Monday thoughts

--So far, moving ourselves and four kids halfway across the country has been...interesting.

--The transition has gone better in many ways than I'd expected. And worse in others.

--Better in terms of feeling "at home" here...strangely enough it already feels like we have more of a general life/identity here than we did in Santa Maria. Weird. Way more free time as a family (which is generally spent running errands or painting our walls.)

--Harder in terms of living out of boxes and the kids being more difficult because things are so unsettled around the house. And harder because the distance between us and most of our family and friends is very, very tangible.

--Nearly all our stuff is in our garage and we are totally still not "moved in", because we're having a bunch of the floors redone. I can't wait for beautiful new carpet and hardwoods to replace the icky current carpet. We're about to order it finally, yay.

--The church we've been trying out is a lot different from any church I've ever gone to. It's currently a PCA church, switching to RCA. The pastor (reverend? I don't know what he's called) wears a robe and they say special things when you take communion, and there's a fair amount of responsive reading. Also the theology is a bit different. But it's cool, and we like a lot of it. (And this is for Joy, and all other former SM G3 members--people don't typically use their Bibles in church, the day's scripture is printed in the bulletin and read up front.)

--Today at the DMV I applied for a Colorado driver's license. The lady asked if I needed to re-register to vote at my new address, I said yes, she asked what party affiliation...and I officially broke ties with the Republican party. I am now a "declining to state" person. (When she had asked what party, I started laughing and said "how on earth do you answer that".)

--This afternoon I shopped at Restoration Hardware with all four of my kids in tow. No one broke anything, ruined anything, or created any sort of a disturbance. I had Kaitlyn IN the stroller, and the older three kids had to hold onto the stroller and not touch anything with their other hand. For some reason they obeyed the rule.

--The people who we bought this house from drive me crazy and I don't even know them. :) We get ALL THEIR MAIL, including wedding RSVPs (for their daughter's wedding) and Victoria's Secret catalogues, both of which come in droves. For now we are stockpiling it all (minus the catalogues, which I promptly throw away--they might make great underwear but don't get me started on their "marketing", which clearly is about more than just buying undies, and geared towards men. Three of which live in my home.) Not only that, our skylight leaks, which they did not disclose, AND they apparently decided to keep assorted keys to assorted locks and refuse to give them to us.

--We picked up Kevin from work at lunchtime today and had a picnic at a park. Kaitlyn was all over the play equipment like a maniac, Anna skinned up both her knees, and Yosef gave another little girl a crazy wagon ride. You can't say we don't know how to have a great time...