Whew!

We're fine!!! You've all been waiting so patiently for news of our safety, sending all those care-packages and cards, the email alerts for "hill" in the columbus obituaries, the prayers for our safety, well it all worked and we're ok!

No but seriously, that was, um, fun. This first picture is actually from a few weeks ago in a bit rainstorm. It's taken from inside my garage a little before noon. the water flooded everyone's yard up the street from us but it stayed in our ditch where it goes so that was lucky. There's a pipe under the driveway and the water was just as high on the other side.

Then, on Sunday, (Chris' Birthday), we met Ike. The wind was getting pretty bad, but when our cable went out we went outside to see what was going on. The first thing we saw was the shingles flying off the roof as fast as they could. Still not realizing this was Ike Chris borrowed a ladder from a neighbor to climb up and check the damage to the roof before the rain came and soaked through. While he was up there (with me holding the ladder), this happened:


I was standing with the ladder right in front of Zoe's window there, and when I heard it I thought it was the close tree and I couldn't figure out whether to run and have both the tree and the ladder fall on me, or stay where I was and hope it didn't hit me. Unfortunately, my neighbor (who was helping me hold the ladder) decided to run and flung the contents of her coffee cup all over me in the process. I didn't notice at the time because I was so relieved to still be alive. So Chris wisely got off the roof and we all went inside to huddle around the windows.

Here's a better picture of my poor tree. We lost part of another on on the north side of the house, tons of shingles, our cable/internet/phone for a week (which explains why I haven't posted in a while), and our water was rationed. However we never lost our power for which I am extremely grateful considering there are still people in the city without it. We had more that 350,000 people lose their power and it was pretty scary for a while. Ice was in major demand, people were buying it right off the truck, bottled water was flying off the shelves (lots of people here are on wells so they didn't have any water at all). We had potable water but it was such low pressure it took forever to shower and I was really happy I'd already done all our laundry that morning. It was cool though, to see people come together. People were driving around with chain saws to help remove downed trees, businesses were making room in their freezers for other businesses product so it didn't go bad, people had extension cords hanging out their windows so their neighbors could have a microwave and a lamp. Apparently it was a category 1 hurricane still when it reached us, 75mph winds, and though we didn't get the rain the rest of the mid-west got we got harder hit with wind than they did. I think I'm going to get a kit together to keep in the garage--water at least, but a full 72 hour kit wouldn't go amiss I think. I've heard too many horror stories about the freezing winters here.

Ta Da!!

Okay. Here's my house. Half of it anyway. We'll start with the kitchen, since that was put together first. This is looking from the corner where the garage door is over toward my lovely stove and dishwasher. The little cabinet on the right has my microwave on top and it holds my cake pans and pasta dishes. I haven't decided exactly how to set up the little dust catcher on top of the cabinets--I'm using it to store my less used pretty things, but I WILL NOT be putting dumb decorative crap up there that gathers dust and breaks when you clean it. Maybe a plant, but that's as far as I'll go. I like my cute little curtains over the sink, and it's just nice to have a window there at all! When you turn to the left in this picture you come to the next picture,

my Dining Room! No but really it's a nice space for my table and that's the sliding door to the back yard. When we're not using it I push the table more into the corner, but when the Missionaries came over we brought out the 6 foot folding table so we could seat everyone and that fit in the space too, so it's bigger than it looks. The door to the left is the door to the office/laundry room which I don't have a picture of yet because we're using it constantly. I really need to post a picture though because my washer and dryer are the most awesome things e-v-a-r EVAR!!!


Except possibly for my couch. Okay, so when we were here in July we found a great couch at a store by our house and it was on sale for $277, so we put $50 down on it to keep that price until we got here. So we'd been looking around at other stuff to go with it and finally decided we needed to get the couch in the house first. We went to pay the rest and pick it up, and thought, we need to sit on it one more time. We walked over to the corner where it lived, and sat on it, and promptly bought the one next to it instead. This couch, we decided, is the one we would always regret not having bought. It's leather and suede, and the best part is it only cost $20 more than the first one!!! The ottoman was a great find too--we got that from their clearance area for cheap cheap cause it was the last one. It has a little drawer in it and it's leather too. The paintings are from Chris' mom, and I like them the best of anything I've seen from her.


Here's a slightly different view with my piano in it (yes it made it all the way here!) so you can see how cute that is. We still need a few chairs and maybe a rug, but that's going to have to come slowly. I also want a tree in that corner. I don't know what kind of tree, but a tree. and maybe a lamp.

