It's a Boy....Again!

K, so we can't make the scanner here work, so we'll have to wait until we get moved in this week to scan in the ultrasound picture....but It's a Boy.

So on Tuesday we will no longer be homeless. We found a 3-bedroom house for rent in our price range, and we're pretty excited. It has a garage, front and back enclosed porch, back patio, and backyard. Those are bonuses we weren't counting on, but we're excited! We won't be too stressed to make lots of money, and we'll be able to save a little to go on all the weekend trips we plan on!

We had my doctor appointment, and I've been referred to a perinatologist so we can all gain a little more perspective before plowing into the decision to have surgery. We'll just have to wait and see. At any rate, I'm a little relieved.

The ultrasound tech said he's 80% sure it's a boy, but I had already guessed that from what I could see. We are excited to have two little boys to be good friends. We are both disappointed that our guesses were wrong, but we like boys so far!

So, no pictures for a bit longer.....but we are surviving for now. We won't deny that it's both been pretty hard on us to deal with our homelessness. We have both wondered if this is really where we're supposed to be, and why things haven't worked out better. But it has definitely been a trial that has strengthened us, so we'll try to make the best of it! Now we just need to get through the moving in and starting school part!

Homeless

Well, moving to NY has been an adjustment for sure. Our drive went great! We kept our expectations low, so that helped a bit. But cpc did a great job the whole way, and we didn't have too many delays. The worst part was running out of cash to pay tolls before we even got to NY. Rather than searching for an atm that wouldn't charge fees, we dug into the truck to find pmc's change jar. We're glad there's usually a way to avoid the toll roads now that we're here.

As for the arriving/moving in part. We'll just say things have not gone so well. The townhome we lined up turned out to be much worse than expected. We only wish we'd thought to take pictures so you could see how bad it was. It was in a bad area, and in awful shape. We quickly cruised out of there, and called the one family we know in the area. They were kind enough to have us over for dinner, which had been planned before we came.

We've been here ever since.....

Which is both fantastic (much more homelike than a motel, FOR SURE!!!), and depressing (we haven't found a place to live).

Syracuse is an interesting place. We need to do some picture-taking to really explain it. But basically the idea is this. Drive down a street, and for three blocks you think "this is a nice street." Then you hit the next block and think "what happened, how are we suddenly in the ghetto?" There is NO rhyme or reason to it, you simply have to drive by any place to know if it's safe or not.

The rental market is great for 2-bedroom apartments. But try to ask for one more bedroom/office space and the rate jumps from 500/mo. to 1200/mo. Oh, and there's only a few of those available in the first place. Or, if it is the right size, it's in an unsafe neighborhood. The school districts seem to determine the area here. Which is frustrating because if you want to be safe, you have to pay more to be in a good school district....which would be just fine if we had school-age kids.

Anyway, we are so grateful that we have the H family to stay with. They have been more than generous to us! They just left on a big family trip around the country for 3 weeks in an RV. So we get to share the house with Lala, their grandma. We finally unloaded the truck this morning into a rental unit, and feel much better now that we aren't in a time crunch to get the truck back. We've accepted the fact that it's going to take a little more time to find the right place. There are a few places opening up Sept. 1st, so hopefully we'll have a home soon.

We are also extra grateful for all the advice from family and friends, it's really helped to keep our heads on straight. The only advice we've received that hasn't been helpful is to "lower our expectations." I think in any other city, that would be perfect advice. But all we want is four things: a safe place, room for me to teach so we have income, enough space for the piano, and to stay in our budget.

We have a slight amount of hope for a place we just found today. They won't let us come see it until tomorrow, so we have to wait a bit more. But it looks like it would be more than perfect for us at the borderline of our budget....but within the budget is within it right?

It's been a while... again...

We haven't posted in a few weeks, and this isn't even going to be a full post (more to come in the next couple of days.) First off, Atec didn't have the surgery that was originally scheduled for last Thursday on her ovarian cysts. We're going to wait to have those taken care of in Syracuse.

We've been going at a frantic pace trying to see Bear Lake one last time and spending time with Atec's family over the 24th, then camping with my family this past weekend up Big Cottonwood Canyon. There's plenty to share about, but we don't have the time this morning.

Our plan is to get the big stuff packed up on Wednesday night, then the little stuff Thursday morning (which probably means afternoon too!) We'll drive out Friday morning at 6 AM. We'll see Nauvoo and Carthage in Saturday afternoon and evening, and if all goes well we'll be in Liverpool, NY by 4 PM on Monday afternoon.

Music and the Spoken Word this morning was both good and hard for us to listen to. The message was about the 'good in goodbye.' Leaving our home and families and friends is going to be a real challenge for us, but one that we believe and hope will make us better. We hope that each day in New York we experience something good that we can see came through our saying goodbye.