We're all moved in!

Well, technically we moved in last weekend, but I have some silly unpacking methods so the house only became livable this weekend. I like to open all the boxes and put everything in the center of the room that it belongs in, and then just set things up from there, mostly because I hate boxes and I want to get rid of them as soon as possible.

So after an entire day full of unpacking and putting things in piles on the floor of various rooms, it was finally time to start organizing. I couldn't decide where to start, I mean, so many rooms! While I debated the pros and cons of each room, we ordered pizza and put the kids to bed (in sleeping bags, of course) early. Like, at 6 pm. They were tired, it was fine.

So we decided to start with the garage. I decided (and here we blame pregnancy brain, very little good logic) that if we finished inside the house I'd be so tired that I'd procrastinate organizing the garage, and then it would be very hot and I'd be very pregnant and the neighbours would think we were slobs. So yeah. Instead we turned on the garage lights and organized that sucker until 3 am. Nick made his whole section of built-ins come together and he hung up all of his tools and we cleaned everything and he hung our bikes up and I remembered to leave a designated place for the stroller. Big deal, I know. But anyways, our garage now looks perfect, so the neighbours will like us, right? Right. So that was our Sunday night.

Nick had last week off of work, so of course he slept until the kids came home from school and I got up around noon. It was wonderful, and it was what the baby wanted. It's all the baby's fault. So I decided to organize the master bathroom, and it went by so quickly that I organized the half bath and the first-floor bathrooms as well. The kids got home as I started to organize the kitchen so I sent them to Nick and he took the easy was out and got them in their swimsuits and threw a few floaties at them in the pool. They had a blast, and NIck set up our new patio furniture. Win-win. I organized the kitchen for the rest of the night, and we ordered in chinese, put the kids to bed early, and then kept organizing the kitchen. It was done around 11 and we went straight to bed. Well, to our sleeping bags

Houses

We're going to be moving at the end of April or beginning of May.

Nick had to make a business trip to California last week, so we arranged for the kids to stay with various people so I could go with him. My friend called it a babymoon, but we mostly went to see houses and scope out schools.

We went through over 270 houses that claimed to be waterfront homes, and in the end we had a list of 24 beach ones we liked, because location, location, location, right? We loved some of the homes in the Canyon Lake area, but we decided against it in the end, and a lot of homes in the South Laguna area made our list, but it was just too far from Nick's workplace. More than 4 hours a day in traffic is not a good thing for family time. Plus, we would never be able to afford a beach house on our own, and we wanted to make sure to take full advantage of the opportunity here, that being The Company My Husband Works For Will Buy Our House Outright For Us. There are a million contingencies, of course, but that's basically how it is. We won't have a mortgage or rent to pay, and we get to choose the house. So of course we want to make the most of this opportunity.

Now we've just got to narrow it down from twenty-four to one.

The hardest part about narrowing this down is we don't know what it's like to be a family of seven, and that's what we will become in the new house. We've been living in a two-bedroom apartment since before Viv was born, and before that we had a condo for a bit, and before that we were in England, and before that we were childless and travelling the world. We've never had room to really spread out.

So when we walked into a six-bedroom house last week, it felt too big for us. But I'm realizing the potential in these homes. The perfect home for us doesn't exist, a home with 7 or 8 bedrooms can be found, yes, but then the rest of the home is a huge palace with ornate details and way too many things for my kids to hit their heads on. I don't want a palace, I want a cozy home with a lot of bedrooms. And I do realize that I sound a bit like a princess with my demands and such, but I'm sorry. Lots of bedrooms. That is all.

*Nick and I have been considering remodelling one of the houses, moving around a few walls so that we could end up with enough bedrooms. We'll see.

Couldn't be any more excited

So I think we've pretty much filled up the Big News category for march, yes? Moving across the country, new job, new house, new school, oh, and another baby! Yes, we've got a lot going on.