And I just accidentally deleted the other picture for the living room, so I'll have to put that in another post. It was of my front window with the cedar chest and drapes. oh well.





here's the other wall in the livingroom, the front door is on the right, and the door you see on the left is to the water heater and furnace. That's Grandma Matheson's stereo (that was in her kitchen) and it works great AND has a plug in the back that we can plug in our mp3 players!








This is the family room, I'd like to point out how clean it is. We need something on the walls, but other than that this room is very nice and cosy. Well, there's that other thing too. The intake for the a/c is in that room. sooo, everytime the blower kicks on you have to turn the TV up really really loud. We played around with it though, and it looks like if we put a piece of furniture in front of it it will quiet down without blocking the air. Now we just need to find something big enough to block it and thin enough it doesn't block the hallway.


So that's my house, stay tuned for the other half of the house, including Jimmy's race car room and Zoe's new and improved Tinkerbell fabricated room.

Little Boys

Well, not to be outdone by his cousin Sam, Jimmy decided to have a golden speaking moment today as well. Chris is under the weather right now with a bad sinus thing. (either that or he blew out his vocal chords and entire respiratory system at the Utah-Michigan game). So he's coughing stuff up. We were in the car today, and Chris said, "sorry, this is going to be gross" and he leaned out of the door and spit on the street. Jimmy wanted to know what he had in his mouth that he spit out. Chris told him "gross stuff. Mostly boogars." Jimmy got a big smile and said, "Hey! I eat those!!"


Oh yeah. Like I'm gonna kiss him again!

The Gateway Arch

So they're not of the house, but at least they're pictures. This is the Gateway Arch in St. Louis. When we were discussing the trip to Ohio, the subject of the arch came up and I immediately laughed and said NO WAY am I going up in that thing! But then we got there and I realized I simply couldn't waste such a golden opportunity, and what kind of sightseeing traveler would I be if I didn't take the chance to get out of the blasted car! So we went. This is a picture of where we parked. Yes. It really is that far away. And yes that is the Big Muddy. And yes, it is big. and muddy. And quite gross. If you'll notice, the parking area isn't next to the river, it's IN the river. The ground was wet under my car. Very odd. It was also trying to decide whether or not to storm, so the air was so thick with humidity you could chew it.

This is a picture of me on the inside of the arch. I know it's hard to tell but you can kind of get a hint of the weird tiny slanty space up there. It looks like I'm leaning over because I am--nothing up there is a 90 degree angle. I had to beat out two grade schoolers and a toddler to get this picture too, they wouldn't move and since the windows are only big enough for one eye to see out at a time there was a bit of intimidation required to get a good picture.











This is a picture looking straight down from the very top. You can see the shadow of the arch and those triangle things at the sides are the feet of the arch. You'll notice the angle...creepy.












This is a picture of my cuties trying as hard as they can to get washed away into Lake Erie. It was a pretty lake, incredibly big, and lots of sand which surprised me...I don't know why it should but it did. Lakes around Salt Lake worth going to are surrounded by rocks. Little smooth rocks to be sure but rocks nonetheless.







This is our trip to the Zoo. We took more pictures of the zoo, however this one portrays the spirit and theme of our visit so succinctly that I just didn't feel the need to add any more.

We left after 5 hours having seen less than half of the exhibits.


We had to hurry VERY quickly past a certain group of monkeys...doing monkey things...that monkeys really shouldn't do...especially RIGHT in front of the glass...with really smug expressions on their faces...

One final note, the rain last night was crazy! Chris and I were in the laundry room and we heard a weird rushing noise like a plane was landing on the house so we rushed to the front door and couldn't open it because Noah was sailing down the street. I wanted to take a picture but we literally couldn't open anything-windows, doors, anything. There was a big flood warning on the tv telling us not to let our children play in the water. Pretty cool.

Yeah Yeah...

I know. I said I'd post pictures after the truck arrived, and here it's been a week and yet there's no pictures. Give me a break will ya? Let me give you a little taste of what's been going on here and maybe then you'll understand.

First, we were trying to get ready for the Taste of Reynoldsburg--the little fair I was making my start in. This is hard to do when you don't even have a kitchen table. so we had to buy one. Then we realized that I had packed the cake pans on the truck. so we had to buy some. Then we found the cake pans where they were carefully packed and realized that what was on the truck was cookie sheets. so we had to buy some.

