We're Here!

Remember when the back of an SUV used to be more than enough room to transport yourself plus everything you owned for a move?  Say back-and-forth to college, or as newlyweds, for instance? 

Five years, two (and a half) kids, and a couple of apartments later, and it takes the back of an SUV, a 15-foot truck (packed to the brim), the back of a Prius, and the back of another SUV to haul all your stuff.

(I blame the kids.)

But we're here!

And we've got us some exploring to do.

 

In case you were wondering about the neighborhood playground:

It checks out.

 As does our own, personal, playground in the back yard.

(Their little minds = blown.)

 

And possibly my favorite part?  THE PLAYROOM.  We have a playroom.  It needs to be fun-ed up a bit, but for now I'm happy that the toys are (relatively) CONTAINED.  It's a new home miracle!

(Also, I would like to point out that from the first picture to the second picture above, a bookshelf has been moved in with things on it that have started to be ORGANIZED.  That's called PROGRESS, people!)

House tour to come!  Though don't hold your breath.  When you move from an apartment that's almost exactly half the size, and then put some money down on a house, well, I haven't taken a math class for a solid decade here but add a few rooms, subtract the changes you want to make, realize how much furniture it will take to fill said rooms, multiply by the number of boxes that still need to be unpacked, remember that you're an interior designer so you have IDEAS, DAMMIT, carry the one and...you're going to need to save up some money for quite some time before things are "done".

But we're here (well, Tyson is gone again to work, BUT for all intents and purposes WE ARE HERE) and we love it.

BONUS!

Because there might be boxes to unpack, but it's still fall.

A Week of Lasts

When you know you're not going to stay someplace forever, you view the place differently. Madison has always been a fun sort of adventure, and yet we (or at least I) never truly allowed myself to settle in here.  And yet, it still feels like home.  Five years-half a decade!-in a place and of course it is going to become familiar, you get settled into routines.  I have my grocery store and my doctor and the kids have their school, we know our way around, have favorite places and don't even get me started on our favorite restaurants.  Things have happened while we've been here.  I moved here one week and one day after we got married, I've had three jobs here, Tyson earned his PhD, we've lost two grandparents, one cousin, one of our dads had cancer, the other had open-heart surgery, and we've had two babies.

And even though this has all been temporary-we knew that Madison would be temporary-it's weird and strangely emotional when the "last" week is here.

The last time at the playground.

 

The last time at this restaurant.  

The last time at this coffee shop.

The last time at the library.

The last time shopping at this store.

The last time going to this school, to this church, seeing these people.  Yikes. 

It's a different move than graduating high school, than leaving college.  Everyone else is dispersing at the same time.  So many of the things and people we know are staying and making their lives right here.  We're what's different, what's changing.

And as excited as we are for this new stage, new adventure, new home, and soon-to-be new baby, what I'm trying to say is...we're really going to miss you, Madison.

So We Bought a House

Oh yes we did.

Since we knew we wanted to move back to Minnesota, I'd been looking, looking, looking at homes in the Twin Cities.  Not always the easiest thing to do when your only option is searching online-but hey, it beats whatever people did pre-internet (I...don't even know. The horror!).

It's amazing how the more bedrooms you add to a house, the more the price increases.  Oh, so you want a fourth bedroom, huh?  Add thirty grand to the price, suckers!  The pickings were fairly dismal for our budget and the size house we needed, with our growing family. And for me being a somewhat picky interior designer.  Then of course there's all the beautifully staged photos that show perfectly online, but in person? You're not even sure it's the same house.  There were beautiful new houses in crappy locations, crappy houses in beautiful locations, houses missing fairly essential things like doors (?!?), strange smells, chewed-up and scratched wood work...

There was one I kept coming back to.  It was at the high end of our budget, but...it looked...so nice.  My mom went on some preliminary showings with our real estate agent, and after several disappointments, she called to say that I was going to really like this one.  I already knew that.  I went to check it and a few other properties out the following weekend. The other showings were just a cover, though.

