Thankful Thursday

1.  I got my job back.  Of course, after we've already moved.  Doesn't life always happen like that?  So, my principal, who knows our family's plan, was pushing me to put in my resignation quickly so that someone else could get their job back and have the weight off their shoulders.  I put it in on Friday afternoon and Monday morning, one of my good friends got her job back!!  Not sure if I am really thankful I got my job back, but I am certainly thankful that she did.

2.  Donnie got a bike trailer from a guy at work.  When we were in Chico last weekend, I was amazed at how many bikers there were.  I don't remember that many people biking when I went there!  We have a great bike trail right next to our house that leads to downtown.  On Saturday night we biked it and it's not even that far.  We haven't set up the bike trailer yet, so I'm crossing my fingers that Jackson will like it, but hopefully it will be fun!  I think it looks kind of like this one, but Donnie paid $50 for it new in the box from a guy at work!

3.  Only 28 more days of school.  I try to tell myself, if the people on Survivor are on day 28 of eating rice and coconuts, I can certainly do 28 days of 23 9-year-olds. 

Trade Off

We went up this weekend and worked, worked, worked on the new house.

The people came and got the rest of the Koi while Donnie drained the pond, and there ended up being 13 hiding in the muck instead of 10 we originally thought.  Of course, now in place of the pond is a stinky, muddy mess.  Hopefully it'll dry up and we can figure out what to do, add more river rock and have a dry bed or fill it in and plant.

The trade off is the pool now looks fabulous!  The pool guy asked me, "Did I really say I would do all this for only $100?"  Yup, that's why we hired you as quick as we could!  Poor guy had been there almost every day since we were last up, and has cleaned the filter more than 4 times.  Maybe he'll think twice about offering that deal to new clients again!

Our frog friends have found another home now that the pond is drained.

Can you see him sunbathing?

Gross!

Words

I've been trying to make a list of Jackson's little words in hopes of remembering his cute little words he said first and his adorable little boy voice.  I don't want to forget that adorable little voice.
bye
Mama
Dada
dog
cat
car
truck
bone
bird
tree
done
hot
train
choo choo
cow
moo
squirrel
please
hello
uh oh
no
up
go
down
come
house
hat
drum
bubble
shoe
cracker

Oh, and I forgot the best one!  He just learned "ta da!" So when he does something he thinks is fabulous, he holds up both arms and yells, "Ka Kaaaah!"  So funny.

This One Hit Close to Home

There is a bit of an uproar here in Napa in the Fire Fighting community.  This is why.  (Well, it's the most unbiased write up of what has happened that I can find.)  Here is his full letter to the editor though.

I'll just say that it really made me mad.  It also really confused me as to why a businessman would let his mouth run off like this without really getting his facts straight.  I love how one of the commenters writes, "Don't drink and write."  Duh, Mr. Sattui, you're in a business with your name directly stamped to it.  I'm not sure if the backlash will really put a dent in his sales, the tourists are clueless these days.   I do hope one day he feels badly about his choice.

Here's a Funny.

This is what our new pool looked like last week when our escrow finally closed.  Isn't it beautiful?  ;)

It didn't look this bad way back when we put in our offer, but since it's been warming up, the algae has started to grow!

Since we're not quite living there yet, we had to get a pool guy so the pool didn't get so bad that it ends up costing us more to fix broken pumps or something of that sort.   He called on Monday and said the pool looks as good as new!  We cannot wait to see that.  I have trouble believing it right now, but he seemed very excited and proud.

The pool does have the most potential.  Poor previous owner came into some bad luck, he's told us he never planned to move from this house.  And I seriously think had he tried to sell the house with no furniture and in the middle of the summer with a clean pool, he would have gotten a lot more for it.  He's a cement guy and went crazy when he built his home!

***Whoops!  When I linked my blog in the Blog Hop, I hadn't read that it was for a home tour, we're moving and only have empty room pictures!***

I feel ill.

After finally watching Food Inc. last night, I feel ill.  I thought we ate pretty healthy, especially how we feed our little clean slate Jackson, but we can be doing soooo much better.