Sooo, then the truck came and we actually had tons of people come to help us out and it only took a couple of hours to get it all unloaded. Everything we packed carefully came out perfectly--the piano, the dressers, the stereo, the cedar chest, the castle, the bouquet, etc. But...we kind of used the entertainment center as a wall, and since it's about 6 years old and made of Shopko particle board, it didn't fair so well. We got it kind of propped up now and it even holds the TV! You hardly notice the slant... a few dumb little bookshelves gave up their lives, but the real tragedy is my Dragon--most of you probably never saw him but he was beautiful and sparkly and purple and now he's slightly...less. Mostly on the front. I looked for the piece that broke off so I could glue it back on but there was nothing in the box but dust. Apparently I slacked off a bit when i packed that box. But everything else came through great, dishes, glasses, pictures, everything!

So Chris immediately unpacked the printer so he could hook it up and print off the labels I needed for the Taste, but there was no power cord. At this point we had no choice, so we had to buy one. (are you seeing a pattern here?) Not buy a power cord mind you, a new printer. I'm not so sure that I believe it was an accident because I know for a fact that Chris has been wanting a new printer for some time. He even showed me the one he wanted at sams club (that we ended up buying early tuesday morning). Highly suspicious...

So the Taste. We worked hard, all three of us, and got over 600 peices of baked goods made, wrapped, labeled, and ready for sale. I got a premier spot, away from anyone else selling goodies and right next to a bridal boutique, and at the end of the night I counted everything and discovered that I had made a whopping $91. So now my freezer is full of bars and cookies...I donated a big box of sugar cookies to the police officers who were at the Taste...and we took the banana bread with us on our trip to Cleveland. Oh well.

So the next day we slept until about 10:30, stumbled out of bed and into the car and were a good 100 miles away before we realized we forgot EVERYTHING WE COULD EVER NEED. My mom broke her glasses that morning, so she was a little distracted trying to find a store that could replace them while packing in her sunglasses. Chris assumed I knew what he needed, I assumed he would pack/put in my hand anything he needed, and basically we didn't bring anything necessary except for the kids' swimming suits (which we promptly left at the first hotel). I say we went to Cleveland, but though we went through it's boundaries we never actually saw it. We went to WildWater Kingdom at Geauga Lake. It was SO AWESOME!!! It was kind of stormy, but since it was free and the people at the park said the radar looked good, we decided to give it a shot. The best part was that everyone already at the park thought the storm would get worse so they all left!!! Seriously, we got there about 4 and people were leaving in droves because there had just been lightening so the lifeguards made everyone get out of the water. We went in and found our cabana (my brother in law who set this whole thing up for us got us a cabana! it was so cool!!!) and by the time we had ordered food (brought right to us at our reserved, shaded deck chairs by the wave pool) everything was back open and we played and played and played until they closed at 8. It was a ton of fun, and I don't even like water parks.

So that was a good day until we got back and read Chris' email to find that because of the way they are paying his stipend his financial aid is basically nil. So that combined with the less than stellar launching of my little business means that I have to get a job. Which Stinks. Oh well. We also found out that Jimmy has a spot in the day care at OSU, so that's good. expensive but good. so here's the new plan. I'm going to get a job and work this year, promoting my business in my spare time (there's a few little shows I was invited to participate in), and then by next fall when Jimmy's in kindergarten I can just do Faerie Cakes in the morning and be done when he's done and have the rest of the day with my kids. It seems really big and disappointing to me right now, but really it's just making me take more time to ease into this new thing. All that happened was the window for success closed by quite a lot so I have to take the time to open it again myself. No biggie. The thing I'm most excited for is that bridal boutique I was next to in the Taste wants me to create a dummy cake to put in their shop. That should bring me something good I think!

Anyway, I have more to say, mostly about Kirtland, but I have to put kids to bed now and watch more Olympics!!!!!! (I love olympics).

going and going and going...

We are finally here! Let's see if I can condense the last week down into a post small enough to write before I collapse.

We got the truck loaded on Friday, managing somehow to use just over 10 feet of the truck. I say somehow, but it was completely due to my Dad's awesome Tetris skills. Then we cleaned and cleaned and went to a wedding and cleaned and then we loaded up the cars and took off early Monday morning. We each drove a car loaded to the gills with stuff we urgently needed (or forgot to put on the truck) and had walkie talkies and a huge bag of back up batteries so we could keep each other awake. I thought before we left that that would be a bit superfluous because we had cell phones, but actually I was really grateful we had them with us.

