I'm not dead.

I planned to blog about our move and CA adventure and it hasn't happened.

I will give a brief run down of a few things.

When we moved out here, we came with a 25ft RV.  All 7 of us (and the dog) lived in the RV for 4 weeks, in the Bate's Motel of RV Parks in Mojave, CA.  A KAO it was not.  We decided to us the California Virtual Academy (K12) for school and 165 lbs of books, a desktop computer and a printer arrived.  They more than covered our couch and I had no place to store them.  I cried.  I looked for a cheap house to rent.

Since we hadn't (and still haven't) sold the house in B'ville I looked for cheap and month to month.  Cheap here is more expensive than our OK house mortgage.  I relented when I found a 2 bedroom, 1 bath, month to month, with a decent sized living area for being only an 860 sq ft house.  It was better than the RV.  It was $850 all bills paid.  Our mortgage on 2700 sq ft and 5 bedrooms is around $730 in OK.

We kept thinking the house will sell and we will be able to find something and move on.  The month to month would allow us to leave with adequate notice to our landlord.  It's been just over 10 months and if nothing else we need a second bathroom, and 3rd bedroom.

I put in a rental app for the first 4 bedroom house I have found for less than 2K a month ($1100).  We'll find out next week if we get the house.  We've had found places that are quickly taken, or the landlord thinks 5 kids is too many in a 3 bedroom or that won't allow pets.  As it stands I'm not holding my breath, but I am praying for more space and a nicer area (the house is in Tehachapi, not Mojave).

That's a brief update of our CA adventure in housing, please pray we get the house and continue to pray for the sale of our B'ville house.  This home school mom needs more room and freedom for her kids.  Mojave is 1200 people with an inner city demographic.  My children have gone from freedom, to prison.

Keurig Coffee Maker Give Away!

I would love to win this.

Giving Up

Victoria broke my heart tonight.

For those of you who don't know V suffers from something called convergence excess, it is an ocular development issue which make reading very difficult.  V has been through 5 months of vision therapy and still have HUGE struggles.

Tonight she said something that brought me to tears.  She said she would give up climbing to be able to read well.  If you don't know V you don't know that she is a tree, pole, rope, cliff and wall climbing crazy person.  If it can be climbed she will attempt it and she finds great pleasure in climbing.  For her to say something like that shows how hard not reading well is for her.

I love her.

What would you give up in place of you biggest struggle?  I honestly can't answer that.

Zero Gravity

This is video of Jonathan at Zero G on G Force One.

tying it all up

I'm making an attempt to better connect the sites I use.  I've hooked my blog to twitter and facebook, my facebook to twitter, and my photobucket account to facebook and twitter.

I wonder if I can get my facebook status to post to my blog...

Now lets see if they can all work in harmony

I know I owe you!

I stopped blogging about our trip, because I couldn't post pictures.

All is well in CA and I will get everyone up to speed.

My laptop wouldn't allow me to dump my camera and my desktop is out of it's box, and my camera is dumped!

Pictures and stories to follow.

I will get pictures soon.

My computer is not wanting to pull data from my camera.  JR suggested that I might need a new laptop.  Woo Hoo!  I might get to go to Fry's!  I've never been to Fry's.  I'm totally stoked.  Yes, I used the word stoked.  I will be sure to throw in gnarly for good measure and I will make sure I don't say y'all to complete my California transition.

I have told my kids to stop Valley Girl talking since we don't live in "the Valley", plus I want to gouge my eyeballs out.

I'm moving on...

...I'm going home...(Smash Mouth-Moving On)

Okay, so CA may not be home yet, but it's been pretty good.  I will not complain about 65 degrees in January.

Our story continues...

We planned to leave on Monday the 17th.  We were struggling to get everything done to the house, the truck packed and the house cleaned.  Honestly it didn't all get done by us and we left the 18th.

On Sunday our neighbor Allen (one of Jonathan's best friends) said, "You aren't leaving tomorrow."  I had been saying it, but Jonathan wasn't really hearing me.  I was thankful that Allen gave him perspective.

We worked like dogs all Monday.  I ran and picked up the car carrier to move Jonathan's 1954 Pontiac Chieftan, and we got it loaded on the trailer and hooked to his truck.  The final plan was to park the Pontiac at the Blackberry Farm and park the truck there and call a transport company to bring the truck to Cali, so we could drive as a family.  We ran full bore and we got to bed at 2 am Tuesday.  We all slept on the living room floor.

Things honestly looked bleak for our Tuesday departure until I had an epiphany at 12:30 while I took a final shower before we left.  I solved the problem of more trash that we had no place to put.

We rolled away from the house at about 10 and made a quick return to Lowe's, grabbed breakfast at McD's and drove to the farm.

After unloading the car we ran for a final meal at Panda in Stillwater and off we went.

We were far enough behind that we didn't get to the pikepass office before it closed (it closes at 4:30 and we were there at 4:40).  We ran by my sister Michelle's and dropped the passes in her mailbox and in our fog didn't see my b-i-l Steve as we pulled away.

Oddly enough we did see Michelle driving the opposite direction on the Kilpatrick Turnpike.

We did make Amarillo, by 10:30 and we rolled into a KOA near Folsom Rd.  We actually noticed that the next morning and JR started busting out in some Johnny Cash, even though Folsom Prison is in CA.