It was the one.  I could picture living there, raising a family there.  The neighborhood was new, beautiful, friendly.  There's a playground right down the street.  I'm pretty decisive-I knew what I wanted to major in since I was in eighth grade, what college I wanted to go to since I was a sophomore in high school, and that Tyson and I were going to get married after a month or two of knowing each other.  This house was just the latest in Major Life Decisions That Shannon Decided On After Approximately 3.908 Seconds.

Not only did this house have everything we were looking for (right number of bedrooms, bathrooms, decent yard, etc.), it had things I never would have dreamed it would have been at this price point.  Cherry cabinetry, cherry trim throughout, quartz-not just quartz but Cambria quartz countertops.  Really, the biggest thing I need (want) to do to the place is paint the bedrooms.  Wallpaper a couple of walls.  That's it.  Like I said, it's at the high end of our budget, but not having to do any work to it?  A basically move-in ready home, only a few years old?  As opposed to having to take all the money we would have "saved" and putting it into necessary updates (like doors?)?  Sold.

It was a close call.  Tyson was waiting on a job offer, so we couldn't put an offer of our own on the house until he officially had the job.  The day he was supposed to get the job offer, our realtor called to let me know that they had received another offer on the house, but they would be willing to wait until that night for us to get our offer in.  Tyson accepted a job that evening, we put together our offer (e-signing papers at 10:00 that night), they reviewed both offers the next morning, and...chose us.  I wrote a letter to the current owners (also drafted at about 10:00 that night), and our realtor said that was a big reason they chose us.

That...was a busy weekend.  And a really strange one.

Tyson still hasn't seen the house in person yet.  And won't, until we close in just over five weeks.   Luckily he cares more about who will be our internet service provider than what the house actually looks like, so I think we'll be just fine.

Life, Lately (Alternate Title: Do ALL the Things!)

Some years are full of life.  An extra shot of life, if you will.  We've had some big years. 2010 was an extra dose or two of life.  I graduated college and we got married, which also meant moving to a new state.  2014, Lord knows that was a big year, what with having twins and all.

And then 2015 rolled around.

God has decided that the stretch from May-October would be a great time for us Williamses to:

1. Graduate with a PhD (Tyson).
2. Grow a third child (me.  Tyson sort of played a part).
3. Upgrade to a minivan.
4. Start a new job (Tyson).
5. Buy a house (also mostly me).
6. Move to a new state/city.

Major life events: might as well do 'em all at once.

(Just a sampling of our mail today.  Three letters: one with ultrasound instructions, one congratulating us on the purchase of our home, and one on the titling/licensing of our van. These letters contain instructions that range from "call to follow up on this paperwork" to the ever popular "DO NOT EMPTY YOUR BLADDER".)

That list should come with subsections, though, since starting a new job means Tyson will be working out-of-town each week in the meantime (training on-site before he can work from home remotely permanently) (thankfully he will be home on the weekends in the meantime) (what am I supposed to do with two 1 1/2 year olds all week?) (parentheses!), buying a house means omg the paperwork! And getting insurance! And all sorts of documents from the past few months/years/lifetimes! And the paperwork!  (Also, Tyson accepted his job offer last Friday afternoon, the offer on the house was put in at about 11:00 that night, and accepted by 11:00 the following morning.  Just a normal weekend around here.)  (And I LOOOOOVE the house.  Tyson has never seen it.  It's fine.)  And moving to a new state/city means spending the next month and a half purging, packing, and cleaning. While Tyson is mostly gone.  And Caden and Brooklyn are still around.  See: it's fine, we'll survive, etc.

(We still require things like food and attention!  And you should probably be teaching us things so we can grow up to be functional members of society!)

So, as you can tell, we have absolutely nothing going on around here.

The Next Step: Plot Twist

So I've had A LOT to say, but haven't been able to say it because...

Even when I did have something to say I've been too tired/nauseous/in the bathroom peeing for the 986th time to write it down anyway, and anything I did have to say would have been something like:

a.)  I'm soooooooooo exhaus-zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

b.)  Everything I wanted to eat today sounded good until it was in front of me on the plate.

or even just:

c.)  ZOMG WE'RE PREGNANT!!!!!!!!!!!!!111111!!!!!

