Unpacking

We made it! We are here! We are unpacking and living on Dunkin Donuts! We have more room than we know what to do with!

We are happy. :)

Here are some pictures! I'll post later about unpacking, BUT we unloaded an entire truck ourselves! Take that TMO!!!! :)

Trip Two: Day Three (Dallas - Birmingham)

Yesterday we went from Dallas to Birmingham, Alabama, and it was our shortest trip yet! I am actually very happy that it ended up that way because we needed a break! The dogs were horrible yesterday, and if you know our dogs, they're the laziest dogs in the world. Usually our dogs sleep 23 hours a day, but not yesterday during the drive. We kept changing their spots in the truck, between on the seat between us and on the ground to get them to stop moving around so much. Every time we stopped, I took them out of the truck, and ran them up and down the truck stop to get them tired and it worked because they slept at night! Smokey is having a harder time than Petey, most likely because he is smarter and knows something is up. I'm hoping that they snap out of their funk tomorrow when we are in our new house and calm down and eat. They've been refusing to eat, and I fret over those two dogs!

We arrived at I think 5ish yesterday in Birmingham, and I immediately put on my workout clothes and hit the treadmill! You have NO idea how good a treadmill feels after three days of being locked up in the truck! We then went to eat at an Applebee's in the parking lot of our hotel because if I ate another burger or something fast food, I was going to flip! Applebee's was an experience! People in Alabama have THICK accents, they are actually pretty cute. Applebee's was so busy, it might have been the only restaurant in this little town we were in, and our poor waiter was getting shit from everyone about their food. The lady next to us, if you can even call her a lady, was ruthless!!! She was there with a friend, and when they got their food she immediately said "Is our food even warm!?" and then bitched that she didn't get her appetizer. The waiter apologized profusely and went to go get their appetizer. I then proceeded to watch Jabba the Hutt put a mound of butter in her potatoes the size of a fist! I mean it was an astronomical amount! Don't get me wrong, I slather butter on rolls and food a lot, but this was LITERALLY a mound of butter the size of a baboons heart. She then proceeded to get the trio appetizer, eat that, and then took a dessert to go! They badgered the poor waiter the whole time too demanding everything be free. Don't get me wrong, she ordered something and should have had it, but it was New Years Eve, they were ridiculously busy, and this poor kid was literally running around the restaurant. I hate people who are rude to waiters and waitresses, it's so uncalled for!

We got some good sleep last night! I love it when your head hits the pillow and you don't wake up at all until the next day. I am going to need all that sleep because we are going to be in North Carolina tomorrow and need all the energy we have to unpack!

Trip 2: Day One (Murrieta - Deming, New Mexico)

Yesterday we left Murrieta at about 6:20am to start our trek out east! We left 20 minutes late because mama needed a Starbucks and bless my sisters heart, she woke up at 5:45 to take me!! My little nuggets of some nephews were also awake! I think it's secretly because they wanted to see the truck off, Blake kept pointing at the truck saying "I want someone to give me a ride in that truck!" Uncle Dusty would have, but he had a miserable time backing that thing up the first time around. I told Blake he could ride with us but only if he sat in the chairs strapped to the car trailer! He agreed! Ha!!

So we left yesterday morning and it took us all day to get into the swing of things. Here is what we learned, so far.

Rule Number One: Stop when you think you have to go to the bathroom, in the slightest bit, or else you'll end up in tears saying to your husband, "I swear to you, if you don't pull over, I'm going to pee right here in this cup!"

Rule Number Two: Truck stops only. They may sound gross, you may have to squat above god only knows what, while your quads are burning from doing the Carrie Underwood leg workout, but it's easier to get in and out of truck stops when you're in a giant ass truck pulling a car trailer. If not you'll add on an extra 45 minutes to your drive time because you can't flip a bitch and you have to find three lefts to turn around! Thanks Palm Desert for that experience!

Rule Number Three: Toothbrushes and toothpaste for your dogs. My dog has the worst breath in the world and after 6 hours, I was over it. He wouldn't eat a mint, so I chewed up a mint, and tried to force feed him baby bird style and he wasn't having it!

Rule Number Four: Book light/personal light. I was nearly done with The Other Boleyn Girl last night and it got too dark to read and I was kicking myself in the ass for not thinking of this earlier!!! (Finished the book, btw, FABULOUS! A must read!!!!)

So far, that's what we've learned! We were on the road for nearly 12 hours yesterday, driving in this truck is way slower than when we did it earlier this month in the jeep, and some gas stations the diesel pumps SO slow! Like 30 minutes to fill our tank! We've also decided to NEVER do a DITY move ever again. If I ever meet someone that tells me they want to do a DITY move I don't know how I won't slap them in the face! The money you make isn't worth it to me!!!!

The next leg of the trip is Deming, New Mexico to Dallas. I love Dallas and the people there!!!! Best part of our trip!!!! :)

Here are some pictures from our traveling! We def aren't stopping as much as in the car!

Merry Christmas!

These past two weeks have FLOWN by. Partly due to my huge procrastination, and refusing to do anything house related, so I've just been driving around the San Diego area randomly. I have been putting off packing, anything moving related because of the holidays! It definitely didn't feel like Christmas this year, we didn't put up a tree or anything, so it all went by so fast. I am excited about the new home and putting up the Christmas decorations a year from now! Wow! We have the perfect little front window for a tree, and I'll definitely make Dustin get up on the roof and risk his life so we can have some Christmas cheer!

Merry Christmas from the largest shih-tzu soon to be East of the Mississippi!

Here is our lazy animal laying on some boxes. He only ever lays on stuff, never on the floor, too diva for that shit!

