A Beautiful Gift for Lottie

We received an absolutely beautiful gift today. It is a cradle built by my dad (with assistance from my mom). It is so gorgeous that I had to share pictures right away.

 

Assembling the Cradle:

Dad actually sent very detailed color instructions and all it required was a screwdriver. We are talking a whole other lever of craftsmanship here.

 

 

 

It came with a custom mattress and 4 sets of sheets. It is absolutely amazing. Charlotte is one beloved little girl.

 

The Hardegrees and The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Move

This move will go down in history. I will start by explaining The Terrible: moving with a 34 week pregnant wife in the middle of tax busy season and a husband in the worst block of med school according to the professors and older students. If all those don’t say “it’s a great time to move,” then we sure don’t know what does. We have been planning to move from about week 2 in our original house, so when the house that our friends from church (the husband is a 3^rd year VCOM student) came available, we jumped on it. It is an area we were trying to move to from the beginning, is an amazing house (we had been over several times), and is with our same property management company, so it seemed like a great idea. Plus, we could move before having a 2 month old—the age Lottie would be when our lease was up. Because everything in the South moves at its own pace as you are about to see, our property manager agreed to let us move with no fee to us at all.

We arranged to get the new house on 2/14 and vacate the old on 2/23, thinking a 10-day overlap would be helpful given the circumstances I described above. Carrie was going to fly in on 2/14 to help me paint the nursery and move my kitchen. In comes The Horrible: SC got hit by a 3 day snow storm with Spartanburg getting 4 inches. After hours of trying to figure things out, Carrie and I realized there was no way for her to get here. Besides being horribly disappointed (I have seen her for 3 hours since November 2012), I was now on my own for the weekend since Chris had a 2 tests Monday and 1 Tuesday. I managed to paint the nursery and move the kitchen (and was completely safe doing it—I promise!). We spent every evening of the following week taking loads over to the new house. We moved about half the house. The rest we boxed up to be moved along with the furniture by movers I had hired for Saturday.

Friday afternoon ushered in The No Good: I received a call from Budget saying that the 24 ft truck I had booked a month ago was not going to be available, so would a 16 ft truck be ok? Not sure why I was asked if it was ok—if there was no 24 ft truck physically there for me to pick up, then I guess I have to take the 16 ft truck. Chris worked his magic and got us a decent discount, but we were still stuck with a truck half the size we needed.

Saturday morning arrived—our sweet friend Ingrid showed up to help with last minute things and to allow Chris to head to the school to study while the movers did their thing. I had also arranged for our wonderful friend Megan to show up after the house was empty to clean. As 130pm arrives, so does The Very Bad: No movers show up. And hour pasts, nothing. I call and am assured they will be there in the next 30-60 minutes. Nothing. Now Megan shows up with her husband and 3 kids to help and to clean, except the house is a total chaos of boxes and disassembled furniture. I call again—another promise that they are 40 minutes away. Again, nothing. Now, my poor husband gets a call from his super stressed and hormonal pregnant wife, and he takes over the situation. After many calls and lots of sitting around doing nothing, the movers arrive at 7pm—5.5 hours late. We sent everyone home (Megan did all the cleaning she could—bless her heart) and asked the movers to get everything that Chris could not move himself, knowing that a second trip was most likely not in the cards. Sure enough, the movers finished unloading the first trip at 11pm. They managed to get everything except about 30 boxes and our bikes. They did a pretty good job actually. We felt bad for them since they don’t have anything to do with scheduling. All this meant that Sunday, we skipped church to finish moving, which Chris pretty much did by himself. We returned the truck 1.5 hours late (just let them try and charge us for that) and were completely out of the old place by 1pm—exhausted, achy, and grumpy.

Though we are still not recovered enough to appreciate all the humor in the situation (the house is in total disarray since we pretty much had the movers just put boxes anywhere being too exhausted to care), we have tried to focus on the positives—the weather was AMAZING, we did completely move out of our old house, and we did not pay full price for anything thanks to Chris’ firm but polite handling of everything. And even though our house looks like this

 

this

 

and this 

  it still feels cozier and nicer than the Norwood place.

First Trimester

I am trying to get better about blogging now that I have interesting things to report i.e. Lottie. So here is a catch up post with weekly pics of the first trimester.

 

 

 

Moving to Boiling Springs

We are moving! We got the new place on Friday and don’t have to be out of the old place until the following Sunday, which gives us 10 days of overlap. With Chris in one of the toughest blocks of med school, me in busy season, and me being 34 weeks pregnant, we thought it best to overlap quite a bit. I went over Saturday and painted Lottie’s nursery a medium gray (I used Sherwin Williams No-Odor or VOC paint, a mask, and gloves just so everyone knows). Sunday I moved the kitchen to the new house. The kitchen is the best part of the new place to me—it is huge! Here are the things we are super pumped about with this new place:

-          It is smaller. We don’t fill the current place at all, and I don’t want to gather more to fill it. A smaller place will hopefully keep our clutter-gathering to a minimum.

-          It is newer—built in 2006 instead 1927, which provides a ton of benefits like real closets, bigger bathrooms, a more sensible floor plan, moisture-free/mildew-free rooms, and-wait for it-insulation!