So there's that.

We had different, somewhat nomadic plans for the upcoming year that I kepet meaning to write about but then THIS happened and those plans were NOT AT ALL compatible with adding a newborn to the mix, so we promptly quashed everything and instead are busy with:

1. Tyson finding a job.  So...
2. We can move back to the Twin Cities to be closer to family.  To do this we need...
3. To buy a house.  But...
4. Before we can do that, we need to get approved for a mortgage.  Which, we've been pre-approved (yay!), but can't be officially, really, truly, approved and set things into motion until...
5. Tyson finds a job.

Tyson is close on the job front, I've been looking at homes like crazy, and we're looking, hoping, with fingers crossed that we'll be ready to move by the end of this month or early the next.  Which...is like three weeks away.  And I haven't packed a damn thing.  Or looked into hiring movers.  Or informed our apartment office when exactly we'll be leaving.  Oh, and along with all of this Caden and Brooklyn are still around and need things like: food. And diaper changes.  And attention.  

It'll be FINE.

(My due date is February 27th (according to our first ultrasound), which is exactly a week after Caden and Brooklyn's second birthday.  Sorry, guys.  Here's hoping that you won't have to share your birthday with another sibling.)

The Next Step, Part 2 (or Maybe 1.5)

(Part 1 here.)

The Good News:  Tyson and I made a decision!  This decision involved him accepting a job!

The Bad News:  Less than a week later he got an email saying that "circumstances have changed" and they revoked their job offer.

The Good News:  Tyson still has another place interested in him, and they were very excited when he called them (back, again) to explain that hey, just kidding, remember how I told you I accepted another job?  Well things have changed, and I am back on the market.

The Bad News:  This means that we went from having a 100% sure decision, knew where we were going to go, started to tell people, started to make plans, to...hoping and praying that this other interview works out.  And it should!  All signs point to yes.  But, as you might imagine, we aren't really banking on anything anymore.  I'm not even bothering to look up information about this new location until the ink is good and dry on the contract. (Okay...I'm looking up hardly anything.)

So...yeah.  It's kind of frustrating to have spent so much time agonizing over this decision, then actually making the decision of where to go and feeling pretty good about it, and then having everything just completely taken out of your hands.  We were starting to research the important things.  Like housing!  Where to live?  Rent or buy?  Let's plan a house-finding trip!  What are the local churches like?  And: Where is the nearest Target?

This isn't very common, this job-revoking thing.  Beyond their vague reasoning, we don't, and won't know why, though we imagine that it has something to do with funding.  But...oh well.  Such is life.  Here we go again.  I've lived with uncertainty in this situation so long that it's kind of like an old friend.  It was almost comfortable to go back to not knowing. The day he got the "lol nvm" email, we were in shock, and disbelief, (I'll admit that the TV did more than its fair share of parenting that day), but then...eh.  By that evening we were joking about it.  What are ya gonna do?  Can't sit in a corner and cry about it.  So Tyson heads out next week for this other interview.

Our fingers are very, very crossed.

UNRELATED:

Caden "feeding" the baby doll.

Awwww...

Oh, and Brooklyn's new 'do.

Luckily these two don't care much about what's happening and where we go next.  Or if they do, they're keeping it to themselves.

The Next Step, Part One

While I alluded to the fact that Tyson ditched us last week, I didn't elaborate on why he was gone. 

He went on his first, grown-up, big person job interview.  (Scheduled back-to-back with a trip to a university in NYC, where he was invited to give a talk.  Because apparently my husband is important like that.)

(Okay, so he had a couple of internships in college.  I suppose those were grown-up, big person type interviews, too.  But they were temporary.  And, heck, he was still in school. So maybe those were pre-grown-up, big person job interviews?)

At any rate, this is his first job interview for a position once he graduates.  This May.  With his PhD.  For good.

And people want to hire him.  Yay!  This is good news!  (Says the girl who had it dawn on her one day not too long ago that, hey, you could go through this entire job applying for and interviewing process and...end up not getting hired.  By anyone.  Huh.  Yeah.)

