Blah....

That's how I feel tonight. I have so many posts and thoughts and pictures to post on the blog. I feel so behind on just about everything. I wonder, really wonder, how people move. I mean, I have some friends who move every few years because of jobs or military or just because. Many of them have more kids than we do. How do they do it? I am so thankful for my Dad and Bonnie to have come up and watched the kids while the moving truck was here and another day while we moved the big furniture from our apartment to the house. Needless to say, the house is one HUGE mess with boxes and 'stuff' everywhere. Someday, and hopefully soon, it will begin to feel like we live here rather than a moving truck.

We finished cleaning our apartment tonight. Many hours have gone into cleaning the apartment and packing up all that we brought in our first trips to Des Moines. Tomorrow at 9am we give back the keys and hope that we get our deposit back. We are SO thankful to be finished with that part of our lives.

Another big thing... we go get our Iowa tags and driver's licenses tomorrow. We have to travel to the county seat of Adel, Iowa - not far, but something new to do. More than that though, it means we are here to stay - for awhile anyway. It's the very, very last thing we need to do. And, yes, we've been putting it off.

I have continually tried all summer to keep the work and play somewhat even for the kids because my baby girl is going to start kindergarten in a little less than three weeks. I wonder where the time has gone. I truly do. I hope that she has enjoyed the time we were able to spend together not only this summer, but while she was young. I hope that later in life she appreciates that I stayed home with her and would rather have had me home than had other 'things' that money from a job could have given her.

The other day I unpacked the wonderful scrapbook that my great friends made for us when we moved here and sat down and cried for what we had back in Lawrence. I miss my wonderful friends and family every day. I hope they never forget us. I am so very thankful for the great friends that I have made here and only hope that someday soon they will begin to feel like they know the real me and I'm not just the new girl.

I have learned so much over the past six months. I have learned to not take for granted friends and family and their time. It is so important to spend time with those you love because truly we don't know if they will be here the next day, week, year. I have learned that life is forever changing and sometimes it doesn't go the way you want it to or expect it to. Sometimes the only thing you have control over is how you react to the situation. I have learned that I am a little stronger than I once thought. I have also learned that Iowa isn't a bad place and maybe, just for now... it can be a place to call home.