Settling down in Iowa

Our first month in Iowa has been great (a bit chaotic but it feels right). To start from where the last post left off, everything was fine and dandy, the moving truck was to leave Thursday and be in Cedar Rapids Monday or Tuesday of the following week. Jared was driving up with us to help unpack and fly back that Wednesday to complete his last two weeks with United Space Alliance. All was dandy until the truck driver informed us that there was a scheduling mix up and everything we owned (and I mean everything because we only packed the necessities for a two day drive) would be sitting in Plano, Tx for nine days. He had to drop the trailer and then make a run west before picking it up....WHAT THE WHAT??

It was too late to change plans so we headed out Saturday morning and stayed the week with my parents. Our stuff got in late the following Tuesday. Jared had already flown back to H-town. The truck pulled up on the hottest day of the summer. My wonderful mom stayed two days helping me unpack in the scorching heat and get things in order and by the time she left it looked like a home.

We are renting a really cute house for the fall on the SE side of town. It was built in 1900 and like any old house has its odd intricacies. For example there is no pantry (which I completely freaked out about). We believe what once was the pantry is now the downstairs half bath....however we have a wonderfully hideous wet bar in the basement that works perfectly for storage.

Entryway

Giant sliding door to close off the majority of the house so when people visit it can be trashed!....I personally think every house should have one of these, its awesome!

My first week in I decided to scrub down the porch, I have been away to long and forgot to check to see if the outside faucets were winterized and managed to flood out the basement. I spent a day getting to know my landlord as we gutted wet drywall and carpet in the basement. The damage was minimal, thank goodness.

Living Room

Attic

The house has this awesome attic that could be out of a book. Anyway the woodwork throughout is beautiful and the neighborhood is perfect. Lots of mature trees and rolling hills and turn-of-the-century mansions. The area is absolutely beautiful and super friendly. Two blocks west of us starts the ghetto and I am not joking we hear at least a gun shot a week and two blocks east is old school money, the 5000 sq/ft circa 1900-1920's mansions that are perfectly manured. We get to bike through the upscale neighborhood on our way to school everyday and I am completely enamored with it.

Erin's school is very diverse economically, everything from title 1 to the old school money. She is attending Grant Wood Elementary until we move (which is awesome, I am a HUGE Grant Wood fan). The halls are lined with his art work, I love love love it! Minus a staff member I ran into this week that dresses like a tramp ( I am sorry no 40 year old woman should be wearing what I would consider a swimming suit cover up to work, especially with little kids. I just wanted to say hello I could see your undies...you know if you were actually wearing some)...besides her everyone seems really down to earth and the teachers are awesome.

Jared finally made it in safely on Aug 15^th, unfortunately his golf clubs did not. Southwest lost them or someone snatched them (joke is on them J's left-handed). So he has been filing his claim and hoping for the best. But golf clubs or not we are happy to finally have him up here.

He seems to like his new job, he even met a nice group of boys to eat lunch with in the cafeteria. I was laughing one night as we sat at the dinner table and both J and Erin excitedly told about their new lunch friends.

And for the first time in month I feel like I can breathe. As much as we miss Texas this already feels like home.

Transition - Leaving Texas

Time to dust off the blog, We are still alive and well! The past three months our lives have been a blur. While at the time it seemed like chaos ruled and logic was lost, we now are settling down to realize the great blessings and mercy the Lord has extended to our family through the process and that we are indeed where he would have us be (well almost, we missed the mark by five miles but thats another story!)

I typically don't back-blog much but I'll take a minute to touch on some major events.

First and foremost Jared graduated from the University of Colorado with his Masters in Engineering Management – Space Operations in May. What should have been a celebrated momentous occasion simply passed by with a sign of relief as we madly cleaned and fixed in preparation to place the house on the market. We are so proud of him, it was a long three years for the whole family but he balanced it all well.

With the move came our biggest concern, selling our home in League City. It was our first house, we moved in shortly before Erin turned two and soon it became home to a growing family. It was beautiful, and backed up to the park and we were surrounded by friendly neighbors who were wonderful. For five years I engineered my own soil, finally last spring I had a patch of fertile land that would actually yield produce.

