This is milkweed…

I left this pretty ugly plant grow, in hopes that I would have a very special group of visitors. Today, I checked and was very happy to find this little visitor.

This little guy is a monarch caterpillar, hopefully he (or she) will grow into a beautiful butterfly before too long.

We went to the apartment today, cleared off the porch, took care of the garden, made sure nothing was in the house, or the mailbox…and put the keys into the drop-off. Done.

And it feels so good to be rid of that place. Now I can get this place unpacked and settle in, but I need some rest, so I will not be rushing to get everything done. I have bruises, ontop of bruises, my back aches no matter what I do, I hurt my wrist (again). I have found all the muscles that I didnt remember having.

I love my basement, I think it is the best room in the house. The apartment that we were living in, did not have any place for storage, so we filled the walk-in closets and various unused corners to store things. When we were packing, I went through the boxes and repacked everything, so now I know what is in most of the boxes. The best part is that I dont have to look at those boxes…unless I want to.

I love my basement.

..and getting settled. It has been interesting, and I dont have a clue where some of the things that I need are. I was joking today, that my apartment looks like a tornato went through, there are papers, toys, and just stuff everywhere…and the house is where all the larger things, like the furnature and boxes were deposited.

I am not feeling to great tonight, I have a horrible cold and possibly allergies. So, I basically feel like I was hit by a truck…then it backed up. I am going to try to spend a few minutes online, I am sure I am out of credits for BlogMad. Anyways, I have the TV, sofa, and the computer. That is enough for me tonight.

I am at the new house and I have a connection!!!!!!!!!!!

I arrived here about 1pm, and about 10 minutes later, the phone lady came by. Ten minutes or so later the TV guy came (he is still here, running a new line for the livingroom), and the Cable works. Tomorrow, the Internet person comes…but I really dont think we need him, as I am on Line

Tomorrow, the furnature is arriving (like it has far to go…the apartment is about 5 minutes from the house), so the mad rush to pack the last of the non-furnature stuff happens today. Add to that, I am taking Youngest to meet his new teacher, and then Youngest and Hubby are going camping tonight (it is fine, it is alot easier to pack stuff up without little feets under foot) and Eldest, is going to a family thing with her boyfriend. So, this will probably be it for today…talk with everyone tomorrow!

I am sorry everyone, I am going to take this week off. With moving and running like a chicken..I just dont have time to visit other people, though I would love to see all your posts. I will post next week.

Next weeks theme for my list, will be about the house. Please stop back to take a look next week.

The electrician came this evening to check out the house. The plug was fried, which is what caused the little “fire”. The rest of the plugs in the upstairs were fine, I had the guy check them all. So, hopefully that will be our only problem.

The owner got to see the pond and she actually was suprised…that is was small. She had thought that I was going to dig up her back yard. I will have to have a proper outlet run for the pond but for now I have it run through a circuit dedicated to the garage, and the pond is in the driveway.

I thought that taking the pond out of the garden would be difficult, but it was actually pretty easy. Once I got the water into the 55 gallon plastic tote, I was able to catch the big fish (the Mama’s), they were put into the tote, and the papa’s were given to my neighbor. Then I had to look for the little ones. They tend to be difficult to see, as they are almost all black. There was one little one that waited till the very end to get caught.

Getting ready for the ride to the house was kind of interesting. A smaller 22 gallon tote that I used for the lily pad, and for things like the pump, seemed fine. But when we lifted the tote into the van, Eldest noticed that there was a crack in one of the bottom corners. I had to get the water out of the van…and quickly. After all that excitement, we finally got to the house, put the pond in the driveway, filled with water, and fish back in. I was even able to get a frog…a little frog, but a frog just the same.

Tomorrow, I will shuttle more boxes over, same on Thursday. Friday, I move some Eldests bed Saturday I bring the cats over in the morning, and set them up in Eldests room. About noon, we will be moving furnature…I dont know if I will have a whole lot of time between now and then, but I will try to post if I have a minute or two.

ggggrrrrrrrrrrrr…ok, now I got that out.

Well, this evening we were at the house, Hubby was upstairs putting together Youngests bed, when I hear Hubby Yell…

So, I grabbed a plastic container, full of water…but fortunately (water isnt what I really should have grabbed) hubby was able to get the fan unplugged and I then went downstairs to the basement and threw the curcuit. Disaster was averted, narrowly. I called the lady who owns the house and reported the problem. Last week, an electrician was supposed to have fixed the electrical problems in the bedroom, but he didnt come, and she didnt let me know that there could still be a problem (I hope that she doesnt read this). My Youngest was in the room with Hubby and he is now scared of his room. I am hoping that having the electrician there and having Youngest there as well, will let Youngest feel safe in the room. I dont feel safe…I can truely understand how Youngest feels. I just wish we had known that the problem(s) still existed…I would never allowed Hubby to do anything in that room if I had known.

I have been commenting that we are using his house as a learning experience, this is one experience that I have definately learned from. I will be calling another well known electrician to have the house checked out.

I dont intend to post what I do every day of this move, but this post is needed for several reasons.

I look around and see so much I have yet to do. And yet, if you go to the basement of the house, it seems like I have moved so much. It is going to rain today, I am going to get some things ready to move on Thursday. I also need to get more “supplies”, boxes from the market, and some more crates. If I can get the coat closet, and the holiday decorations done, I might reward myself by putting the dinningroom table together. I also have the TV thingy to put together.

I made the phone calls yesterday, to get the services put in my name for the house. We plan to be out of the apartment by the 23rd, which will give me time to clean the apartment before handing over the keys.

We did find something yesterday, that was totally unexpected. We moved a book shelf out of Eldests room and behind it we found a fairly large spot where the wall is damaged by water. The only thing I can figure, is that there is a problem with the siding on the outside of the building and that the water has rotted the wall. I will call management tomorrow, as I do not want them to blame this on me. They have a bad habit of doing that sort of thing.

I do not like moving, I know I am not alone. When we move, we take about a month to do so. First moving non-essential things working up to the furnature, which is the last to go. Fortunately, I have not moved very far, each time I have moved, so I can take my time.

So, last night, we made two trips to the new house, starting with things like clothes that we dont need now, and stuffed animals that will not be missed. Most of our closets are full of stuff we havent seen in a while, so half the stuff, we also can throw out.

New moves, for me at least, usually mean, that we can get a couple new things. So last night, I went through the fliers, and checked online for a few things that I would like to get. The things I wanted, I was able to find at some really good deals. We have hard wood floors in the entire house, so I looked for rugs that I could use in some of the rooms. I also found a great looking (at a really great price) Dinning room table and chairs. My Youngest will not be able to keep his bunk bed, as it is to high, and the ceilings are lower, so we checked on a bed for him. We did find the bed that he would like, but will have to wait till the end of the week to get it, as they dont have it in stock.

Finally, we will not be able to use our 8 foot high shelves that I designed. I am not sure what I am going to do with them at this point, but I will see what I can do, when we figure out how much room we have once the move is over. So… I got a nice TV stand, for the livingroom.

So, for now we are going to keep packing and shuttling the boxes and plastic containers over to the new house.