Our Two Month Move

I was quite cozy in our home on Cayman. I had definitely forgotten how much work it is to move and completely underestimated the amount of STUFF we had accumulated over our two and a half years there. Packing up our Cayman lives into 7 suitcases was practically beyond our abilities. Somehow we made and and thanks to great friends who let us dump all our left over stuff on them we began our move off the island. The day of flying was LONG but the kids did amazingly well considering the challenges. It was hard not to duck tape Juliana's shoes to her feet when she kept taking them off on every plane and in every airport and it was tempting to knock out the girls with a club a few times but we made it. :) It was great to be home in Boise. I laughed hard when after we had been there a couple weeks Calli asked me why it was cold. I explained to her it was wintertime for like the 10th time. And then she asked "but why is it STILL cold??" Christmas and New Years went like a flash. We were always busy with family activities and preparing for "phase two" of our move. We attended three different sessions of family pictures and countless family dinners. The girls had a blast seeing all their many cousins and we enjoyed showing off baby Trey. We have more memories from the holidays that we can write about. We are very grateful for our families who help us and love us so much. Amid the family chaos -eh, I mean bliss :) we were doing our best to sort through our things in storage and pack for Minnesota. Rob broke down his anti-minivan guard and we bought a mid sized van. We love this van. We fit an unbelievable amount of things in it. It has served us well. Rob just likes the remote button to open the sliding door. j/k. January 5th we had another round of goodbyes and then we were off to Minnesota. The portable DVD player helped entertain the girls on the drive. We also sang songs and we stopped at half a do zen Burger Kings for the girls to play in the playplace and get wiggles out. We had some treacherous driving in thick snow for a few hours the first night the rest of the drive was pretty clear. After a nice stop with friends in Bozeman the first night and a shifty hotel night in -10 degree North Dakota the second night we finally arrived at the Twin Cities. Finding our new apartment was an adventure in itself but we made it. We slept on an air mattress for a week while we worked on buying all the furniture we needed from craigslist and getting some very generous free furniture from another church member. After about two weeks we had all the basic furniture we needed. Since then we have just been organizing and settling into our new home. Our home has definitely gone through interesting stages of 'moving-in' but now we have a perfect little table for eating at, living room we can relax in, and nice beds to sleep in. Feeling all moved in we were able to start thinking outside of the house. We have enjoyed time with our cousins that live here and new friends. We are also really enjoying the free things to do with kids here. We have an open ice skating rink in our apartment complex and a nice play room in the community center. The library is fantastic and there are many zoo's and museums we are looking forward to exploring. We are quickly liking the area. Hopefully now that life has slowed down a bit I might be able to do some regular posting. No promises though. :) Thanks again to all our friends and family that are always there for us.