Now...we have to make decisions.  Grown-up, big person decisions.  There are deadlines. Where to go?  For how long-ish?  How easy would it be to move/live/work there?  What is the pay/benefits? What's the cost of living like?  How close is family?  Would it be (relatively) easy to make trips "home"?  (I haven't lived in MN for ten (10!) years and yet I still call it home.)

We've dissected everything and talked in circles (can you talk in any other shape?  A square?  Dodecahedron, perhaps?)  through every option.  At one point yesterday we thought we had a decision and were actually looking at houses/rentals in that market. Literally the next hour there were two other options suddenly on the table (more or less) that were potential game changers

This is exhausting.  I'm usually excellent with decisions.  I would go so far as to say that I love making decisions.  Uncertainty annoys me.  I knew since middle school that I would major in interior design.  I thought about which college I wanted to attend for about 1.2 seconds (My parents, worried that I made the college selection process too simple when my friends were applying to 5, 6, 7, 10+ universities, made me consider/visit another school. There was no comparison.).  I thought for a liiiitttttle bit longer about whether I wanted to marry this Tyson character.  I suppose this is a much bigger life decision, one that affects more than just me.  Or even Tyson and me.  

Oh hai!

(Not pictured, assorted family, friends, etc., who all have their own secret and not-so-secret desires for our next life stage.)

Even though I've been anticipating this moment practically since we were married (graduation and a real-person paycheck, woo-hoo!!!!!), it now seems so...real.  Official.  I kept saying that I just needed to know WHERE we were going to be next, so I could start thinking and planning and researching housing and creating LISTS, etc., etc., etc.  I dunno.  Now that it's here, there's something to be said for the uncertainty of the in-limbo stage.

I don't have some sort of tidy conclusion to all of this yet, although I think we are 95% certain of what our next step is going to be.

Hope the suspense is killin y'all almost as much as it has been killing me.

P.s.  To add to all the dramaz, and on top of everything else that is normally going on around here, I'm also trying to plan/prepare for the twins one year photos, and, oh yeah, a big ol' party that's happening here in a couple of weeks.  Perfect timing is perfect!

P.p.s.  And then because life just isn't exciting enough around here Tyson called today to tell me that he'd lost the keys to the car.  The only set of keys to that particular car.  The one that he drove to campus.  With the carseats in it.  So it's not like I could have just packed up the babies and gone to pick him up or anything.  And he called the dealership to find out that a new key would cost $400 (!!!) to make!  And THEN...he found the key by retracing his steps today.  The end.  Except that he gave me a good 40 minutes worth of even MORE to worry about, which just seemed that much WORSE since it was compounded by everything ELSE. *sigh*

the commute

Afternoon commute 2 Wednesdays ago:  
4:45-5:18 pm = 33 minutes


Morning commute 2 Thursdays ago:
8:32-8:59 am (including a pit stop at Caribou) = 27 minutes


Morning commute TODAY:
8:50-8:54 am = 4 FREAKING MINUTES!!!!!


Conclusion:  The only way my commute could be any better is if there were still a Caribou along the way.

Moving. Boo.

Hubby and I are moving this weekend.  

Moving sucks. I've moved 12 times in the past 6 years (back and forth between Iowa and Minnesota, and then to Madison).  Hasn't made me like it any better.  Packing, trying to eat up food, more packing, cleaning, packing, moving boxes, packing, etc., etc., etc.  Boo.  

Not that I'm not excited to move.  I'm just excited for it to be done.

So I've been preparing and thinking about moving a lot.  And then I realized that I had approximately 0 photos of our current apartment.  Which is kind of important, since this is the first place hubby and I ever lived together,  for the first 11 months of our marriage.  And despite all of it's smallness (800ish square feet) and quirks, I'm probably going to want to remember it someday.  So here it is.

Bedroom/office.  You can see why I'm excited to move since this is what the room looked like about 97.348075% of the time...aka Tyson on his computer.  Ok, that's a lie.  Usually the bed wasn't made.  Anyway, only 5 more days before having a bedroom that is ONLY a bedroom, and an office that is ONLY an office!