-          The laundry room and pantry are inside the house, so no more going to get your cereal in the morning in a pantry below freezing. I also will do the laundry more frequently since I won’t have to bundle up and go into the frigid winter to move clothes between the washer and dryer.

-          It has dry, well-ventilated bathrooms—our towels may last longer than a day before smelling mildew-y.

-          The house is evenly heated and cooled—no more bedroom that is 104 degrees and a living room that is 55 degrees at the same time.

-          It has 2 bathrooms! No excuses not to visit us now!

-          It has a 2 lane drive-way, so no more juggling parking of the cars.

-          It is in Boiling Springs, which is a suburb of Spartanburg. Even though this is further from VCOM, it feels much safer than Spartanburg.

The list goes one and on, but those are the main things. Here are a couple of pics of the new place. These aren't great--I will try to get some better ones later.

Kitchen

 

Guest Room/Office

 Master Bedroom

 

Nursery

 

Nursery (after I painted it--Chris still has to cut around the ceiling)

 

Snow Days

It is crazy how different a week can turn out from how you had it planned on your calendar. It is an important reminder that God is in control, and I am not. According to me, this week included a baby shower for us thrown by Elliott Davis on Thursday, a week of long hours since Carrie was to arrive Friday afternoon for a Bestiemoon weekend, and receiving the key to our new rental house. According to God, this week included snow, snow, more snow, and ice. We were “snowed in” from Tuesday evening to Thursday evening. The baby shower was rescheduled, and Carrie’s flights were cancelled. This is the second weekend we have tried to have a Bestiemoon, but it just doesn’t seem to be in the cards so far. I won’t dwell on it because it makes me super sad (I have only seen Carrie for 3 hours since Nov 2012). I am choosing to focus on the fact that God knows more than Carrie or I do; therefore, He is the ultimate scheduler.

On a happier note, as a Houston girl, I enjoyed the snow as much as possible. Chris and I set up our computers (and second monitors) on the dining room table and worked side-by-side with the blinds open onto the snowy landscape for 2 days. I loved working next to my hubby with 2 puppy dogs at our feet. I could get used to that. We took breaks to play in the snow, which I have chronicled below. The dogs LOVE the snow. They go nuts and race around in circles with pauses to shove their nose in a snow drift for a big whiff of whatever. We built a snowman the second day, and Chris had Winnie destroy it. It was pretty cute--the last pic is of Winnie knocking it over and the video shows her destroying it. All in all, I think we got over 4 inches of snow. It was crazy.

 

 

 

 

 

Moving

A short post about moving cross country in case anyone has a big move coming up. This was the first cross country move of both of us. My parents sweetly agreed to come with us to help out. We initially thought we would be driving a U-haul or something similar the 960 miles to Spartanburg, which had neither Chris nor my father super excited. However, we found a different solution, which ended up costing only $300 more and did not require driving a huge truck through several states. Our solution was U-Pack, and we had a great experience, so we wanted to share it with everyone. U-Pack is run by the national shipping company called ABF. They drop off a 28 foot trailer, which you pack with your stuff.

Once you are done, you put up a bulkhead, or dividing wall, and they pick up the trailer and load the remaining space with commercial cargo. In 3-5 business days, the truck is dropped off at your location after the commercial freight has been delivered, and you unload the truck. They charge you the set cost of shipping your stuff plus a per foot charge. We ended up needing a foot more than the quoted amount (we have so much stuff!! I am not sure how!). It was nice being able to use the extra foot and not worrying about needing a bigger truck or another POD or whatever. Everyone we dealt with was super nice and helpful. The truck arrived on time in Houston and was picked up early since our apartment complex decided to be difficult at the last minute. It arrived early in Spartanburg and was picked up on time. Everything arrived in great condition despite travelling through inclement weather. The only note I have is the trucks ride rough (same as all the moving trucks), so you need to pack your boxes full and well.

We are in the process of unpacking. Again, we have so much stuff. I don’t understand how we own this much, especially after the past year of Clutter Dieting. Here are some picks of Chris photo bombing my pictures. Clearly, the move to SC has not matured changed him at all. 

The Treasure Trove that is Our New House (This post is X-rated - read at your own discretion)

A single mom with 2 kids lived in the house before us. They left a ton of stuff in the house. We are still coming across things. Here is a sample of what we have found:
- Gameboy
- Little boy pants
- Hot pink Scooby-Doo suitcase
- Vacuum attachments
- Rubber chicken (in a bush outside)
- Goggles
- Socks (we have found an abundance of random kids socks in the backyard - only in the backyard)
- Beach toys
- Rake
- Huge pumpkin sign

For the most part, fairly normal things. However, I was putting stuff away in my closet while my parents were here, and I noticed a black computer type bag on a high shelf. Once I got it down, I saw it was labelled Educator Kit.

I instantly thought of Sarah, my SIL, and figured I may have some teaching stuff to send to her. Boy was I wrong as I discovered when I opened it up and found...

A SEX KIT.

No joke.

It included several types of birth control (including cycle beads and a plastic model of the female reproductive system) as well as 2 dildos and several lubes. Not exactly the Educator's Kit I as expecting to see.