We took our nephews to Sea World last week. Military get in fo free once a year! So we officially became parents! My sister went with us, but when we walked up the older two shouted "Mommy & Daddy!" at us, it was pretty darn cute. Aren't they the cutest little people you've ever seen! Sea World is kick ass because you don't wait much in lines, thank god! And the shows were pretty cool this year too, since it was Christmas time they were all Christmas themed, and they had the teeniest otter that was waving in one show. Watch out hedgehogs, mama wants an otter now!  It was nice to do something with the boys before we left. I think the oldest one understands we are moving, but the little ones still don't get it. It's going to be hard to leave them because I see them so much! I love those little boys!

Dustin, Me, Logan, Blake, and Luke 

Blake & Luke and Shamu

Oh god. Here is the story with this situation outside of my house. So we live/lived in South Oceanside, it's supposed to be one of the nicer areas in Oceanside. Wellllll, we are the first house in a nice neighborhood. Get it, FIRST house, aka we live next to derelicts. Our neighbor towards the shady side is a bit odd, but he's a nice guy. A nice guy as in he'd literally kill someone on our lawn for us, in fact, he did beat someone once on our front lawn with a billy club....Soooo one time my girlfriend borrowed my wetsuit, and I was leaving out of town, so I left it on my back porch for her, so she pulled up in my driveway, went and got my wetsuit and came back out and my neighbor was watching her staring her down. A week later I still wasn't home, but my husband came home and the neighbor told Dustin that he saw a girl come to our house and leave with something in her hands and that if anything was missing, he took down her license plate number!!! Bahahaha - so he's odd, but he means well, and he likes us because we never make a peep!

Anyways, the other morning as I was finally packing crap, I noticed a cop car pulled up outside of the house. Next to our crazy neighbor, on the other side of him, is a shadyyyyy duplex. For example, one of the people that lived in the duplex had just got out of the slammer and used to jump rope in front of the house with his ankle bracelet on. Walking the yard, literally. But he was actually a nice guy...anywayyyssss, the people directly next to our crazy neighbor are WHITE TRASH. They are horrible. Their kids are always out in the street, barefoot, at all hours of the day. Their dog is never on a leash, and it shits in my yard probably daily, and they're always out on their patio furniture, in front of the house, smoking watching the people walk by. And we are pretty sure they deal drugs too because random people will sit in front of their house in their car for like 30 minutes, and then go inside the house, get something and leave.

Well, when we noticed one cop showed up, then two other ones including the field evidence team came as well, I went in and made myself a sandwich and sat on my front porch to watch it all go down. Apparently, the wife beat her husband! I found this actually really hilarious because they're always screaming at each other on the lawn, and she's a little thing, and he's a lot bigger than her. Anyways, I watched them talk to her and him and when the police were questioning the husband, his children were standing on the hood of a car in their driveway, it was like an episode of cops or something! This all took place I think 2 days before Christmas BTW! They ended up arresting the mom, and put her in the cop car, and they drove her past her house, and her kids were waving to her. BIZARRE!! Merry Christmas children, mommy's in the gray bar motel!

Our new neighborhood in North Carolina is already MUCH nicer, let's hope that I don't have crazy neighbors there too!

And here is our other dog Smokey at the beach the other day. Our property management company that we had didn't know we had 2 dogs...for 3 years! HA! They didn't want a big dog in the house, you can only have big "outside" dogs? What the hell? WHY have a dog if it's only ever outside? That's not fun! Anyways, we had our inspection last week, so I took Smokey to the beach to enjoy some time. He gets CRAZY there and you can't control him! Luckily it was raining that morning, so there was no one there except for the kite surfer in the background. We hung out at the beach and watched them for a bit before it got too cold and we headed on back. Isn't Smokey such a beautiful dog? Very smart too. Love him.

Today we got the moving truck, and that's going to need it's own post tomorrow because WHAT an experience that was. A sneak idea? We had to call a mechanic already...

We leave for North Carolina on Saturday, please keep us in your thoughts and hope for good weather! NO SNOW!

xoxoxox

the gidge

House Hunting/Pictures!

House hunting sure is exhausting, especially when you know nothing about the area you are moving to. Today we spent 5 hours driving around New Bern, Havelock, Newport, and Morehead City. We REALLY like this one area of New Bern, but we were waiting on hearing back from the rental agency to make sure that our pets were okay. So we started to freak out and think maybe that area isn't the best area, and we were second guessing our decision. Morehead City seems to be more of an area that's similar to the one we live in now, but I just can't justify the teeny houses there. We live in a small house now, and part of me was excited to come out to North Carolina because we are outgrowing a 2 bedroom home. When you have one room dedicated to just crafts, that tends to happen!

Plus, a lot of houses in Morehead City don't even have a driveway! Forget a garage, no driveway!? WTF! We started to panic because we couldn't find anything we liked. I was on the verge of tears all day because I was so stressed out. I just want to be done with this house hunting crap and have somewhere locked in to live. Plus I went to the cutest antique store today and wanted to buy half of the items in the store for our new soon to be home.

Tomorrow we hear back about one of the homes, and we are viewing another that's beautiful, so PLEASE think good thoughts for us! We could use them or else we won't be going home on Monday as planned!

Remember how I mentioned that our wonderful friend Ramona took pictures for us for Christmas? She has done this for the past 2 years as well! SHE'S amazing! Seriously! She makes us look better in these pictures than we do in real life. Ramona is the best, she should REALLY consider opening her own photography business because she could make a killing! :o)

So here are a few that I LOVE LOVE LOVE. I uploaded all 34 pictures and realized that was a bit extreme and had to cut them down. But I want to have them ALL up, because there isn't a bad one! NOT ONE! 

Be sure to play the game, "how many tattoos can you find?"

Nice "blue steel" face!

Glad that I get to wear cowboy boots more in North Carolina!