We've only told a few people so far, and we've gotten a mostly shocked and surprised, but still very excited reaction. It's so unbelievable to me to be able to truthfully say "We're expecting our fifth child." because I never pictured myself with so many children.

When I met Nick he wanted two kids, and his absolute maximum was three, with the third child being an accident. After which both babymaking parties would be taking preventative measures to prevent further offspring. I didn't have an exact number when I was young, I wanted a minimum of two, probably three, four seemed perfect, and five only if we had an accident or twins. I was crazy.

Then Nick and I got serious and talked about it and decided to start with two and see if we even wanted more after that. So we had our boy and our girl, and we were the perfect little family, and for a long time (right up until I got pregnant, actually), I didn't want anymore kids. Nick did. He would totally give up his man-card every. single. time. we saw a little baby when we went out, ooh-ing and ahh-ing and slowly persuading me to just consider one more. Just one more.

So we all know where this went. Philippa was born after an almost three year gap, a long space for me considering Theo and Sera are 15.5 months apart. When Pippa was about a year old, Nick and I decided that we wanted another baby, and we wanted to have it close in age to Pippa, like we did with Theo and Sera. We kept things a little longer this time, with 2 years and a few months between Pippa and Viv. Immediately after Viv was born, we knew we wanted one more baby, and since we didn't want to have one child a handful of years behind the rest, we decided to just go for it. So there will be a little bit more than 16 months between Viv and Baby5.

Honestly, I think I'm crazy. Nick too. I was going to stop after two kids. I would have happily been done. And while I was pregnant with my third and fourth children, I was so done. They were going to be my last. And after each of them, we needed another. And that has led us here, a chaotic family of six, with kids ages 7, 5, 3, 11 months, and one on the way. We are loud, we do not fit into a normal car, and we spend an obscene amount of money buying groceries. Old ladies love us, and middle-aged women raise their eyebrows at our circus, surely wondering if we have heard of birth control. (We have.)

As we've told a few people we've gotten a few of the shocked and-not-in-a-good-way reactions. Like this baby was an accident so we are just going to trudge through it. No. This baby was planned, and even if he or she wasn't, we would (and are going to) appreciate every single moment of this pregnancy and new adventure into parenthood.

The Other Reason We're Moving Out

Baby #5

Due the last week of August or the first week of September, 2011.

14.4 weeks in and we've already chosen full names for the baby boy or girl, who will be a gender surprise.

Big Changes

So, after much preparation and renovation and innovation and just plain work put in to stay in our current home for at least another year, we have decided to move out. Very soon.

First, Nick was offered a higher-up job at work. The job was located in Las Vegas. We both felt like Las Vegas was not the place for us to be. We like Dallas, we have friends here, and I don't like Las Vegas for more than a week, tops. So Nick politely declined the offer. That all took place in the fall.

Immediately after Nick rejected the job offer, his company went through some big changes. They switched headquarters, set up some new locations, and a lot of new jobs became available. Nick was, once again, offered a new job, except this time it was his dream job. His words, not mine. This time, we seriously considered it, and requested all the details. The job was located in southern California, a place that both Nick and I love, but we always found it to be too expensive for us to permanently live. The job involved a once-weekly travel schedule, where Nick would need to fly out on a Wednesday morning, most likely to the east coast or ohio, although possibly to Texas, he would attend meetings and dinners and make sure everything was functioning correctly, and then he would fly back on Thursday afternoon and be home just in time for dinner.

We found out that the job was very secure, and had huge promotion possibilities, and that the pay was great. Then, in a very complicated and (for us) lucky situation, we learned that the company would provide a house for us to live in. We had until March 1st to decide.

We had a lot of late-night conversations and a few really big arguments. We've known since we first moved here that we didn't want to raise our kids here, that's why we never bought a house. While the school system is excellent, it was never my favourite place. And we were going to move in a year anyway. We have many friends here, but we have many friends in many places, so why tie ourselves down because of others? In the end, we were leaning towards taking it.

