final wisconsin move - day 1

i have been delinquent in posting about our trip to wisconsin to close on the house because it was so non-stop that i just needed some time to recover.  i have been doing laundry for 3 days, had to stock the kitchen with food, get some sleep so that i could put together a complete thought, and other back to normal life activities before i could get a chance to sit down and write about it.  so much happened that i am going to break it up into a few posts.

we left monday night after matt got home from work, and it was snowing.  the snow wasn't a huge deal, more of an annoyance.  the main problem was that maggie had diarrhea.  and nothing says "fun" on a long car trip than a dog with diarrhea.  it also wasn't fun to keep having to run her outside while i was trying to get everything ready for the trip.  her stomach was upset because mason keeps feeding her from the table.  i think that it was the monterrey jack cheese that did her in this time.  anyway, back to the trip.  madelyn was really excited to be going and made up this very catchy (and repetitive) song - the original 15 minutes had "i'm so excited" more often than the video shows.  it's dark, but you are just listening to her (over maddux' crying).

i worked during the drive and matt drove.  mason was actually the one of the kids awake for most of the drive.  i was a little surprised, but he slept at the beginning of the trip enough to make it so he wasn't tired enough to fall asleep in the car again.  both kids were awake when we arrived in wisconsin and not very interested in going back to sleep at 2am.  matt and i were beyond tired and were trying to be patient about getting them situated on their air mattresses.  madelyn said that she didn't remember where her room was in that house.  maybe she didn't.  she also didn't refer to it as "home" a single time on the trip, it was always the "wisconsin house" or the "house where we are staying".

the kids did so well considering all the chaos and lack of schedule (i.e. one hour time difference, no toys, boxes everywhere, air mattresses, no food in the house, etc.).  i think that i was really expecting the worst and they gave, mostly, their best.  maddux either sat/slept in his carrier or napped belly down on the floor (we had a pack-n-play, but only used it for night time sleeping).  i don't think he got nearly enough sleep on this trip, but stayed happy.  in retrospect, i really wish that i had brought my moby wrap so that i could have 'held' him more.  it was hard to find a safe place to set him most of the time.

such a happy boy.

can you find the sleeping maddux?

tuesday morning matt ran up to mcdonalds to pick up coffee and breakfast (we did not eat very well on this trip) while i got maddux fed and everyone dressed.  once he was back and we ate, i went up to mcdonalds for internet access.  i ended up working for an hour and felt bad leaving him for so long because i knew that he couldn't get much done with the kids there.  at least i had plans to keep them out of the house for a while.

we wanted to see as many of the neighbors as possible during our visit.  unfortunately, most of them had sick children and we didn't get to see them, but we were really thankful to see the ones we did and were very lucky that amy was willing to host us all for a lunch time playdate on tuesday.  matt packed while we played, but joined us for lunch.

madelyn playing with ava.  ava was one of the people madelyn most wanted to see.  ava's family is also moving soon - to california.

we were able to take the kids back to the house so that mason and maddux could nap while matt and i packed some more.  we had also really wanted to see our friends aeron and kate, and their daughters avery and tess.  we weren't able to see them before the first move and were really glad that they were willing to have us over for dinner on tuesday night.  even when avery woke up from her nap with a high fever.  i only wish that we could have visited longer, but we really had to eat and run because we needed to get some more work done at the house and still needed to stop by to pay the boy who had taken such good care of our house while we have been living in ohio (clearing snow, etc.).

tess, madelyn, and avery

mason joined them and it got a little wilder...

we got home kind of late (after 9pm); we hurried the kids to bed and got back to packing and loading.  i went to get my camera so that i could take pictures of our goodwill donation for the following morning only to discover that i must have dropped it outside of aeron and kate's house!  i called but they couldn't find it.  i couldn't let it go and went to look myself (because i couldn't describe clearly enough where we had parked).  sure enough, it was under the car that was parked in the space where we had been.  i was so thankful to find it, and that it still worked, but i lost an hour of packing time and it was after midnight.  good thing that we still had wednesday.  love.