We placed our house on the market Memorial Day weekend, ours would compete at the time with scores of homes with similar square footage and build. The local housing market was flooded because of the massive layoffs associated the shuttle program. While our house was in a good neighborhood and we kept it up, there was over a year of inventory on the market and could easily be a year or more before we sold simply because of the volume and economy.

Jared was swamped with interviews and work during the spring and I spent night and day prepping the house for sale. I am thankful for good friends who scrubbed walls unknown to people taller than 3'. The amount of showings was dismal, by the third week of June we only had three showings. Much to my surprise our Realtor called and said an offer had been submitted. The offer was acceptable, almost asking price, but the buyer was asking for $6,000 cash to close. Ouch, but after running the numbers what it would take to keep the house vacant, plus the concern of shifting foundation with the drought (which by the way I had nightmares all summer during the closing process that it shifted right before closing and the buyer backed out :) we accepted.

July was plain crazy. I am thankful for an excellent Realtor (Jeff Bulman for all your locals getting ready to put you house on the market) who kept everyone of their feet (much to the loan officers dismay at times). Their email banter back and forth provided entertainment while we were in a completely stressed state. The buyer had financing issues, and after a few weeks where we suspected the deal would fold, they worked it out. Long story but the market was falling so fast our house didn't even appraise for the buyers offer. That became a breach of our relocation contract - one messy chaotic situation and for several days we had no idea who actually owned our house or if we had closed. In late July we received our equity check in the mail...which made us assume we SOLD! It was one of the many miracles on this journey. For reasons still unknown to us, we were able to sell and are so very grateful that we could start in Iowa being free of our obligations in Texas.

In the mean time Jared got tickets to see the STS-135 launch from the six mile mark at Kennedy Space Center. While we didn't have the time to make an impromptu visit to Florida, this was the LAST shuttle launch. I'll post separately about it, but it was epic (and emotional)!

Jared dropped me off in Louisiana for YW camp on the way home from the launch. I served as the assistant stake camp director this year, which was a perfect closure to my time in League City and after serving in the ward YW presidency for 6 ½ years (which will probably be another post).

I returned home from camp on a Saturday physically exhausted from two weeks of travel and spiritually uplifted – just in time, the movers came on Wednesday. Monday friends threw one Texas sized good bye party for us. They had a corn roast in the park, despite the heat it was a warm sendoff and much needed closure as we left great friends who have doubled as family
over the past seven years. We will miss them all dearly.

Wednesday and Thursday were spent packing in 100+ degree heat. Thursday and Friday night we stayed with good friends, enjoying some final time together before the next adventure of life would turn its pages for both families the following week. We waved goodbye to Sam Houston as we left Houston one last time... we left home to head home.

The Great Migration

Over the past year we have noticed a trend, several old friends are returning home. LA, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Atlanta, Baltimore, Oklahoma City all returning to the upper Midwest triad(Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin) after almost a decade of being away. I wondered why, there is not much there besides fields and memories. Like most of them, we too loved where we grew up but went off to college and then off to the city. I enjoy being a couple of miles away from the center of Houston, the games, the museums, concerts and constant things to do. I love that within a five mile radius I have two lowes, a HD and a small hardware store. I miss the summer storms, the 20mph "breeze" and the warmth of the Midwest people (southern people are friendly also, but they don't chant randomly in the store line :).

In mid July we too will join that migration. We'll be heading to Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Jared starts at Rockwell Collins on Aug 1. We knew this day was coming. With the closure of the shuttle program in July and the cancellation of Constellation last year (the program in play to replace the shuttle) that Jared would probably become one of the thousands of aerospace causalities. With several layoff over the past year, he was blessed to make it to the end of the program.

The last month has been crazy, he had a standing offer at Rockwell Collins and also had another offer from a small comapny out at Goddard Space Center in Washington DC. We literrally had to make the decision over night. DC sounded amazing, the job was great... the cost of living there with three kids and the poor school system, put a damper on the excitement. We too decided that it was time to spend a few years home, let the kids get to know their grandparents and enjoy the storms.

