New house

Whew. Got our dryer hooked up and we now have internet! Things are slowly getting unpacked, but still needs a lot of work. This Saturday we will be in Corvallis cleaning up our old place and collecting the last of our things. When this is all done we are doing a massive clean out and getting rid of a bunch of stuff we have collected through out the year. You never realize how much stuff you have until you move I guess. What's nice is that this place is bigger so we have a spare bedroom we can still walk through even with the pile of stuff. It's also two stories so now I have to get use to walking up and down stairs. I haven't taken any pictures of the new place yet because our house is currently a disaster. Some day this house will be normal and I can walk through my dining room without tripping over stuff.

What's nice about this place is my commute to work only takes 15 minutes which means I don't have to get up so early in the morning. After class Ty can come right home afterwards and not commute so long. I'm really glad we decided to move before the weather gets really bad. I can't even imagine driving down I 5 in ice and snow. What a nightmare! Anyway I look forward to the day when our house is in order but I think that will have to wait until the keys are returned to our old place

Let the moving begin!

Well on Sunday morning we headed up to Salem to sign the papers for our new place! We took some boxes with us and already started loading stuff in as the week goes. It's going to be really nice being closer to where we work and not have to commute so much. Tyrel was doing the math earlier and we calculated that we spend about $300 a week just on gas! Anyways we also drove around a little bit since we want to get know the town. While driving I noticed some things I will have to get use to, like how there is more traffic to deal with, but being a bigger city it kind of makes sense. Also Salem has some weird intersections. They are very confusing and if you are in the wrong lane you will most likely exit the street and go the other direction. Other then that it should be fun living there. I've lived in Corvallis pretty much my whole life so it really is a whole new chapter in my life. Lots more choices of stores and things to explore. Saturday is our official move in date where we will rent a u haul and load all of our stuff in one trip.

Salem here we come!

Busy weekend

Every year for Halloween Tyrel and I work many hours carving multiple pumpkins. Well this year we aren't really feeling the Halloween spirit. We are in the process of moving (finally) and don't really have the extra money to buy a bunch of pumpkins. I went to the pumpkin patch with my kiddos and was able to pick up a pumpkin while there. It also didn't help that we didn't have much time to carve either. We always wait until like the weekend before Halloween to carve pumpkins otherwise your pumpkin goes bad. Well we only had the Saturday to carve pumpkins because on Sunday we headed south for a memorial service for Tyrel's grandma. 

Next weekend we sign paperwork for our new place, which is exciting. Unfortunately it's on Sunday so that probably means we wont get to move in until the follow weekend. Oh well at least we found a place right?

Carving #1

Carving #2

Tyrel's carving #1

Tyrel's carving #2

Rest in Peace Oma

Birthday celebration

Finally got him to smile!

Getting a strong neck

He likes his tongue

Mama and baby :)

Ok first of all, I have the cutest nephew ever! He smiles a lot and started cooing. And if you couldn't tell in my picture, he is getting really good holding his head up. The more I hang out with him, the more he resemables my little brother when he was a baby. Earlier this week my sister posted a photo like this on facebook:

                                    Little brother as a baby on the left, my nephew on the right

I don't know about you but I definitely see a resemblance. Speaking of little brother, we celebrated his 6th birthday last night with pizza and cupcakes. We may be 22 years apart but we are still pretty close. I love taking to him fun events like my school carnival and the toy store.

Birthday boy

Such a goof ball

Update on apartment searching: I finally found a place that I liked and I'm turning in an application tomorrow morning. It's a cute little townhouse in south Salem, really close to Winco. Fingers crossed we get approved! (which by how it sounds, that shouldn't be too hard)

The search continues

How I looked all last week...

The frustrating search for a place to live still continues. We went apartment hunting  yesterday in Woodburn and Silverton and had no luck. Places aren't open on Saturdays and most of the time there is no manager onsite during the weekends. The places we did talk to don't have any openings and have a huge wait list. We did look at one place that sounded promising but turned out to be crappy. We turned in an application for a duplex in south Salem but someone else turned one in right before us so we ended up not getting it. When the lady asked me what other places she wanted to put our application towards, and they all had pending applications. I never knew it was so difficult to find a place to live! We really need to move and are getting desperate. I have been really tired lately because I'm not sleeping well due to stress. It's really hard being from out of the area and not knowing if it's a good place to live. It's also hard having to work all week. We aren't able to take time off work to go look at places, which only leaves the weekends and by that time, places are either closed or the place has already been rented out. I was really hoping for some sort of house or duplex but they usually cost more. I really didn't want to settle for an apartment. I'm kind of done doing apartment living, but it looks like that might be our only choice. Things are getting difficult and neither Tyrel or I are getting much sleep because we both have to commute. Last week Tyrel left for Portland at 5am, worked there all day got off work and hung out in Salem until class at 7pm and then didn't get home until 10:45pm. He then had to get up at 4am the next morning to go back to work. I have to wake up early to give myself enough time to get ready and then about a hour to drive. By the time I get home from work I only have a couple of hours to cook dinner, eat and relax before it's time to go to bed.

Any help would be appreciated. Let me me know if you see anything open up in the Salem area. 

Apartment hunting

Lately we have had some busy weekends. Renaissance faire, baby shower, my birthday and then yesterday we spent the day in Salem apartment hunting. We weren't really looking to move until later this year but we recently received a letter from our rental company saying they are raising our rent to $775 a month. That's a $50 increase! However if we went to sign up for a year lease, which our place has never done, it would only be $760. Either way it's expensive on our end so now we are frantically looking for a new place to live. We drove by tons of places on Saturday including the duplex I'm looking at on Tuesday. Out of all the places we looked at this duplex has been my favorite. All the other places we went too that we both liked were not available. Let's hope this is one. It's currently empty but it's not available until October 15th. When I talk to the lady on Tuesday I'm going to ask her if it will be available sooner.

Today has been a low key day and I was perfectly fine with that. I was able to get the Halloween decorations up and I even baked an apple pie! Hoping Tuesday goes well

Changes and weekend fun

Another busy, fun-filled weekend. Saturday was another home Beaver game. It was a great game and the Beavers played really well. I love the seats we got this year. Unfortunately, my phone wasn't working so I wasn't able to get any pictures. But thanks to my wonderful husband he was able to fix it for me, and was very patient with me during my frustrated time of not having a working a phone. On Sunday we had my sister's baby shower. Normally you have a baby shower before having the baby, but because they didn't know what they were having my mom decided to do it after the baby was born. We played a lot of fun games, including guess the poop which is guessing what melted candy bar was in the diaper, and a game where the guys had to drink beer from a baby bottle

Today I'm starting a new job in Salem. I'm both nervous and excited about this new opportunity. The goal is move as soon as we can, we just need a find a good place we both like, in our price range. For some reason we are having a hard time finding a place with washer and dryer hook-ups and a dishwasher.  I hope we find a place soon but for now we both will have to commute.