We finally moved out.

Facebook post a few weeks before we moved:

We have outgrown our apartment and we have to make it fit for a few more weeks. Ann Marie thinks it's fun to keep the kids awake by screaming at them, but there's nowhere else to put her because I literally cannot find the floor in our bedroom most of the time due to the fact that our bedroom is currently serving as a garage for holding boxes and packing supplies in addition to its normal roles as sewing room/shop/attic/bike storage/pantry/garden shed. There's a path from the bedroom door to the bathroom and I somehow manage to wade/climb/fly to the bed. ‪#‎Imgonnamissthisplace‬

What can I say? We packed, applied for jobs, and savored as much time as we could with friends.

Since we didn't have a job yet and didn't know where we were moving, we decided to get a storage unit nearby and go visit family while Ryan continued to apply for jobs. We really didn't even have a definite schedule until a couple of weeks before moving out. We finally decided to move out on June 27 but get the storage unit the Wednesday before.

Once we saw the storage unit it was clear pretty quickly that we were going to need another one.

Ryan started taking loads of boxes over to the storage unit almost as soon as we had the storage unit. We were trying to get everything packed by the 27th so that when the men from the Elder's Quorum showed up it would be a matter of loading everything up and then cleaning. I tried to do some deep cleaning ahead of time so we wouldn't have to do it after being tired from moving. I cleaned the oven and figured out that SOS pads and baking soda with some water seem to work the best (oven cleaner is powerful stuff, but the fumes make it impossible to actually clean the oven since you can't breathe).

On Sunday night we felt like we were in pretty good shape for moving out quickly. I was up late folding clothes and Ryan was packing. I got tired and decided it wouldn't take that long to put the clothes in suitcases in the morning. Ryan took our bed apart and wanted to put the memory foam mattress in a box. Another Facebook post:

We're packing suitcases and I realized that all the things I'm leaving in the drawers to stay in storage probably could have just gone to the thrift shop because clearly if I'm not going to need them for the next month and a half I don't need or even want them at all. But when you're moving there comes a point when you stop worrying about what you're keeping and you just start throwing things in boxes. 

I wish I had a video of Ryan and I struggling futilely to get our three-inch memory foam mattress topper into a box. There were a few quotes from Rocky. And we finally put it in a bigger box, but I suspect that the box is going to explode in the middle of the night. 

I'm going to miss the memory foam. I call it my cloud. 

Now that most of the stuff is out of our bedroom I'm realizing how nice that bedroom would have been if we could have just had our bed, side tables, and dressers instead of having to also use it as the attic/garage/sewing room/bike storage/nursery/toy timeout room. My dream is that when I grow up we will have a lovely master bedroom that is only a bedroom.

We really felt like it wouldn't take that long to get out of the apartment. There were just a few random things and the apartment was already pretty clean. Jamie and our upstairs neighbor Kelly had cleaned most of the crayon off the walls, and they agreed we were just about ready.

But for some reason it took forever. We had four or five men who came over and helped load all the heavy furniture onto the truck and then unload it all into one of the storage units. We kept packing the random little things and there were just so many little things. The floor under the washer and dryer was vile, which didn't surprise me, but it still took forever to clean it. Normally I use rags because they work so much better and don't get soggy so fast, but obviously I couldn't do that since the washer and dryer were gone, so I had to clean the floor with paper towels and swiffer wetjet attachments, which, by the way, aren't very effective.

We got rid of the couch. Interestingly, not long after Ryan and his friends left it by the dumpster, somebody had left a note claiming it. I guess it's a usable couch, but knowing all that had happened on it (we do have three kids) and considering the rips and the broken post in the back I figured nobody would want it. We also left one of the dressers by the dumpster because there wasn't much room in the truck. It was a dresser that we had snagged from the dumpster area ourselves a few years ago and while it was functional it wasn't that great. I know some people like to sell all their furniture and buy it again to save the pain of moving, but what I'm realizing now is I think I prefer moving things to going through the pain of shopping for furniture.

We were so blessed to have friends who offered to help. Noralin kept the girls the entire day and fed them lunch and changed diapers and everything even though I had told her we would be done by lunchtime. Rachel came over with her roommate and they cleaned bathrooms and a lot of the kitchen. Then Jamie and Kelly both came back and helped with everything, and then when we left they took all the food from our fridge and freezer. By the time we left I was in tears because of how much kindness our friends had shown us. It was the nicest thing anyone had ever done for me.

We also had to pack the van, and in retrospect it would have been so much better if that was done the night before. I would have packed much differently if I had realized how much space it was all going to take up. We had bought a bag to put on top of the van for our camping things since we were planning to camp some nights and have the kids sleep in sleeping bags on the trip, but even though the bag was helpful the van was still completely full. So Ryan spent quite a while packing the van.

And then the battery died. At that point it was almost 5:00 and it was all so ridiculous and we were so tired and hungry that we just laughed and said, "Of course the battery died!" Jamie drove down to the garage and jumped the car and it was fine.

We said goodbye to all of our friends and took some pictures, and then we finally left.

We will miss all of our wonderful friends in Chapel Hill. But in some ways it was such a relief to finally be leaving. We had grown out of the space three years ago, and our bedroom became the place where we stored everything, so it just felt cramped, and I was ready for a backyard. And after all the worrying and the work of packing and cleaning it was nice to finally have all of that done and be moving on, even if the future was still so uncertain.

Ryan (driving the truck) stopped by the dumpster to drop off the garbage, and he said after he finished unloading the garbage he seriously considered throwing everything else into the dumpster too. But instead we took it to the storage unit and unloaded it (this was a second, smaller load). Then we were finally on our way.