We are sad to be leaving Texas, but after almost 18 months in limbo its nice to have something secured.

Mamas dusting off her running shoes

Pre-race

I haven't ran in years...so this spring a group of girls from church decided it was time to get out heinie's in gear and put some miles behind a us. A few had never ran before in their life and the rest of us were rusty so we put together a face book group to make us accountable to each other . I still don't run much, around 3 miles two or three times a week, but I am remembering why I loved it so much (at least until it hits 90 degrees).

Last Saturday we all did a local 5K together, Yuri's night run (even though it was at 8am) to celebrate manned space flight (which is ironic since the program is killed this year). Alot of our kids also ran the 1K. The weather was beautiful, the course was beautiful and there were even a couple of random storm troopers to help you off the finish line!


Erin is an awesome runner, she came in first in her class and fifth overall for the 1K (ages 12 and under). Erin is not competitive in nature but put her at a starting line and she gets her game face on! She was dang proud that she beat Stevie (yes they are holding hands, Stevie is a hot commodity with the kinder girls :). We all survived! My goal was to make it in under 30:00 and I came in at 29:18 and placed 13th out of 54 for the 20-29 age group. I feel like I am in a good trend, I can now outrun the stupid, yet incredibly swift and mean geese around the pond trail, hopefully I can keep up the momentum!

Double Trouble

These two have a love hate relationship. When they find common ground it typically involves mischief.

Truck, Truck!

Friday night we went to a birthday party. Our city fire department has a really great program where they will come out to your party with the trucks and let the kids climb in them. Erin was not amuzed at all, Eliza had fun but Ike was in Heaven! He just stood there pointing at them and yelling TRUCK!!!! TRUCK!! The fire woman gave him a hat and badge and he was just beaming! They had two trucks and he spent twenty minutes going through them...then they had to leave early for a car fire.

Eliza decided they were okay as long as she got the drivers seat ;). The weather was beautiful and just a great night to be outside....our nice days are numbered.

Project Weekend - Emm meets electrial for the first time!

Projects # 2,8, 18 & 26

Jared was out of business for part of the week and I had some time to crank out some house projects. I actually pruned my trees a few weeks ago, our neighbors had an electric pole saw so we thinned out our large red oak in the back, pruned the peach tree, and nubbed down the crape myrtle.

I finally got all the woodwork in the kitchen caulked...yay!

And this weekend I had my big first....I learned to wire in electrical stuff! I don't know why I have been so timid to do it, (probably because I HATE electricity) and even though I shut off the power to the whole house, I still think I am going to die of electrocution). I can't believe I didn't tackle this sooner, walk in the park...White to white, black to black, ground to green....(except for the back light which were all white and I got lucky). twist, cap and walah! I am proud to say they all worked on the first flip of the switch! And I am sad to say I had to take the back one off and return it to Lowes because the screw that lets you set the light was stripped, so I got to install that one twice, lesson learned.

Our front garage light is UGLY! It once was a lovely cheap looking shiny gold, no doubt from the early 1990's. At first I was just going to buy one, but even the new ugly gold ones are $30.00 plus dollars. We rarely use it and while walking through Lowes clearance section they had a can of hammed bronze Rust-oleum spray paint on sale for $2.00. That was more my price range. The paint is amazing! I got a little spray happy and also did our flag pole holder which was rusty and our fuse box and meter (they are outside). Now I want to go back and buy the brushed nickel spray paint and paint all our uggo gold fixtures. I cleaned the glass (for probably the first time in twenty years) and wow the thing lights up the whole neighborhood now! So ya its still ugly but at least it a new, bright ugly.

And I never realized our back light they put the junction box on the outside of the siding. Whatever, I am not going to mess with the last guys laziness. It has not shorted out in five years so I slapped that new puppy on and for the first time in a year we have a back porch light. The girls we all excited until I told them it was so they could run things out to the compost pile after dinner...the excitement faded quickly.

