Thursday, August 25, 2011

School and Birthday




Our Coming of Age Skater

(5th Grade)


Our Perfect Doll

Our Pink Princess



So very much to celebrate today. Luke entered the 5th grade. He sported all skateboarding brand clothing today - skinny jeans and all. Eloise entered the 2nd grade. She chose a cute matching outfit - and of course - a first day of school hat. Kate starts Pre Kindergarten on Monday. So to make her day special today we celebrated Stroller's 1st birthday. Chris won Stroller, Kate's monkey, at the MN State Fair last year, making him one year old today!

Sunday, August 21, 2011

Moving?



We've had a lot of questions lately regarding our departure date. I suppose that makes sense since we had a giant moving sale and haven't really updated you all on our plans. Chris signed a contract to teach through the 2011-2012 school year which ends in June of 2012. So our family will be in Minnesota until then. After school gets out we plan to head to language training in Colorado for 2 weeks, come back for the fourth of July and officially move to Haiti shortly thereafter.


So why a moving sale 11 months before moving? We are going to try our best to move to Haiti without shipping anything via crate. It is expensive to ship things and containers often get stuck in customs for months and require expensive bribes to get released. So we are trying to move in suitcases. Imagine fitting all of your belongings for a 5 person family in 12 suitcases! So we are trying to pare down in steps.


Step 1 was the moving sale, which was a great success. Step 2 will be moving out of our house in January or February of 2012. We plan to rent our home at that point. Details of where we will live from February to July are still being formed. Step 3 is packing in suitcases.


So that's the plan for now. Subject to change of course and not solidified until we buy our plane tickets!

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Missing Doorbell


I forgot to update everyone. We found a new home for Diesel. He is now with a family in Chisholm, MN. He's been there for about 2 weeks now and things are going well, both for the new family and ours. We met the new owner at a mall parking lot in Duluth. Luke and his friend were allowed to shop together without adult supervision for the first time! So, needless to say, Luke was completely distracted when we said goodbye to Diesel and he's had a good attitude about it since.

The main thing that I have noticed is that our doorbell is gone. We've never had a working doorbell in our house. Instead we relied on Diesel to bark, alerting us when anyone approached the house. So to all my friends - if we don't answer the door we aren't avoiding you.

Thursday, August 4, 2011

Failure

I attempted to make this:





But instead got something that tasted like this:


Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Simplify, Simplify

In an attempt to get the entire house to fit into 12 or 24 suitcases (depending on if you are talking to Sara or Chris, respectively) we are simplifying our current home. Sure we have 11 months before we depart. But in about 5 months we are planning on moving out of our home. Seeing as that will be the dead of winter we can't have a moving sale then. So a moving sale is scheduled for the end of the month. In addition to trying to get all non-essential items out of our home we are also selling items impractacle to bring to Haiti and replacing them with lighter, more compact items.


Before





After




Before




After