Relief

I think I mentioned that we had found a house in Blackfoot. . .well we got a call this week. Oops, they sold the house. Ahh!! So we started scrambling to find a new place. No one was answering/returning my calls. Ever apartment complex I called was booked up with at least a 6 month waiting list and don't even get me started on the costs! Not one of the apartment complexes included utilities, yet they were all charging over 700!
In a state of stress I began my search in earnest employing all of the resources I know of on the internet (google and craigslist).
In the end I found an apartment . . . agreed to rent it and then happened to trip onto a site which included some renter comments. Usually I don't look at these, but for some reason I did this time and noticed it was VERY negative. Then I read the others and found another site with comments. There were about 16 total comments and of those 1 was positive and it was very short. So I backed off of that one and started the search again.
I ended up finding a few homes for rent in Rexburg, all of them higher than we wanted to pay, but still within our abilities. Then I started calling the companies. It took me 3 days, emails, phone calls/messages to get in touch with them but I finally did.
I'm still waiting for a return call about a couple questions.
So I searched again and found a townhome, emailed the owner and received a reply within a few minutes. We exchanged a few more questions and answers and finally I think this is the one. . . It's farther from campus than we were anticipating, so I've still got my ear to the other two companies just in case, but it's the best option so far:
I've included what few pictures we have of it. Don't be jealous.



This week also saw the completion of the last wiring in the house. Everything officially works. We ended up opening up an entire wall (a small one) because there were more studs than drywall and we couldn't figure out where all the wires went, but it's done and we'll worry about repairing it next week after we move everything out.
Also interesting to note that we're staying the night at my mother's house tonight because when we got home this afternoon we no longer had water. . . yes that's right, no water. Why? Well, after about 10 calls to the landlord he finally called back and . . .oh oops. . .forgot to pay the water bill last month because he went on vacation last week when it was due. Seriously? What kind of landlord are you?!?!

Anyway, on to a happier subject: We got our new car :)
My mom got the final okay for the closing on her new house, and since it is out on 2 miles of unpaved road everyone involved felt it would be wise to get a more durable car with higher clearance and 4 wheel drive. So she bought a new subaru. This meant they had an extra car. . . oh what to do with it?
So, we're the proud owners of a new Honda Accord LX. It's pretty.

Also Jason has been sick as a dog for the past week. His latest is the flu. Stay away my love, stay away. He and Alisabeth match each other well. No new work stories because he literally drags himself through the day or comes home early due to sickness.
We did have a nice yard sale this last weekend. We sold about 1/2 of our earthly possessions and a good chunk of my mother's as well. I was actually quite surprised about how few people there were. Most of them didn't speak any English and had license plates from Sonora. They were worried about how much tax they would have to pay crossing back over the border with their loot. One lady actually took our table completely apart so that she could bury it on the bottom of her other items so they wouldn't see it.
I just nodded, tried my best to not let them bargain me to death and looked away as they stashed it away.

In the end we took most of the remaining clothes and books and housewares to Goodwill. I could have tried to sell again next weekend, but no one was interested in the clothes and most of the larger items were gone. I did keep a few of the things I felt had actual worth to try to sell them on E-bay instead of yard selling. We made enough for gas on the moving truck all the way up, now we just have to see if the last few items can get us gas money for the car :)

We also had our first Christmas. It was at the Liddeke's house and it was a blast. All of the little grandkids went first and since they're all girls there were a massive amount of little beautiful dolls. I was a little nervous because Alisabeth was at attention when she realized that all the little girls were getting dolls. After about the third one she kept saying "my turn!"
So when she got a different box I feared for her reaction, but Sonja picked perfectly. When she opened her new trainset she was more than thrilled. She was immediately enthralled.
The adults had a gift exchange once the younger ones were done and I ended up with a really cute candle holder. Jason got coffee mug with some Vanilla flavored coffee. He gave the coffee to the highest bidder and planned his hot chocolate revenge.
After we had enjoyed the gifts and family for a while we had to rush across town for a "Surprise" party for Holly. We had balogna sandwiches and chips for dinner and then a great cake made by Jason's younger sister. The gifts were really nice, my favorite being the little figurines her youngest girls got for her. It was a nice night which culminated in my daughter throwing a coughing fit and making herself sick, so after locking her in her seat I got her back out and bathed her while Jason cleaned the seat and then we headed home. (She was gone before we got half-way there).