Wisteria

(Last week)

My wisteria is almost five years old and this year it finally bloomed! I was SOOOO excited, absolutely beautiful!

(This week)

Take it down the field!

Eliza started city soccer this spring. She plays on a 3/4 year old team, the green jaguars, and while I personally think soccer is probably the most boring sport on the face of the earth, tot soccer is hysterical to watch. The first five minutes of the game is full on mass chaos with a swarm of little bodies go for the ball....the last twenty-five minutes are filled with the defensive line picking flowers and the occasional kick.
It took us two full practices to get Eliza onto the field (she is really shy). But she finally caught on and this last game she even got the ball and dribbled it down the field. Thanks to Erin E. for the photos!

Spring Break!

We picked strawberries, canned jam, played and play and played at many playgrounds, had several play dates, late night parties, dinner dates and lots of backyard outside time. Ike swing, swang and swung, currently he is very possessive of the horse swing.

Project 6 & 9....Expansion across and up!

I have spend the last few weeks out prepping the yard, spring is here (and almost gone!). Some of our good friends were taking out their garden and returning their yard to sod and had several loads of excellent soil, free for the taking. So after several van loads (yes I use my Kia Sedona just like a 1/2 ton truck) I was able to expand my plot by several feet! I also decided to box it in this year. After pricing out materials, I decided just to go with non-treated pine ($25.00). It will probably only last about three years, but I was not ready to spend $100 plus of concrete blocks and didn't want treated lumber encasing what I eat.
I also wanted to build up this year. I started using my fence as a trellis for green beans and last fall we cleaned out the boy scout shed at church. They had a bunch of old 2x4's that were warped and going to the trash so I grabbed a few to make a trellis.
I planted tomatoes, peppers, green beans, cucumbers, squash and cantaloupe (front yard) and peas. The trellis is for cucumbers and squash. Everything is in a growing and I am excited!

Project # 19 - Stick it to Schwinn; Project #15- Sold

My kids were messing around on my double jogging strolled and tipped it over, breaking a hinge on the handle bar. Since it was under two years old I figured I would call Schwinn, pay $20, they could send me the replacement part, drill out the rivets and wa-lah!
However I was kindly informed that they do not make "individual" components and I would have to spend $130 on a whole new frame. WHATTTT!! So miffed I went to the local bike shop and he was sure he could call as a supplier and get me one, his luck was not any better.

So there was no way I was spending that kind of cash on a stroller I paid $80 on ebay.
Because of the stress load of pushing 50-70 pounds it could not be epoxied. Thanks to a great home teacher with a drill press, I spent a whopping $5.60 at Ace Hardware to create the bionic stroller. Works great! Then my neighbors had a garage sale and I was in my minimalist mode and I sold it....but the project was completed!

And Project 15, the headboard, also went to the garage sale. We are looking at getting a new bed in the next year (hopefully a king) so I didn't think it was worth spending time on a queen headboard.

Dip Dip & Swing

(Pre-race, waiting to port in)

Brittany and I decided to dump our hubbys for the day and compete in the Buffalo Bayou Regatta, a fifteen-mile canoe race through the center of Houston...and for some reason we both thought that we could easily paddle 15 miles without training.

The Regatta is the largest canoe race in the State of Texas, this year was no different with close to 450 boats. There were several classes, but Inflated Expectations, my two person inflatable kayak landed up in the unlimited class (which was a good portion of the entries).

Our morning started with me walking back to the registration area and yelling to Britt “Hey you want a breakfast taco, some random guys jumped out of a moving truck and chased me down in the parking garage gave them to me”. And that is when we both stopped and just realized what I had said and then shrugged and took a bite...that’s what I love about outdoor events. In any other situation in Houston there are so many red flags in that short phrase, but on a day like today its really just a group of nice guys offering you non-dangerous food in a dim-lit musty parking garage.

Our boat was stamped “sea worthy” by the Navy Seals and we were ready to get started.