Step one, I found a local farm in Chico for once we move.  They have grass fed beef and chickens, fresh olives and olive oil, and seasonal produce.  They also come to Chico's Saturday and Thursday Farmer's Markets.  The produce stand at their farm even has "an honor safe for you to place your payment even if no one is available."  Who does that anymore?  Awesome.  And they do farm tours for kids!  I cannot wait.  The thought of the regular supermarket freaks me out right now.

Our Other New Guests

Here are our other new guests at the new house. Two Fighting Bull Frogs (or something like that, the old owner told Donnie what they are but we forget). They are around 6 inches long, which is huge in my book.

We didn't know about them while buying the house in cold months. Now that it's warmer, they're out and about. I think I screamed 5 times in one day last week when they jumped into the pond as you walk by. They have this horrible scream/croak too.

Can you see him?


I told Donnie to go up behind him and try to scare him so I could get an action jumping shot. Here is what I got when the frog screamed as he jumped, and of course I was the one who got scared!


Not sure what's going to happen to them when we drain the pond. The old owner said he bought them because they eat all the bugs. I'm not sure what's worse, huge, ugly frogs, or bugs. And he said they went in the pool. No way are we swimming with frogs.

Bye Bye Fish

Say hello and goodbye to the pets we inherited at our new house.



Ten, 12 inch long Koi fish.



In a pond/stream that hasn't been taken care of in months, possibly a year. The pond is less than a foot deep in spots, and we just feel badly for the poor fish. I don't even know how we'd clean it at this point. So, we've decided to drain the stream and give away the fish. Can you imagine how fascinated with the stream Jackson would be and how dirty he would get from it? Not to mention that putting a fence around the pool would be somewhat pointless with this other body of water on the outside of it?



I do feel somewhat badly though. A lot of money & effort was put into making this stream with a nice filter, and here we are just going to drain it. We're not going to fill it in though, except replacing some new and clean river rock to make it a dry bed. In the future, if we ever want it again, I guess we can just start it back up.



I got back from being at the new house Wednesday night. The next morning, I put our 10 friends on Craigslist free to a good home and had 10 inquiries within an hour! I guess we could have charged for the Koi, but really, wouldn't you have felt badly?

"Please come fish out 10 Koi from our dirty pond, and by the way, we would like $10 for each disgusting fish you scoop out?"

Easter Pics

A few quick pictures!

Jackson started off the morning opening his basket from his Nana, thank you! He just loved all his new trucks!


And one from GG too!


And then we headed to Susan's for Easter brunch.


It was cold, so the kids had to play mostly inside.

The kids were in the other room when the Easter Bunny stopped by. Jackson got a peek though,

The few men in the family.


Janet had wrapped a set of Thomas Trains for Jackson to find instead of candy eggs. Jackson found one out of five of the trains and was happy and good to go! We had to find and pick up the rest for him!



It was cold, rainy, and a bit tiring. So to come home, get in our jammies, and have a fabulous Easter 'dinner' was perfect!

Moving Night

Moving Night is over. Why was it moving night and not moving day? Because here was our experience with Pods.

When we moved out of our house with no house yet to move into, our choice was a storage unit, movers, or Pods. I called Pods. They put it on your driveway, you pack it, they pick it up and store it, then they deliver it to your new house when you're ready. Genius. It totally cuts out the step of the moving process. They quoted us at $149 a month (normal for a storage unit) and $267 to move it whenever we're ready. Um yes, we'll take one please.

We got our Pod, loaded it, and it was sitting at their storage place. Last week when we found out our closing date, our realtor told us it was safe to have the Pod delivered. I called to have it delivered, and they told us our total to have it moved was $1600. $1600! Excuse me? I was furious. Of course they had no record of our earlier quote or moving zip code, and now looking back, I never had it in writing either. My mistake, big mistake. But really, now I realize the sales lady was purposely vague, no paperwork trail, and didn't put in our moving zip code into the system because she was trying so desperately to make her sale. Ugh.

So, after talking Pods into getting our case reviewed, they knock us down to $1400 to have it moved. Oh geez, thanks a lot. At that price we could've gotten real movers who would've done all the work. We decide instead to have it brought back to Napa (for the normal $61) price, and move it ourselves.

