Goodbye Luverne

I don't have much time since it's 12:30am and I'm extremely tired after a super long day, but I'll give a quick update..... After 3 days and 3 nights in a hotel it's SOOOOO nice to be back in Luverne! Have I ever said how much I like Luverne? :) Today I tried EVERYTHING to find a place in Clear Lake and nothing. I made about a hundred calls, stopped at 3 realtors offices, looked at a couple places, called the owners of vacant houses, everything and nothing was available. We thought we would sign for this one apt and then after everything was said and done, he tells us we don't qualify b/c it was a 2 bedroom and we have 5 people moving in and according to their rules you can only have 4 people in a 2 bedroom apt. I'm like 'come on!' 3 of those people are under 3 ft tall! That can't count! But, it does....soooo...we were left with taking a place in Garner. (By the way, the reason why everything was booked in Clear Lake was b/c it's tourist and vacationer season b/c of the lake in town so the population doubles from 8k to 16k in the summer b/c of all the travelers, so everything in town to be rented is full). So the place we got in Garner is an old, small 2 bedroom apt that I guess will suit us fine for a few months. (did I ever mention how nice we have it in Luverne? :) My mom is planning on coming down here tomorrow and then we'll pack up and probably go to Garner on Sunday and move in. Another 2 day move...this one will actually be quicker than the last! We will be bringing as little as possible and keeping the rest of the stuff here at this apt in a garage in hopes that we will be back here at the end of the summer for another job going up around worthington. Jen, (being the great manager that she is!), said that we'll probably be able to move back into this apt! That would be awesome!! Anyway, so there's our plans for now. I will update with pics, etc later and I'll be sure to post pics of our new old place when we get settled. (it has floor to ceiling fake dark wood paneling in the whole place, every room, just to give you an idea of the great 'decor'...) There's lots to do tomorrow (like laundry, make bread, unpack suitcases, oh yeah....and pack and MOVE!) So i better get to bed.....g'night.

Is it next week yet?

Here are a few pics from today and last night. We went to Garner tonight to check out the possible places to live. Please pray that we'll find a place in Clear Lake which we think will be closest to Nathan's show-up site and so that we wouldn't have to move to those places that we looked at......yikes!!!

This is what the kids starting doing right when we got to the hotel! "Lets jump on the bed!"

Play area at the hotel

Caedmon's having a good time

There's Mr. Climber himself

Our smiley Bray Bray

Update

Ok, so Nathan wanted me to correct myself...we were not in St. Cloud for 2 weeks, we were there for a week and a half. We got there on a Thursday night (late) and left yesterday (Tuesday) a week and a half later. :) We were very busy with everything going on and trying to get everything accomplished in a short amount of time. Nathan was busy out on the land over-seeing the construction of the road that is being built for the development. It is coming along nice and it should be done by the end of the week! Okay, so now that I've corrected myself, I will let you know what's going on with the job......

Nathan called right away on Tuesday morning and spoke with the lady from the union hall in Iowa that left him a message last Friday. She told him about the "Mason City" job and he accepted. He will be putting up a transmission line that will run from Crystal Lake Iowa to Manly Iowa (I think) and they project it to take 3-4 months or longer. Like how they give us a set time? :) He will be working 6 - 12s (6 days a week, 12 hours a day) which is very nice compared to the 7 - 12s we thought he'd have to be working.

So yesterday morning we left St. Cloud for Des Moines Iowa to get his referral slip from the union hall. (I took us 4-1/2 hours drive time, 5 hours with stopping once) Then from there we back-tracked north to Mason City (about 2 hours) to find a hotel to stay for the night. Nathan's training this week was being held at the Holiday Inn so thankfully they had a room available!! So this morning Nathan is in training and we are playing in the hotel room :) It was quite a scene last night here with trying to get all the kids to settle down after being in the car all day long and then all packing into one little hotel room. But we made it! I went to get some groceries last night and once I left Nathan was able to shut off all the lights and the kids were out shortly after that.

