Right before I left I hosted a Texas Bee pool party at my apartment complex! I was so happy to have so many people agree to come. I don’t have time to comment on every photo, so those who attended can feel free to leave their thoughts below

Baby BoP and Baby Avo. T1 has such a HUGE head compared to her! They are only 5 days apart. I remember when BoP went into labor and I was so mad because she was due after me and I was so ready to have the baby out of my belly!

Hydrangea, BoP, Mouse, Avocado. TH came after we took this picture, and Fro-Yo was there as well but she wasn’t in our group shot because she was mistakenly at the wrong pool for a little while!

Baby Hydrangea is on the way.

Those swim trunks are for a 12 month old. He looks ridiculous in them.

I brought my waterproof camera down for some shots in the pool. Fro-Yo’s nieces had so much fun playing with it.

I am most definitely NOT good at being in underwater photos.

Fro-Yo is really good at it though!

Isn’t she darling?

Can you find Mr. Mouse in Mrs. Mouse’s glasses?

If any of the bees present would like a copy of the photos they are in send me an email! I’m exciting for our Chicago Bee get together this Saturday

A teaser for my Maine wedding is up on Jenna Cole! Remember that one I was so nervous about? The photos are fabulous and I’m so proud of myself. You’ll be seeing lots of photos from it in the next few weeks!

We’re in our apartment. We wake up every morning and look out the window and realize that all of this light makes us realize how lucky we are. Our prayers lately have been bursting with gratitude. As awful as moving was, we are so happy. What a great start to our time in Chicago!

We still don’t have all of our stuff. We used a company called Compass Van Lines and they come pack up your stuff in their truck, take the truck to a holding facility, and then group up everyones belongings according to the area of the country they are going. That way you get the experience of a full service move (i.e. someone packing up all your stuff for you and unloading it at your new place) but you pay a lot less. Of course there is one big drawback… we don’t have our stuff yet and we may not have it for something like two weeks. We’re making do with what we were able to pack in the Camry. One chair, a handful of utensils, a few articles of clothing, and of course all of our computers. We couldn’t live without those!

I have my computers, which is very necessary because I have a bazillion photos to edit, but we just found out today that we won’t have internet in our apartment for at least a week, maybe longer. I’m dying dying DYING as you can imagine. Posting will be sporadic, since it’s tough to drag a baby down to an internet location and still get anything done, but I’ll have lots and lots of photos to share when we are finally hooked up again!

We painted, I’ve been to the farmer’s market and started stocking up the kitchen again, we’re going to go do some shopping today and try to find me a desk so I don’t have to edit photos while sitting on the floor (what am I still doing down here in the laundry room writing on my blog?!?!). I just love life so much right now!

I’ll leave you with some photos that Kelli Nicole took when she was watching T1 a few weeks ago. I think I haven’t shared these already…. if I did I apologize for the repetition! The photos are hers, editing is mine.

I love him in this hat. These photos are my favorite.

We made it into the car and we are going to try to do the full drive in one shot, through the night. I’m going to turn this into a liveblog of sorts combined with a bit of braindumping. I’ll be writing from my phone so please pardon my spelling mistakes.

4 pm we made it! I signed my life away and have key in hand. Now I’m wrangling the babe while TH does the same. I’m realizing that moving into a high rise is going to be several vary ts of awful (especially since we are moving in on the busiest weekend of the year), but I adore the employee that is helping us, Krista, and I know she is going to make it as easy as possible.

I think all three of us are just happy to finally be out of our super cramped car! We had every nook and cranny that we weren’t sitting in packed full of the stuff we need for two weeks and anything we didn’t send on the moving truck.

I won’t have Internet until Monday, so we will as if I am able to post before then (business center maybe?) for now T1 and I are chilling on the grass enjoying the sunshine. I’ll check back in soon!
1 pm CST. I just finished a few hours of driving but TH has done most of it less thN 3 hours left!

Did I mention that I can’t see what I’m typing? Apparently I’ve been mKing some strange mistakes. Whoops!

I’ve been listening to a book about thr Columbine shooting while we drive. I cried several times and really like it so far. I think it seems very balanced.

