The longest post EVER

 

The rest of December involved a trip to Virgina City to put the house in relative order and do some cleaning in anticipation of the move in January. So these are the last moments of 2013 in our old place. We went bike riding- Tupp is finally tall enough to use her pedal free bike. I think Cash is about ready to take the training wheels off. I don't know that he would agree- he's rather cautious.

 

Our Christmas decorations were on the natural side too this year. Using contact paper, I let the kids rip up some tissue paper and stick it on for a stained glass affect.

 Clay had one consultation before we headed out on our weekend before Christmas trip to Nevada. The kids amused themselves with drawing.

 You'd never know from this photo that she tried to choke him twice on the trip. The first time he barfed- picture us on the side of the Sierra's cleaning up vomit with baby wipes and it's literally freezing out and I'm quickly losing feeling in my hands. The good news is that Tupp never got sick on the trip so either driving in my car or the homeopathic nausea tablets did the trick.

 The Comstock was all decked out for the holidays. This is one of them mine shafts in Gold Hill- right by Clay's hotel.

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We gave the kids one early Christmas present- snow bibs. Which they put to good use and played right out side the house.

The company had a Christmas party for the kids. There was a make your own chocolate Christmas tree lolipop, all sorts of candies and goodies and rides on the haul trucks for the mine. Pherson thoroughly enjoyed toddling around.

 The way to our new place involves turning off main street at the only signal in Virginia City and heading down past the Catholic and Presbyterian churches. Definitely picturesque.

 

Got home in time to spend Christmas Eve with the Haffner side

 And then Christmas day was spent with the Mitchell's. We had a secondary celebration later too as Honor, Benson and Grant didn't arrive until a couple days after the holiday. Here are the collar stays I made Clay for Christmas- my friend Cazra introduced me to the wonderful world of metal stamping.

The last bit of our time in California was spent acquiring boxes, packing, working, selling the kitchen table and some other furniture, making lemon curd out of the mountain of Myer lemons we received from one of our housecleaning people and I started a "photo a day" challenge. I'll post all those that I have so far
in the next installment.

We were originally going to move at the end of January, but by the way things looked we decided to up the date to the weekend of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. Cash said goodbye to his French school- all his little friends were sad to see him go, but his teacher most of all. I think she was worried about him moving and how that would be on him. Just FYI, he's been fine and was very excited about the move and all is well as far as that goes. We loaded the truck on Thursday and headed out on Friday morning, stopped at Ikea to pick up a bed for the kids and some other things and then finished the drive at about 5pm. Clay picked up some BBQ at our favorite place, we had dinner and then the Elder's Quorum president, a couple other guys and the missionaries showed up to unload us at 7pm that night. Talk about whirl wind! But it turned out for the best.

Tupp's been confused for a boy since the pixie haircut she requested just before we moved.

 Both Tupp and Pherse came down with the flu within the first week of moving. The scariest part was the high fever, coupled with the nearest store being about a half hour away (so that's about an hour round trip). We've done pretty well at settling the house within the first week as well. Tupp is enjoying it as well as Cash.

This is roughly what the place looks like, minus the insanity in the kitchen- that's been put right.

Pherson has become quite the reader. He toddles over with a book and demands you read it, but let him turn the pages.

 

We had our first snow day- school cancelled. We had great fun playing in the snow, watching the snow plow, drinking hot chocolate.

We take walks around town- the kids are especially fond of the train and the Catholic church. Pherson is still quite the climber and has enjoyed reaching the light switches. He's especially enthralled with the fans- we have four total. He looks up and makes the around motion and says "go."

Oh, and Cash gets to walk uphill in the snow to school. That'll be one for his grandkids.

 

I think that will finish it for this post for now. I'll do another once the kids are down to bed. Off to walk and pick up Cash and then play in the snow with the innertube we picked up yesterday. I'll be honest, it's not all fun and games. But so far it's mostly great. :)