The Company flew our family, all six of us, out to LA for a week to see the house, and the area, to check out schools, and get a feel for what it would be like to live there. We all loved it. We took the kids to Disneyland and I'm pretty sure they would have been happy spending eternity on the Dumbo ride.

On the morning we were leaving I did my own thing, killed a few hours while Nick took the kids to the beach on his own, and then we flew home. And we decided to take it. Take the job, take the opportunity that is being handed to Nick on a silver platter. Amidst all these stories of people being fired and laid off, somehow we got lucky.

So for all the reasons you see above, and many, many more, we are moving. Moving across the country, away from family and friends, towards new opportunities.

Play/Guest/Work Room Update!

So when we left off here the playrooms was empty of any playthings. It had the bed and a workspace and a chalkboard and a bookshelf, new hardwood floor, and nice light but appealingly bright blue walls. There was nothing on the walls, floor, there wasn't even a light fixture!

We put in a big silver fan for the hot summer days to come (we do have a/c but sometimes a fan is nice too), we put in track lighting so it's nice and bright in certain areas, and we bought this big baby, to put over what I decided would be our reading area. Suffice to say, our ceiling was done being decorated.

I really wasn't sure where to go after that, so I didn't pay any attention to the room until after the first week of January. Then I found an amazing purple floral area rug that wasn't exceptionally feminine (Theo...) but still brought a bit of a delicate feel to the room. We bought it and threw it down and it was like a switch got flipped on because from then on I was all about finishing the playroom.

We found an adorable wooden table with four chairs for 50 bucks, took it home and painted it white, and now it's one of my very favourite things in the house. We decided we weren't done with the ceiling after all, and we ended up hanging four long canopies from the ceiling. Most of the time the kids don't care about playing with them, but once in awhile we'll let them hang and all of a sudden we've got four little circus tents or houses or stages (because obviously that's what they're for). Viv is too little to play in hers much yet, but when she gets older she'll have her fun too.

We decided to be very careful in selecting toys for the kids, so we bought a Lego bench that serves as both a Lego building platform and a Lego storage center, and a puppet theatre. We bought a bunch of fabric puppets and the kids love them. We bought some wooden cars and other Eco-friendly toys, and we found cheap and very comfortable love seat on wheels that we put in one corner. We bought a cheap TV on sale in January that we hung on the wall so every once in awhile I roll the sofa into the center of the room and stick a movie in the TV and the kids don't have to watch TV in the living room, plus that was our guests can watch TV in bed and we can watch TV if we're using the workstation, even though that's counter-productive.

For Christmas my mom made the kids about 8 (probably more) cushions for their little huts that hang from the ceiling, and we threw in a bunch of old throw and fleece blankets so it's a cozy room.

It doesn't have very many toys in it at all, but the kids have lots to do. We're at a stage now where the older kids can play together as well as entertain the younger ones, and we've got stations set up so that sharing isn't a big issue. There's a huge chalkboard, an art table for colouring or painting or doing homework or playing cards. A puppet station, a bunch of fabric tents to make houses or shops. And of course they can put on little plays all the time too. The big kids can read. There's tons to do in there, mostly involving the use of their imagination, and I think that's better than a bunch of noisy, flashing, battery operated junk. We have a tonne of puzzles for the kids to set, and board games galore. If there's really nothing to do, they can always watch a movie.

So overall it turned out great, I love that the playroom is a place where I don't have to watch the kids every single minute, guests will enjoy it, and Nick and I can work in it. It's everything we hoped it would be, and if the last few days are any proof, the kids love it.

I didn't want to write this but oh, here it is

Nick and I flew internationally with four children yesterday. For the second time. We took a trip to a family reunion, it was pleasant. The family, not the flying. If you were flying anywhere near eastern United States yesterday, I am sorry.

It started at 7am yesterday morning, when I woke up to find our plane delayed. Already. Our plane was supposed to leave at noon. So I let the kids sleep a bit longer and we eventually woke them up and got them ready to leave with only one minor incident over a fluffy purple tutu. Okay, check, Four kids, 6 suitcases, 7 carry ons, Nick. Good. Oh, and a purple tutu. Can't forget that.