With the stress of moving I’ve been really lax with my eating. Still committed to my new rules about meat eating but indulging in some refined carbs and way too much fat and sugar. I’m looking forward to my first trip to a Chicago farmers market and restocking our kitchen completely with food that fits our new way of eating.

Doesn’t sound like anyone other than Kristen can come to my paintin party, but I realize it was late notice. We will do something soon though!

I’m considering a virtual book club of my own, similar to what Blue-eyed bride is doing, but only for nonfiction books. I’m just kind of “over” fiction lately for some reason. Would anyone like to join in finishing a non fiction book wig me once a month? I haven’t worked out any other details in my mind.

It is 8 am CST and we are about halfway there. I still haven’t spent a single moment driving.

We are listening to In Defense of Food and TH is officially a believer. Hooray! Our new favorite books are Nurtureshock and In Defense of Food. You should read both.

U2 is tired of being in his car seat.

Apparently I have to update near the top because I am using the web browser and can no longer get the Wordpress app to work for That Wife. Anyone else ever had this problem?

We are in Oklahoma. I haven’t driven yet because TH is a rock star. I should be napping so I can take over for him soon.

We just took a nap in thenparking lot of a McDonalds.

Ree, Pioneer Woman, lives in Oklahoma. Does anyone know where exactly?

U2 is still sleeping. I’m grateful.

It took me 14 hours of straight work to clean the apartment from top to bottom and I still think we aren’t going to get our deposit back because it wasn’t good enough.

I love TH. He really is the one that made this move happen.

We took Grunty to Jason’s Deli at 9:30 pm tonight. It was incredibly classy.

Our car is loaded down with stuff like you wouldn’t believe.

Apparently the amount of stuff we had stuffed in our 1bed+den is comparable to the national average for a 2 1/2 bed. How do we have so much stuff?

I am covered in mosquito bites. Lately I always am.

The 500GB hard drive on my computer is full. TH finally agreed to get me 2 TBs.

We have two families in particular to thank for helping us move. To the G fam and thr L fam… we love you and we will miss you. Come join us at Booth next year!

Update: Most of the good stuff is gone so we are going to bed. Call me tomorrow morning if you are interested in dropping by!

We survived the packing. I slept two hours last night, TH pulled an all nighter, and now the majority of our stuff has been loaded up into a moving truck and we are keeping our fingers crossed that we will see it all again within the next three weeks.

One of my wonderful visiting teachers (it’s an LDS thing where women are assigned in pairs to watch out for specific female members) took care of T1 for a few hours so that TH and I could take a nice long afternoon nap, and after a delicious lunch at Jason’s Deli we are ready to pack up the car with the clothes and toiletries we have set aside for the time we will be waiting for the moving truck, and clean the apartment from top to bottom, hoping the charges we have at move-out are minimal.

I wanted to get this up earlier today, but I suck and procrastinated everything so this probably won’t be very effective.

But if you want to come over and sort through this pile of stuff that’s going to get donated/thrown out you are free to do so. Clothes, food, books, other miscellaneous items. I’m going to post my address publicly since we’re moving in the morning and if you wanted to come rob us you wouldn’t be able to take anything except my socks and shampoo anyway!

We live on the opposite side of the street from the leasing office. You can call me at 214-233-5331* and I’ll give you the gate code when you get here (I don’t think my apartment complex or fellow neighbors would appreciate me posting that information publicly!) Second set of garages on the left, look for the white Toyota Camry that should be parked out front. We’ll be up late cleaning so feel free to come by anytime before midnight.

I won’t have time to answer questions about what you can specifically find in the pile, so please don’t call or email about specifics. If I do have a lot of people come by I’ll update this post with a new picture to give you an idea how much is left.

If our stuff takes a few weeks to get here I should be able to lots of blogging, because I won’t have anything to do other than paint and eat. Hooray! I said it yesterday, and I’ll say it again, I miss my daily updating!

*I’m changing this Google voice number when I move to Chicago, so yes, I’m also comfortable posting my phone number publicly. You can find it on the Jenna Cole site anyway!