Oklahoma

I cant believe we are here. It didn't really sink in that we were moving for me until halfway to Denver. The drive started out great. I drove the Hyundai with Preston who slept the first three hours. Cory drove the van with porter and Theo happily watching new movies on the DVD player. I love technology. How the pioneers traveled for days on end with kids is beyond me. I suppose then they were going so slow the kids could walk and so as a parent you didnt have to hear them whining the whole way. The hard part for me was when Preston woke up from his nap. The crying started followed by a scream. We stopped and i nursed him and we were off again. At this time i realized my silliness in not having his carseat on the right side of the car. I could not reach him to help him get the binky back in his mouth. Finally out of desperation in the middle of no where i stoped on the side of the road and took everything out of my car so i could re arrange it with the baby on the right side of the back seat. I then drove for the next three hours with my right hand reached back there so he could clutch it with both his arms. If i moved it he would cry. My shoulder is still sore from driving in that position!

Denver was awesome. Our hotel was really nice, think granite counter tops and dark hardwood headboards. I was so sick of driving i was ready to just move in there! Theo was up till 2 am, i guess he had slept alot during the day so he was a bit wired. The second day of driving was a little better since Preston and i had figured out the arrangement of him holding my arm in desperation while i sang every hymn that i could think of. I had to drink a mountain Dew since thats the only drink i like that has caffeine in it and i was trying to stay awake by this point. I have not had caffeine in so many years that after only half the drink i was wired! The main reason i was trying to stay awake is because Kansas is so boring ( no offence to people that live there) Its just miles and miles of flat nothing ness with an occasional farm on the side of the road. It was really windy too and my car was shaking.

The third day we finally arrived in Oklahoma. Its just like anywhere else... super walmart, sonic, KFC, McDonald's, bestbuy, home deopt. When did we become so commercialized that all the cities in the US were the same? Since our truck was not going to arrive for a few days we had to figure out some bed arrangement. We went to get some bunk beds for the boys but everyone ( even walmart!) was out of wood beds. Well that's not entirely true i could have bought one for 800 dollars but i was a bit too cheap for that. So we just bought two twin mattresses and put them on the floor pushed together. We slept on that the whole family, well we are still sleeping on it and will until our stuff gets here which has been delayed till Friday. (grrrr) So if you didn't know that we had more stuff coming we look pretty poor and white trash. We are all in one room sleeping on the floor with nothing on the window but tin foil to keep out the street light at night. Our living room has nothing but suitcases, laundry, and a few boxes strewn about. we bought a card table that we set our computer up on and also we eat at it. We have all paper plates, cups, and bowls. In the living room is a big window and for privacy at night i wanted to hang a sheet up over it. But we didn't have anything to hang with. So I taped it up with box tape. Lovely black sheet TAPED to my wall. Seriously we are living the white trash life!! We even bought a wireless thing for the computer and taped it to the window so we could use the neighbors Internet ( don't worry they know we are using it at least!) Hopefully the cable guys find time to come to our house soon so we can stop mooching.

The people are all really nice here. We live in a four plex basically. The people across from us are Spanish, underneath us they are black, and the fourth family is from Irak and really friendly and nice. They came and introduced them selves. Its sad because they both have degrees back home but our country doesn't recognize them so they have to go to school all over again here. I asked them why they moved to the US and the dad sarcastically said " well there is this little war going on back at our home... have you heard of it??" The wife said she misses her family terribly but its too much money to go back and visit them. They have a little boy that is three that my kids have played with. Across from us there is a Jewish family ( practicing since the guy wears the yamika all the time) and another Spanish family. So its a pretty diverse place.

Surgery

This picture was taken moving week at our old house. I took it because this is how it typically looks at my house. Cory with three kids piled on and around him. He is a wonderful father and the kids are like leaches attached to him at all times if he is home. He is always carrying them around, lifting them on and off things, lugging them on his back up and down the stairs... you get the picture.

So this past Tuesday Cory had to have his appendix out. It was the middle of the night when we went up to the ER and 6 am by the time he had surgery and 11 am when they finally let me see him again ( he had some problems coming out of the anesthesia so that's what took so long). I used to pull all nighters in college all the time and was fine, but apparently i am OLD now because at 28 i thought i was going to die if i didn't sleep soon! I think i finally caught up on the sleep, i even went to bed at 8 pm one night and if you know me at all you know i usually don't go down before midnight so that is extremely early for me! Anyone that has had surgery knows that the first thing they say is not to lift anything for two weeks. So after not seeing Cory at all for a few days he comes home and the kids want him to hold them and to pick them up. Which he cant do! He tries to sit next to them on the couch which ends up them pushing on his incision and him screaming and them crying. Its going to be a long 2 weeks for us all! Thankfully Cory is healing and we hope he will be tip top in time for his class to start. Also what a blessing for this to happen now and not in Oklahoma, or halfway to Oklahoma!

Also this has pushed our move date out a little bit. We figured Cory might not be up to driving 18 hours this week. We are going to leave the weekend of the 21st now. I am so excited to get to Oklahoma and be one more step done with this crazy limbo phase of my life!