I was also extremely grateful we DIDN'T have the kids with us. I missed them, but I barely made it 600+ miles per day--I can't imaging trying to make that drive with kid friendly music and tiny bladders. (I still had to deal with Chris, but at least he was in a different car!!) Just kidding--although I have to say he insisted on more bathroom breaks than I did. But maybe that was him being sweet and looking out for me cause he knew I was trying to muscle my way through.

Anyway, we stopped in Denver the first night and went to dinner with Nikki and Joel and Nikki's fiance Brian (whom we hadn't met before). It was actually a lot of fun, and we ruined the poor waitress' night by sitting there taking up the table for hours.

The next day we drove through Kansas, which was actually a lot prettier than I thought it would be. That's not saying much, but some parts were quite beautiful. Kansas City MO offered a strange welcome--we started across the bridge that takes you over the Missouri river into the city across the state line, and as soon as we saw the "you are entering Missouri" sign, there was an absolutely horrible smell like lake stink and yellowstone and landfill all combined into one. Then we got out of the car and practically drowned just trying to breathe! We drove through several little thunderstorms, so every bit of the drive was extra humid. We were so tired that we couldn't bear the thought of staying up any longer even to get good KC barbeque. So we went to Dennys. I know. But it was really late and we were so tired!!

So then we drove to St. Louis, and as even though I swore I wouldn't, I simply couldn't pass through the city and not go up in the arch. Well that was interesting from the get go. First of all there's a huge security check point to even get into the ticket office. Well, we had been moving and cleaning, and Chris had his big knife in his pocket. you know, the big giant one that flips open, the one he bought from a cop and was (barely) legal in Utah? Yeah, it's not legal in Missouri. So much so that when Chris tried to surrender it they wouldn't take it because they couldn't be in possession of it either. So we had to go put it in our car which was like two miles away down six miles of stairs and through several clouds, literally on the bank of the Mississippi. So we went back and bought our tickets for the tram. The tram was interesting--8 round cars that supposedly seat 5 people but really were made for gerbils--attached on in a row so they all swing independently from each other. Yes, I said swing. Often. Creakily. The tour guide said that the trip up takes 4 minutes and the trip down takes 3 minutes because gravity is on your side. I couldn't help thinking that I didn't want gravity on my side--I wanted FRICTION on my side. and big fluffy pillows. And WIDE OPEN SPACES!! It was very odd at the top, because it is very very apparent that you are inside the arch. That's hard to describe, but you know how the inside of cool looking buildings is usually nondescript and it's hard to tell that there's a difference until you look out the window? Well the inside of the arch is triangular just like the outside, and you lay on the slanty carpeted walls and look out the tiny slits for windows. We took pictures, but the camera's dead so you'll have to wait.

We drove on and on and on and on and finally we made it to Columbus. It was just at sunset and absolutely beautiful. Since we got here we've been going crazy, unpacking boxes, organizing, baking, shopping, building furniture, cleaning, you name it, and all the while Zoe and Jimmy and running around yelling and screaming and fighting and playing and whining and eating (or refusing to eat). FINALLY, after dinner tonight (saturday) we've got the cable all fixed and working so we can watch the Olympics and check email and, of course, blog.

I have to sleep now, but when we get the truck and the furniture I'll post pictures!

The Proverbial Wire

We're in the final countdown now--the paperwork is all signed with the new tenant, services are canceled, we're eating off paper and plastic, and the end is in sight. It's kind of disgusting how much stuff I have in the kitchen alone. My mom saved up all her newspapers for days and I went through them in just a few cabinets.

I found a cool thing though, well I guess I didn't FIND it so much as decide to trust in a commercial. I took the glass castle that was on my wedding cake over to the UPS store to have them pack it for me. It took about 10 minutes and less than $10 and now I don't have to "worry 'bout a thing." But the real test will be unpacking it in Ohio and seeing how good a job they really did.

And now on top of packing and saying goodbye and all that, now I also have to type up a statement for a deposition. Fun stuff. My former boss is being sued by a former employee of hers who is lying through her teeth about everything including me and my actions. Buffi should have fired her long before this ever happened.

But enough of this nonsense--I have so much crap to do today. It's my goal to have everything packed by tonight, and even though I know that's not going to happen I'm going to do the best I can to alleviate stress at the end of the week.