Getting There

Finally, it seems like things are getting done and we’re getting a little more settled in each day. It’s amazing how smoothly things seemed to have gone for us in AZ. We sold our house in 2 months, sold our car in one day. Sold many of our belongings very easily on craigslist and made some good cash for them. And then we moved here and it seems like there was one roadblock after another. As much as we tried to get things organized in advance of moving here, it still took awhile to get things like Dish and Cable set up. Then there was the car situation. My car that was being transported from Phoenix arrived a week after their guaranteed arrival date and many many frustrating conversations with that company. While waiting for my car to arrive the AZ registration expired on it, so it was top priority to get it registered once I had it here. But first we had to get our drivers licenses and insurance. The day we went for our licenses we waited about 2 hours and then their computer crashed and they told us to come back the next day. After we got that straightened out, the next day, I went to get it registered. But the title I got from the bank was incomplete, so they told me to call the bank and come back when I got a new title or letter from the bank. Why couldn’t anything just go easily so we could cross it off our list?

This week seems to be going a bit smoother. We finally have 2 cars! We drove out to Pittsburgh on Saturday to pick it up since the dealerships out here didn’t care enough to make us a good deal.

I did get what I needed from the bank, so I went back and was able to get the car registered. Today I dropped the car off for inspection and emissions testing (something we didn’t have to do in AZ). It passed! Today we also went and opened checking and savings accounts. That took about an hour to do, but it felt good to cross off the list! There’s not much else that we need to run around and get done on lunch breaks or in the early morning. We need new cell phones. We get crazy looks when we give out our phone number with a 480 area code. It’s such a small town that they don’t even expect us to say an area code since everyone has the same one!

I’m thinking about getting an iphone. I’m not usually big into getting the last technology and gadgets (that’s usually Justin), but I think an iphone will be tons of fun. Will it be worth the extra $30 monthly fee? We’ll see.

July - a look back

I was just browsing through some old pictures. Here are some pictures of Paige from July 06, July 07 and July 08!

July 2006 - 2 months old

July 2007 - 14 months old

July 2008 - 26 months old

Shoes

Paige loves her shoes. Grandma and Pop visited this weekend and bought her dolly a pair of shoes. I'll let the pictures tell the story...

Oven/Stove Safety

A little while back, I posted how Paige had managed to open the oven door. Of course, we couldn't just always keep her out of the kitchen, so we bought an oven door safety lock. It's cheap and effective. Here are some reviews on the lock.

In our new place, the oven/stove is gas and not electric. Also, the knobs for the stove are right above the oven door and not on the top back like they were in the old house. These are pretty much just at eye level for Paige! The other night, I was sitting in the living room and thought I smelled gas. Someone (probably Paige) had turned one of the knobs just enough on the lowest setting to turn the burner on so that gas would be coming out at a slow rate. Luckily I had smelled it and we turned it off and aired out the house. Immediately we went to the computer to find locks for the burner knobs. We came across these online.


The reviews were mixed. Sounded like it could be a hassle when cooking. The actual stove knob fits inside these plastic cases. After reading several reviews, we decided to take the advice of one of the reviewers online and just remove our knobs all together!
I don't know why we hadn't thought of this ourselves! Without the knobs, the gas can not be turned on. They slip on quickly enough when we do have the stove in use that it's no big deal.

Wisconsin Trip

We had a great time on our long weekend to Wisconsin. It was nice to spend some quality time with Paige again too. We've lost a little of that since the move. Here's Paige driving Great Grandpa's tractor.

Paige being cute. She was doing a lot of that. She was so well behaved the entire trip. We messed up her naps pretty badly, but she was still a trooper.

Here she is chewing grass just like great grandpa.

Great Grandpa's cows. Surprisingly she wasn't all that frightened of them. We never actually touched them, so I think that helped that we were sort of at a distance. She would "moo" to them.

Paige checking herself out in the mirror.





















Grandpa, Mommy, Daddy & Paige. We're at the dog park that is being donated to by Aunt Judy's memorial fund. It's a huge beautiful park where dogs can run free. Hopefully they will be able to get some nice exercise equipment or other fun stuff for the dogs in memory of Judy.

















Riding on Grandpa. If you click to enlarge the picture, you'll notice she's chewing on grass again. Once she learned that from grandpa, she was doing it all weekend!





















Four generations

















Here's a picture of her playing at the Milwaukee airport. Not many airports have such a nice, or any at all area for kids to play while we wait. It was nice to not have to chase her around the terminal for 2 hours!

Heading to Wisconsin

We're going to Wisconsin tonight and staying the weekend getting back in town very late on Monday night. I'm not really looking forward to flying again based on my most recent experience just a few short weeks ago. But I think this is going to be a really nice trip for us. We can take a break from thinking about unpacking and getting the house looking decent for a few days. Paige will get to meet some Aunts, Uncles, second cousins and even a great-grandfather that she has never met! She'll also get to see cows and I can't wait to see her reaction when she gets to be up close and in person. I'm thinking she might be a little frightened, we'll see. We're not planning on taking a laptop either...taking a break from that too! So I'll post with some pictures when we get back on Tuesday.

Have a great weekend.