Team Renshaw ported in on a steep wooded slope, which was not really even a port area. We were luckily enough to be in a class that allowed an in-water start. The corporate competitive class (the big aluminum canoes) required bank start, which was hysterical. Imagine 100 large canoes being cast down a steep wooded banks, probably half capsized trying to get started.

(Long Kayak Division start)

The day was beautiful, but windy (and windy in the wrong direction). We had a strong headwind almost the whole race. Brittany saw the first banner and exclaimed “There is our half way mark (which in reality, much to Britts dismay was our 3.5 mile mark)”. By mile three our shoulders burned, by mile six, without current and the wind at our head our arms ached and by mile 12 we were having to put everything into it, my knees and back were killing me. The whole race we trailed a quad boat and our goal was to overtake them and we did in the last half mile. We crossed the finish line with a time of 3hours and 20 minutes (I thought it was 3:40 but they just posted the race results, yay!). It was all we could do to drag our battered bodies out of the canoe and onto the dock.

(Britt still looking strong even though we both wanted to die)

The run itself was beautiful. The thick vegetation drowned out the roar of the city and there were dozens of beautiful mansions that lined the bayou (may who cheered us on and played music) and lots of beautiful retaining walls (and some not so nice ones).

(Approaching the skyline)

The last three miles we approached downtown and my favorite part was rowing under I-45, weaving through the bridge pilasters. We went past the aquarium and crossed the finish line at one of the downtown plazas where they had live Zydeco music and lunch.

(Maneuvering under I-45)

(Lunch party on the plaza, we made it!)

Britt stayed and packaged the canoe, while I got to ride the city drunk bus back to the parking garage. It was 30 minutes of bad drunk entertainment, it reminded me of riding Cyride home on a Friday night in college, expect these guys (same ones that offered me the breakfast tacos) were like in their mid 30's (and cannot sing Lady Gaga for the record). They even invited me to a keg-er that night, a kind gesture to a mother of three :) What a way to end the day.

Notes for next year...1. Get a real canoe (I love my inflatable but its not race material), 2. no more pretending I have the body of an twenty year old, 3. legs require sunscreen even in March!.

Thanks Britt for being my partner in crime!

Project #25: The New Pet (x183)

As parents what lengths do we go to to feed the needs our children's curiosity? Their minds are so open, so willing to lean. The question is can mine be the same, can I look at ideas with the same simplicity and excitement as a six year old? This week I am trying and because of it I would just like to say I deserve the Mother of the Year Award.

Erin has been begging for a worm farm for months now. I kept thinking it would be a passing fad, distracted by something covered in pink and glitter, since you know, she is a six year old suburban girl. But I soon realized this idea, wherever it originated, was here to stay.

After some research we decided if we were going to have worms, there might as well be some secondary benefits (besides entertainment???). We decided on Red Wrigglers since they are a composting breed (its like having a living garbage disposal). They can eat their weight daily in food scraps. Worm castings (also known as worm poo) has a highly beneficial organic fertlizer for gardens and beds.

After thinking about it for a while this is a win-win situation. The kids get a pet, I don't have to pay anything to keep it, there are no vet bills, and if (when) I get sick of them, I don't have to take them to the pound, I just dump them in the garden. And if they do take off, both the worms and casting sell for a high price, so Erin can pay for college by selling worm poo :)

So Friday evening we started E's Worm Ranch. While most worms farms start at 1000 worms, I didn't feel comfortable with that large of a starter kit.....We started with 183.

We made our barn out of a three gallon frosting bucket from Shipleys Doughnuts (ironically Erin's favorite place). Erin had her first try at drilling holes and she did an excellent job. The holes provide oxygen to the worms. The bucket was filled with wet newspapers and a handful of dirt and a few apples slices to get them started. Most people actually keep them in their kitchen. I was not sure how I felt about that, so right now they are living in the half bath we rarely use.

So far Erin and Eliza are deeply concerned about the welfare of their worms. They check on them four or five times a day and Eliza even sang them a song last night.

For those of you looking to start you own worm farm, its simple, thank you google for one more completed project!

Cheap and Easy Worm Bin