It was quite an eventful week! I'm excited for this one which promises just as much fun. Christmas Eve will start at the Liddeke's Mexican Christmas dinner followed by an overnighter at Jason's parent's house. Then gifts in the morning followed by more gifts at Nana's house and Christmas dinner. Whew! See you on the other side.

"We already had those yesterday"

Our little three year old is speaking up a storm. Luckily most of it still doesn't make any sense. She's at the stage of contradicting everything you say regardless of the truth or how she really feels. She's also into the stage of screaming at us when we don't do what she wants. It's got to be the hardest thing I've faced thus far. Then today, after screaming at me, and hearing my serious threats of having to go to bed at 5:30pm she sat back in her seat, started to eat her "I don't like it" dinner and after a few minutes whimpered out "Sorry I yelled at you mommy."
At church today we sat and played during the whole Christmas program (to keep her quiet, really) and she said "I love you mommy." These moments help me to realize that we really are getting through despite appearances and gives me hope to keep going.
Below is my sweet girl after the street fair. It's not as good as what they did at Sea World, but it cost about 1/3 of the price, so what can I say, it's good enough. She was delighted to be a cute kitty.

This week also marked my immensely amazing success with the bathroom light. I think I mentioned that in the last blog, well, I being the amazing genius that I am (and humble too) figured out that we had already torn open the wall by the light fixture, so I just connected it at that point instead of over by the switch, this way we had the return we needed.
Here's praying that the other lights work similarly (with easily traced returns). . . that's tomorrow's project.

Countdown to the yardsale. We're doing it on Saturday. We are going to underprice everything so that it sells, and sells fast. The goal is no longer to get as much money as possible for the trip. Heavenly Father provided that for us.
Jason's truck died on the way home on Thursday. The clutch burned out. He made it all the way to the exit next to ours, so i came and "bumped" him all the way home.
I hate towing cars, and neither of us wanted to wait hours for the tow truck so I just started nosing him home with my car. After a second we got going fast enough so that he could go up the hill on his own (thank goodness). (Did I mention the car was stuck in 5th gear).
After the hill I bumped him through the two left turns and we were home free. It was nice. After that we went to the mall and Alisabeth decided that she's going to save up for one of the official Disney Princess Cinderella dresses ($60). We told her it would be a long time and that she needed to fill her piggy bank all the way to the top for it. She has a good start after helping me clean out daddy's truck to get it ready to be hauled away. (We were going to give it Jason's parents, but now that it's broken it's more effort than it's worth.). There was a bunch of change in the glove compartment and she got all of it for her efforts.
I'm trying to think of what else we did this week. Oh yeah, Jason bought my Christmas gift and I accidentally found out because I was reconciling the bank account that day and suddenly a large transaction appeared and I went to research what paypal thought they were doing charging my account. . . oops. Luckily for me he doesn't check the bank accounts so he wouldn't have any clue what I got for him. *evil grin*

Jason had a great experience on Saturday. About midway through the day the other adviser was too sick and had to leave. So Jason was alone for the rest of the night, no big deal except that a customer came to get their car at about 4. It was the other adviser's customer, so Jason started to try to find it. He found it, half done in a technician's bay. That technician was gone, for no apparent reason, so Jason began searching for another technician to finish the job. The other tech was gone too. So Jason is alone in the building with a used car technician who didn't want to do anything (including his own job), and a customer. The customer was very understanding, but it was fun for him.
I told him he should just have finished it himself, but he told me it was a wiring job and there were wires everywhere. He didn't want to get involved in the middle.
He was also told this last week that he's not allowed to leave because he'll be too hard to replace. When he told me this over instant messenger I asked if that meant they were going to double his salary and give him benefits. He just laughed.

My other success this week was getting most of the house packed up. I broke down and bought a few boxes from U-haul. Every time I went to find someone with free boxes they were either really small or they canceled on me last minute and I was just getting tired of it, so I figured I'd go with them. I spent $20 and we'll probably be able to return many of them (they have a guaranteed buy-back) so we won't have lost anything.
Our other money success was our landlord granting us a refund of the deposit even though we're breaking our contract early. I had Jason talk to him. He traded us December rent and all of the remaining supplies for our deposit which was weighted on his end, but I'm okay with that. At least we're getting out with enough to pay our first month in the new place in Idaho.
We set the date for the 5th to load the truck. We'll head up to Utah and stay with friends that night and the next and be up in Blackfoot on the 7th to get our keys from our new landlord.
Ah the joys of moving.

