightly) and for the best reason, they are free at the grocery store just start saving them as you purchase things and ask your friends to do the same. – This one comes from my Grandma who has moved many, many times and has experienced little to no loss of her numerous dishes!
• Pack dresser drawers (any drawers for that matter) and cabinets as full as you can. No sense in wasting that empty space, fill it with things you are taking with you any way. – I think this one came from my Mom who moved around a lot as a child/teen/young adult.
• Place pictures and other flat items in-between blankets, sheets and pillows to keep them protected. Just be careful when your un-wrapping! – this one came from my friend, Sabrina, who has also moved several times with her former Marine hubby.
• Use the “Color Coding” system. Pick a color for each room of your new house, (i.e. Yellow – Kitchen, Blue –  Garage, etc.) then label your boxes accordingly – I got this hint online somewhere but I can’t remember where so I could give them credit for an awesome idea
• On my colored pieces of paper I’ve also been labeling what is in each box so when we get there it will be easier to find what is needed instead of having to unpack every box right away. – This one is from Mom (she’s a super woman when it comes to packing things!)

Well that is the end of my borrowed brilliance! Any other tips I should know or could add to my list?

~Bex

We're Going to Camp and We're Gonna have a Ball!

Did you ever listen to the old Patch the Pirate tape (yes, I said TAPE, not CD) called "Camp Kookawakawoods?" My mom would always plug that one in when we were on our way to camp as kids... Ok, we listened to it as teenagers too... Ok, so I still listen to it :) I just love it :) anyways there is a song on there that says

"We're going to camp, and we're gonna have a ball,

We're going to camp to get away from it all!

Were the bears are tame and the councellors bite, OUCH!

I'm going to Camp!!!!!"

I have been singing that song all morning (in my head because I think Kenny was getting annoyed with my singing :S) But We're going to camp, and I'm all excited.
We'll be leaving today after the Sunday Morning Service, headed for Georgia for a week.
Please keep us in your prayers as we travel and for the services.

Our Honeymoon

Like I said in yesterdays post we spent our first two nights at a bed a breakfast called The Red Horse Inn and it was amazing! If your looking for a nice place to get away this place would be at the top of my list.

It was a beautiful room with a private balcony and entrance. They put breakfast in our mini fridge – Quiché, muffins, fruit, OJ and even some chocolate covered strawberries with a congrats sign :) like I said it was very nice :)

We left the Inn early Monday morning for Panama City Beach, FL This is the only picture I took on our 8 hour drive (I slept most of the way)

We got into town at 10am (with the time change) and went to the house we rented for the week.

  It had two bedrooms(one of which became our suitcase and dirty clothes room) 1 1/2 baths a nice spacious kitchen and living room, it was like home away from home :) except for the fact that we were only a block away from the beach and our real home is in the mountains!

… This is the part were I tell on myself :S … We had signed up to get our scuba certification in Florida, it was a three day, fast pace class; we had already finished the classroom part online and just had to do our pool and open water dives. Our first pool dive was on Monday at 12 pm. After stopping by the house and grabbing a change of clothes for scuba we took off to do our pool dives. Unfortunately I couldn’t finish the dives and we didn’t get our certification – but I am planning on trying again in a slower paced class! So instead of diving for three days we rented scooters on Tuesday,

 

and drove to a National park along the beach which just happened to have a Gator Pond that you could hike around!

Can you see the gator in the water??? 30ft was about as close as I was going, I just knew he was the decoy and there was another one lurking in the bushes waiting for curious tourists!

 

 

 

We also had a lot of fun just climbing in the trees :)

 

 

 

 

After the gators we went a little further in the park to a place called the Jetty’s – basically a beach with a stone reef around one side in the water. -

  We played around in the water for a couple of hours before heading back to Red Robin for supper… YUM!

On Wednesday we took a Jet ski, dolphin tour! The dolphins would hear the noise of the jet ski and would swim right up to us, it was really neat. While on the tour we stopped at Shell Island, a very small strip of land with 2-3 mansions on it.

Here’s the Hermit Crab Kenny found, he found a lot more Thursday when we went snorkeling!

Thursday morning, before we went snorkeling, we went to this Donuts, Burgers and Fish shop just down the street from our house and it was so good we went there for lunch on Thursday and breakfast Friday morning as well!

  I had to add just one picture to make you really drool :)

Friday Morning (after another amazing breakfast at the donut shop) we loaded up the car and made the trip home. Tomorrow, or maybe Friday, I’ll start our home tour but I’m going to apologize now for not taking any before pictures of what we’ve done, you’ll just be left to wonder about what our house looked like before! Until then I hope you have a wonderful day!