ABC's

As part of her night time routine, she has started to give her doll a night time routine as well. In this first video, she is rocking the doll and singing her a song. The song happens to be her version of the ABC's.



This second video is her putting the baby doll in her crib to go night night. She's gonna make a great big sister one day :)

Internet

I think I mentioned in a previous post that I started working from home this week. At first, we were scheduled to have wireless internet connection through the Cresson Borough in place before the week began. However, with the trees there was not a clear signal for us to get that. Plan B was then to get cable service from Comcast. Because we moved in over the July 4th holiday weekend, we couldn't actually get in touch with anyone from Comcast until Monday, July 7th. One of our kind neighbors did not secure their wireless, so I was able to tap into that if I sat next to the window in the closet storage room. Well, that only works some of the time. If it's rainy, cloudy, or even a slight breeze I get disconnected. After a lot of frustration the first few days, I would drive down to the library that offered WiFi and work from there. Only problem with the library is that I can't make or take any phone calls. The soonest Comcast could schedule to come out to start service is Tuesday, July 15th! On Thursday, we had the idea to come into campus so I could work out of Justin's office. We weren't sure what time the office would be open, so we thought we'd have breakfast at our only fastfood restaurant in town, McDonald's. I remembered seeing a lego table there, so I knew that could keep Paige busy too. And they advertise WiFi so I could work for an hour or so before driving into campus. As soon as we get to McD's I start looking around for a power outlet. My laptop has a battery life of about 20 minutes max. I couldn't believe it, but there was not one outlet in the entire McDonald's seating area! How could a restaurant advertise WiFi but have no outlets? I asked the cashier/manager person. I should've known better. She said she didn't even know what WiFi was. She "hates computers". I tried explaining I didn't need help with the WiFi part, just the outlet to plug in. She seemed thoroughly confused. Maybe she hates electricity too.

Today (Friday) I decided to come back up to campus since it worked out fairly well yesterday. Only thing is you have to walk through a classroom to get to Justin's office and class was in session this morning. So, today I'm at the campus library...for now. Until I have to make some calls. Cross your fingers that Comcast comes out and everything is set up and ready to go on Tuesday!

Edit: Here's a picture of my makeshift office while we were waiting on Comcast installation.

Cresson - a small town

From what we've seen so far Cresson is a great, small town. Population is estimated at 1521 as of July 2006. It's very quiet. Our street as near the top of a hill. Our house is situated on a lot behind another house. So we don't get much traffic on our street at all. Today was trash pickup day. I saw the trash dump truck drive up the main street early this morning and was waiting for them to turn down our side street, but they never did. Just a few moments ago, a red pickup truck drove by collecting the rest of the trash including ours on the side streets! You know it's a small town when pickup trucks collect trash.

In Phoenix, our biggest concerns were safety. There were a lot of gangs around and graffiti. Occasionally we'd hear gun fire. Our house had been robbed within a few months of us living there. We just never really felt safe. Plus it was very noisy. At night, we'd hear dogs barking, neighbors partying, cars screeching down the street. It's the complete opposite here. Our bedroom is on the ground floor, right by the street and we hear nothing at night. Some neighbors were setting off firecrackers over the holiday weekend, but even that quieted down by 10pm! The loudest noise comes from chirping birds.

Here are some more stats on Cresson:
46% Males, 54% Females
Median age: 38.7
Estimated median house/condo value in 2005: $77,300
Race: 98.4% White Non-Hispanic
Elevation: 2030 feet

The Move: Day 5 and beyond

We made it to Cincinnati on day 5. I think this was probably the easiest day of them all. Maybe because we had a familiar place as a goal. We got in after 9pm, but it was still light outside so it wasn't bad at all. We spent the night with Grandma and Pop S. On Wednesday, we met Grandpa and Grammy M for brunch before we headed to Pittsburgh to see Grandma and Papa K! This was only a 5 hour drive. The truck was really acting up at this point. It stalled on us in the middle of the highway a few times. It was to the point that I wasn't even comfortable driving it anymore. I was so relieved when we finally made it to Pittsburgh. We called Penske again when we got in. The technician came out and even took it for a drive, but couldn't find anything. We only had 1.5 hours more to go to get to Cresson, so we just kept our fingers crossed.

On Thursday morning, Justin drove the truck, my dad drove his car and my mom and I with Paige drove in another car. At least this time Justin had some backup if something happened with the truck. We all made it to Cresson and immediately started unloading. It took us most of the day along with my parents to get the truck emptied. The house was packed full with boxes. We went to dinner around 8pm and said goodbye to my parents from there. Back at the house, Justin and I cleared out the bedroom enough to get the mattress flat and we called it a night. Paige slept in a playpen the first few nights until we got around to setting up her crib yesterday.

At this point, we have the rooms in pretty decent shape. Livable at least. We have a room dedicated to being a closet/storage that is still pretty tough to get around in, but the main rooms are good. We still don't have Dish Network installed or even our Internet. As I type this, my laptop is on a box next to the window in the storage/closet room so that I can pick up a neighbor's wireless! Hopefully we'll have internet by mid-week. I'm officially back at work today, and this is going to be pretty tough working like this for very long without my own internet!

Check out the July 08 folder on Picasa for pictures from our trip and our first few days in Cresson.