Success

Finally! Finally finally finally.
Today (Jason's day off and the day that I get nothing done around the house. . . ever) we finished the last circuit. . . Do they all work. . .well, sort of.
Why? Ha, it's funny you should ask. See the guy why built this place had never heard of logic or planning. Apparently to him it seemed like a good idea to run single wires to every light switch instead of running a complete set of wires.
The effect of this decision is that we can't find the return wires for any of the lights.
Possible solutions include ripping up all of the ceilings, or running wires along the outside which will look absolutely atrocious, or praying with every ounce of faith that we possess and hoping that some of the exposed wires we found (but didn't know where they went to) turn out to contain return paths for the lights.
Any better ideas would be welcome.
We now have three working lights not including any of the bedrooms or the bathroom. Ah I love life.

Also this week on The Flanneries:
Alisabeth started earning money this week by doing chores and helping mommy around the house. Why? She saw an umbrella and simply had to have it. She already understands the concept of buying things and usually tries to hand things to any uniformed person and then turn to me and say "I wanna buy that." So we took it a step further and told her she would be able to buy it herself if she earned money. We explained how she could do that and then we made a big deal of putting whatever change we could find into a little piggy bank (already 1/3 full) and marking a spot about half an inch above the money already in there. Toward the end I started stuffing bills in there because they take more room.
It took her two weeks to get to the line but as soon as she got there she got such a giddy look of excited anticipation on her face that I could do nothing but smile and love her to pieces.
I didn't get to go with her to pick it out, but Jason said she was quite decisive. She chose a purple parasol. It's very cute and so far it's done everything except sleep with her. . . if only we had some rain. :)

We also took a trip up to Phoenix on Wednesday to see the lights at the temple. Every year they set up a huge light display which contains most of the scenes from Luke about the Savior's birth. There are three giant camels and wise men on the front lawn, sheppards in the fields on one section of grass. An ancient prophet writing about His birth and a bunch of other scenes. It was very cool.
Alisabeth totally understands that we're celebrating Jesus's birthday this month. She's amazing.
Tonight's Family Home Evening lesson was about his second coming (I modified my sunday school lesson to fit since we didn't have time to do anything but circuits today). She was actually engaged the whole time. We talked about how she is sad when daddy is at work, but excited when he comes home. This is what it will be like when Jesus comes back. We will be excited because He will tell us that He loves us. She even parroted it back at the end. "I will be sad because Jesus is at work, but when he comes home we will be happy because he says he loves us!"

In my life there's not much new, I've packed up all the books, and all my sewing stuff. The only thing I have left to do is a ribbon on a gift for a second cousin-in-law, and then that will be packed away too. I even packed my motivator movies by accident. All I have left are Disney. . .
The one cool thing is my story, but even that is sort of pushed into the background by everything else we have going on. I have to really be able to concentrate to write well, otherwise it's disjointed and wrong.
I did, however, somehow manage to get Best Buy employees into a lot of trouble. I guess they've changed store policy since I worked there. Saving boxes for people is not longer allowed. I got two loads from them, but when I called back for more I was informed that district had called to tell them they were no longer allowed to give them out due to liability issues. I felt bad. Hope they didn't get into too much trouble. . .
Now I don't know where to get more from though, so it's a dilemma.

Jason hasn't done anything spectacular either this week. He did complete an entire circuit today though while I finished another one. I came around the corner into the bedroom at one point to see two shoes sticking out of the hole in the wall that leads to the crawl space. He's amazing.

Nothing super exciting happening here. Just waiting for Christmas and New Years. We've set the moving date for the 5th of January, though it may shift forward or backward depending on weather as the time draws near. Hopefully that will be plenty of time to finish this house and get through the holidays. . .
We'll also be throwing a surprise party for Jason before we leave, but don't tell him that.
It'll probably be on the 4th or 3rd before we leave, and it will probably be in an undisclosed location that I haven't set yet.
For more information you'll have to wait because I don't have any. Although brownies instead of cake does sound better.