The Pod came back Saturday to Napa, and Donnie's telling the driver about our horrible experience. The driver says the company is horrible, they treat him awfully, and he's quitting as soon as he can find another job. He says he can deliver it to Chico, on the side and undercover, for $600. Still not quite as cheap as we thought, but worth the hassle of us not having to unload it, rent a Uhaul, pack it, and move it.

So, Tuesday night at 11:30pm, the driver picked up the Pod from Napa, brought it to Chico at 2:15am, brought a brother-in-law to help, and the 4 of us unloaded it into our new garage in less than an hour. Thank goodness for that driver. I wish I could publicly thank him, but I wouldn't want his job to be in jeopardy. The two of them were so nice, and I'm kind of glad he got the extra money on the side he probably deserves from the real company. So would I EVER recommend Pods. Nope, unless you get our driver.

And that was our moving night. It wasn't as bad as I thought. A Pod that took Donnie 1 week to carefully pack, was unloaded in less than an hour. All of our furniture is good as new. We were back in bed at the hotel by 3:30am. And thankfully our house closed that morning.

Picture Hold.

I'm on picture hold again until Thursday. We had a FABULOUS Easter! Despite the cold and rain, the kids were still able to look for eggs and we all still had fun. Mimosas, sratta, and way too much candy. I only wish I'd gotten pictures of the jump-roping.

Today, back at work. Donnie's off and loading up the trailer to take to Chico. Because our house closed?! Nope. I just got word it would close tomorrow. But, our Pod is being delivered at 7am tomorrow morning and we have to unpack it as quick as we can. Another thing I will post more on later. AFTER we've unpacked and unloaded our furniture, I will tell all about Pods, but not until I get our furniture, if you get what I'm saying. I have a mouth full about Pods, but let's just get our furniture into the new house safe before that happens. :) Fingers and toes crossed.

Scratch that, it's being delivered at 3am. This should be fun. Can you hear the sarcasm seeping through?

Happy Easter!

Tomorrow will be Jackson's first Easter where he's able to walk around and look for eggs, yeay! Hopefully it won't be raining and better for Jackson then last year.

So, this year his basket is really a backpack I wanted him to try out. It would be nice if he could hold his water sippy and some toys in it, and maybe a towel for his messes or the pool. Chalk eggs in the pocket since he's not a candy eater yet. The longer we can hold him off the better.


His new Klean Kanteen bottle with the big kid sport top. And, did you know Klean Kanteen was founded in Chico?! Always looking for local companies to be obsessed with and loyal to!


Some Crocs we wanted him to have for the summer, a Thomas Pez minus the candy, and some board books!

Traintown

Hmm, not sure what to think of Traintown. We went today because Jackson is obsessed with his trains. I bought 2 huge boxes of Thomas the Trains on craigslist for $70. Deal of the century. Those things sell for $10 a train and the set pieces are ridiculous. I'll post later on those. But anyways, Jackson knows his "twains" and "Choo choo!" So, we thought Traintown would be great.

Jackson flipped. He cried his little eyes out, saying and signing, "Done!" before the train even started.



Once it started, he was fine.


After 8 min on the train, they stop at this mini-town where you have around 5 min to walk around.
Jackson in the schoolhouse,


Not wanting to sit on anything,



And then they make you get back on the train back to go back to the front of the park. They don't let you hang at the mini-town and walk around for awhile longer. There are a few rides up at the front of the park, but Jackson's too small/short.

They do have a real train that just sits there that you can walk through. Jackson looking out the window of one of those,



So, $10 for a 20 min train ride?

Thankful Thursday

1. I'm writing this post on Wednesday night and having it automatically post on Thursday, because right now (on Thursday) we're up signing papers for our house! Yeay! So thankful that the end is near! We'll be signing papers, doing the walk-through, and hopefully the next time we're up we will be unpacking!

2. Rain? Not really thankful that it's during our Spring Break, but I guess CA needs it.

3. Oh, all I can really think of for #3 is our house closing is near!!!