At first I thought the bathroom was strangely proportioned and overly large (compared to the rest of the place), but I came to love the extra space and it grew on me.

Disclaimer:  This is our kitchen in the raw.  I took this photo pretty much right after we ate dinner one night.  Before anyone bothered to take the time to clean it up (ahem, hubby).  This is probably a more accurate representation, anyway.

This is what I am going to miss most about our ENTIRE apartment.  Seriously.  The little ledge behind the kitchen sink is GENIUS.  Good bye, ledge. 

Dining room/living room/ignore all of the boxes and dirty plates.  I already told you nobody cleaned anything before I took pictures.  Whatever, honestly.

Ok, so the bookcase is coming with us.  But I still like it.

And I had to include the top of the bookcase, because I love everything on it.  And I'm not sure that my favorite part of it (the willow branch decoration thing) will make it to our new apartment in one piece, and I really kind of like him.  It was part of the floral arrangements at our wedding reception, and still looks beautiful, even dried.  However dried = brittle.  I packed it up with a ton of paper and labeled the box "SHANNON TOUCHES ONLY!!!".  So we'll see what happens. 

Getting Ahead

Sometimes, I get a little bit ahead of myself.  


I'm a planner.  Lists are my friends.  I'm one of the 8 people left in the civilized world who still use an actual, paper, writing things down in pen, view by-the-week planner.  And I love it.  I tried using a calendar on my computer for awhile (ahem, 2 days).  Didn't work.  There is something therapeutic about actually writing things down.  Writing things down helps me remember what I am supposed to be doing and when I am supposed to be doing it.  Not so if I am typing it in.  Just doesn't work for me.  Plus, I have really nice handwriting.  I mean, I have to show it off somewhere.


Anyway.  Planning.  Supposed to be a great thing, right?  I thought so, too.  Truth is, sometimes with all of this being organized and planning, I actually screw myself over.


Example:
Once upon a time, when I was a junior in college (shhh...I won't admit that was over 3 years ago already...), I was working very hard on a studio project.  (Ok, when wasn't I working hard in college on a studio project?)  This particular project had a lot of components to it.  It was due in less than a week, so I made a list of everything that needed to be completed.  It was quite a list, so I decided to tackle some of the things that I didn't want to do first.  You know, get them out of the way.  I started working on a part of the project that wasn't huge, but still time-consuming.  It took me the better part of 4 or 5 hours to complete.  As I was working on it (I don't remember exactly what it was, by the way.  Possibly a lighting plan), several people saw me working on it and said variations of "Aw crap!  I haven't even started thinking about that yet!" so I was feeling quite proud of my effort and forethought.   As I was finishing up our professors called our attention and said that they had some revisions to the project plan.  They said they understood how hard we were working and that it seemed like all of the components they had planned to be due for this project were taking longer than they had expected.  They then said that because we were working so hard that we no longer had to do one of the components on the list.  The part that I had just spent the past several hours working on.  I looked at my drawing, looked at my list, sighed, and thought "Well at least I get to cross it off my list anyway..."


Variations of the above happened a few times in college.  I decide to do something to get ahead.  Professors change their mind.  I discover I wasted precious hours that could have been spent on something that would be actually due.  You'd think I would have learned my lesson.


Fast forward to now.


Hubby and I were supposed to be moving this weekend.  For long and complicated reasons that I don't feel like getting into, we are now moving the last weekend of August instead.  About a month ago, being the planning and productive wife that I am, I went to the US Post Office website and filled out the form to forward our mail to our new address.  Assuming that this weekend was set in stone as our moving weekend, I selected Monday, August 1st as the day to begin forwarding our mail.


I don't think we're going to get any mail for a month now at our current apartment.  Seriously, just junk catalogs and credit card applications.  And I'm pretty sure that the poor sucker that is subletting our new apartment for the next few weeks will be getting all of our mail.


All because about a month ago I thought "Well, if I do this now then I don't have to worry about it the week we are trying to pack and move everything.  Hooray!"


* sigh *


We'll see what comes Monday...and shhhhhh!  Don't tell Tyson!