So we drive an hour to the airport, and of course the big kids fall asleep and the baby poops and the toddler stays awake and chats the entire way. We get inside, drag 486534066902 bags and four children to the self-check in thing, check in, and then begin waiting in line.

After 20 minutes and nothing gained I send Nick to go take the oldest three for a smoothie on the other side of the airport, and thankfully they go quietly and our line begins to move and I check the weight of 486534066902 suitcases, check four car seats, and Nick comes back and shows his i.d. and the kids are all present and for a few minutes it was not chaotic at all.

We say goodbye to family and rush the kids to drink the last of their smoothies. After another round of goodbyes we corralled the kids around the stroller, got Viv in her car seat, car seat on the stroller, put Pippa in her seat with much annoyance over the fact that I'm sorry, the purple tutu may not travel with us, and got Sera and Theo to hold Nick's hands. Once all the bags were loaded onto out bus we made our way into, you guessed it, the first line. It was short, we were through it and into another line in no time. Border. After an excruciating amount of time spent trying to keep my energetic children from getting refused entry to their birth country, we made it through the border and into the security line. We had to remove each child's shoes, jackets, backpacks, and the stroller was a whole other deal. After a minor issue where we were told Vivian would have to walk through the metal detector (she can't walk on her own), we made it to the other side.

Each kid threw a tantrum while we hurriedly redressed them and shoved their backpacks on/stuffed them into the stroller. They all had to go to the bathroom so we had a long stop there to change the baby and get everyone set for the flight, and then... nothing. Our flight was delayed, and the international terminal had nothing to do if you're a normal traveller, never mind a family of 6, most of whom are under 6.

I didn't want to open up any electronics yet, lest they die during flight, so I took the kids to a section of chairs where no one was sitting and I let them run wild. I gave up. They played tag and rolled all over the floor but I did not care. Nick and I just watched, hoping they'd tire themselves out eventually. The did. And we reloaded everyone and then boarded out plane. Our tiny, tiny plane. Two seats on either side. I sat with Viv to nurse her, Nick sat with Pippa to control her, and the big kids had two seats behind Nick and Pippa. They munched snacks while everyone got on the plane, and I only had to shush them twice. Let's skip the next 45 minutes, because it involved tears, while they deiced the plane, and we'll just say take-off went well. The big kids were all excited about flying! on a plane! in the air! so high! up! up! up! and Viv nursed and Pippa sat in her car seat and drank some juice and watched the ground a lot.

The flight was really good, Viv fell asleep and Pippa fell asleep so Nick and I talked to Theo and Sera and it didn't seem like very long until we were landing. I gave the big kids some chewy candy and two water bottles and nursed Viv, Nick and Philippa played patty-cake. I'm pretty sure she had no idea we were landing. Everyone who left the plane smiled at the kids and they waved and grinned back and it was cute and they were little angels and Nick and I had a proud parenting moment. On a plane! I know!

Then we got the stroller and put the car seats on them and I put Viv in the ring sling and Pippa was on Nick's hip sling and I put the big kids in the stroller and we RAN from terminal C to terminal G because our plane was supposed to be leaving NOW. So of course we got there and the plane was an hour delayed. And then it ended up being three hours delayed and my god this entry is long so we'll just say many flights were cancelled and our flight was only delayed but the kids had nothing to do and then they ate McDonald's for dinner and we finally boarded our plane and there were tears and crying babies and sleeping big kids and it was just horrible. So we landed in a lightning storm and it took 2 hours to drive the 45 minute drive home because it was pouring rain and at 2am I walked into our place and Theo fell asleep on elevator floor and I finally got to lock our door and turn off the lights at 2:30 am.

So we all slept until noon today, except the baby woke up to eat at 8, but she went right back down. And now my kids are playing silent tag because I told them to be quieter, and I'm a zombie.