So we have a couple days here. He will be finding out today how many days of training he has, either 2 or 3 and then it will be back to Luverne (3-1/2 hours) to pack our things and move them down here!!! We will be looking at a few places tonight to live at. Two of them are in Garner and 1 is in Forest City. We don't have many options because of the fact that we just want to rent for a few months and most people want a 6 month to year lease. The other reason is that the guy in Forest City told me that there is a feed mill crew and two other wind power crews looking for places to stay so we are competeing with them too. We are too worried about it though, the Lord will provide!

I will keep you updated as I know more......and later I will post pics of our stay here and in St. Cloud. But for now we are off to play in the play area here at the hotel!!!

Real Quick.....

I just have a few moments, but I thought I'd give an update of where we are at..... We've been in St. Cloud for almost 2 weeks waiting to here about the next move. We got a call from the Iowa union on Friday but Nathan's phone battery was dead and he wasn't by a charger so we missed the call. We will call Tuesday (tomorrow) morning to see what the call was all about and we will go from there. If it is the job that we've been waiting for, we will most likely be moving to Forest City, Iowa. Well, that's all for now...the kids (and my husband) and waiting in the car so I better run! I will update as soon as I can!

New Hobby

My new hobby??...dehydrating food!! :) I bought a dehydrator a few weeks ago and it's so cool. It's an awesome way to make snacks for the kids and since you take the majority of the water out of whatever you are dehydrating, it's mess free! (I've also learned that almost ALL of the nutrients stay in the food when you dehydrate!) Here are some of the foods I've tried so far; pineapple, apple, oranges, bananas, strawberries, watermelon, cantalope, and tonight I'm doing kiwi. The favorite fruit thing we make in the dehydrator.....fruit leather!!! It's SO easy and it tastes just like fruit roll ups from the store, but SO much healthier and cheaper! We've made combinations of apple-strawberry-banana, apple-strawberry-yogurt, apple-strawberry-watermelon. I've also made fruit leather out of applesauce (yummy!) and out of yogurt. BUT....the ultimate fav thing from the dehydrator???....JERKY! Yes, I made my own jerky and man, is it good!! We just got some more beef from our farmer and we get our milk from, so I'm am looking forward to making more. It's easy too...just take the beef, mix in the spices, put it in the nifty little jerky gun, squirt it out onto the dehydrator and in 5 hours you have amazing jerky! :)

Brayan has starting eating solid foods and now that he's started, he eats a TON! He'll eat ANYTHING we give him and he'll eat it all. Last night he had avacado, brocolli, mango and banana (of course, all fresh!) and finished off the whole plate full! Since he's eating so good, I've pre-made some baby food and froze it in ice cube trays and then put them in plastic bags (about a weeks worth) so then I just have to take them out of the freezer a few hours before and it's ready to go! Other foods he likes are carrots, pears, yogurt, blueberries, applesauce and this morning he had blueberry waffles! So basically, he'll eat anything :)

Tiernan is doing GREAT with potty training and is now pretty much accident free! He continues to practice his counting and is currently up to 20! (although he tends to skip over 13, so we are still working on that!)

Not too much new with Caedmon...he still loves to sleep (praise God!) and he is OBSESSED with reading books!..but I guess that's a good thing :)

Not too much new with the job situation. They still will not lay him off so he'll continue to work until the end of the job, which Nathan thinks will be in a couple weeks. The job in Iowa got pushed back a month so now that is scheduled to start in June. We're not sure if he'll be on that job or not, but it's still a possibility.

Tiernan "helping" me make bread....he really just licks everything he can get his little hands on :)

Tiernan says "that's good dough, mom!"

Brayan has started pulling himself up on everything and standing...our baby is growing fast!!

Smile :)

My 3 yr old is washing the dishes...that's right, start 'em young!

Playing in the Thomas tent!

All 3 of them!

Tiernan put together this puzzle ALL by himself!! And as you can see by his face, he was pretty proud!

Just waitin' to go to church