The plan was to camp in the Great Smoky Mountains that night. We were going to roast hotdogs and marshmallows, walk around a bit, and go to bed at a decent hour. But that was assuming we would leave Chapel Hill at noon. I had to laugh when Jamie said, "Well, I hope you guys weren't planning to drive to Tennessee tonight," to which I replied that actually that was the plan.

Ryan hadn't consumed anything except Gatorade all day, so we stopped at Chick Fil A to get dinner. The kids ate their ice cream cones there and then we brought the rest of the food with us so we could get going faster. Ann Marie was being incredibly slow eating her ice cream cone, and then she dropped it on the floor, and even though I was going to just throw it away and not worry about it one of the workers saw and got her a new one, which was really nice and meant it took more time (Ryan helped Ann Marie speed things up by eating part of her ice cream cone). We didn't know if our plans for camping were going to work out since we would be getting to our campsite really late, but we decided to try.

These flowers outside of Chick Fil A made me happy. I was glad I took a moment to appreciate them after such a stressful day.

Heidi's 5th birthday

Even though we were moving out of our apartment in five days we were able to do some nice things for Heidi's birthday party. She had a chocolate heart cake (homemade cake because we needed to use up some flour and cocoa powder and store-bought frosting because I didn't feel like making frosting). It was very yummy.

Heidi got a doll stroller and a coloring book like Ann Marie.

Heidi had been saying for months that she wanted a party with friends at the park, but we got so busy with packing that I didn't think it would happen. Then Emily and Jamie said they wanted to go swimming together one last time before Emily and I moved away, so we made cupcakes and had a little party for Heidi when we went swimming. I think Heidi was a little disappointed that it wasn't at the park, but she still had a fun time with her friends and enjoyed herself.

final preschool days

We finished off our preschool school year with some fun activities.

One day when I was teaching Heidi started reading this library book to her friends. I was impressed that she said most of it verbatim when we had just checked the book out the day before. The other kids enjoyed the book.

I had wanted to try this idea for a long time and I was glad I finally got around to it. I think I first found it back when the girls were three and we were doing joy school. I was trying to find ideas for a letter U themed preschool and came across this idea for drawing Under the table. On one of my last days teaching I was supposed to do art, so we talked about Michelangelo painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (including looking at images on the internet) and then we taped paper on the underside of the table and they tried drawing on it. Sometimes it's hard to predict which activities will work with preschoolers, but fortunately this one worked well and they enjoyed it.

One day for a science experiment we used a homemade Archimedes screw to lift water, following the intructions here. It worked! I saved the supplies and did it again with Kevin after school, and he liked it.

Ryan and I had some leftover plaster of paris from our cub scout den leader days, and I decided we should use it up instead of moving it. So on the second to last day of preschool I had the kids put handprints in sand (borrowed from the Baity Hill playground) and we filled the depressions with plaster of paris. When they were nice and dry Ryan and I cleaned off as much sand as we could. Then on the last day of preschool the kids painted the hands. I was nervous about doing paint, but the kids actually kept it in control and they worked really hard and their creations. It was a fun way to finish off the year.

Heidi, Addisyn, and Kathryn have known each other since they were nursery age and have been together in play groups/joy school/preschool coop for the past few years, so we thought it would be good to get some pictures of them together since our family was moving away and so was Kathryn's family. So we went to Duke Gardens and Emily took a lot of nice pictures of the girls.

I'm not normally one to take a lot of selfies, but the lighting was good and I got a couple of nice pictures of myself.

I don't know if I will do any kind of preschool coop again. I don't know how teachers can handle an entire classroom, because even having to do school with a couple of extra kids is a lot of work. I felt like I needed the rest of the day to recover after taking my turn teaching. Heidi was also strangely rebellious when I was the teacher. A lot of the time she would scribble on her papers or even rip them up instead of doing her work, which was really frustrating for me, although it was comforting to hear from Jamie and Emily that she did good work at their houses. However, preschool wasn't really in the budget and I knew I probably wouldn't do much for Heidi on my own, so it was a good option last year. And Heidi really learned a lot. She can sound out simple words and write all her letters and numbers, plus she's getting the hang of cutting with scissors and she's learned the pledge of allegiance. I'm really grateful for Emily and Jamie's help and all they taught Heidi this year. It was also really nice to have an excuse to see Emily and Jamie so often this past year. So I'm glad we did it. We are really going to miss these dear friends.

Stuff that happened before we moved.

I have all sorts of news to share and I'm trying to get caught up.

One of the biggest pieces of news was that Ryan gave his dissertation defense and passed! So now you can call him Doctor Tanner! He got a diploma and everything.

May and June were busy. It's hard to pack when you don't know for sure where you're putting your stuff or what your schedule is. I tried to go through things ahead of time as well as I could, but there's only so much you can do beforehand. I started going through the boxes in the master closet and trying to figure out what was there and what we should keep. I found a shoe box full of pens and pencils that I didn't know about and the kids helped me throw away the dried out pens and sharpen all the pencils. I realized that a lot of the boxes were Ryan's keepsakes and he would have to look through them himself, but I did what I could.

The plan was to get fry boxes from Chick fil A because they're free and a useful size, so I went and got a stack and started packing things into them. But then at the beginning of June a family moved into our building and I happened to see them as they were taking some of their boxes to the recycling, so I asked if I could have their boxes. As they unpacked they kept dropping their boxes off by our door and we ended up having so many that I gave a lot of them to a friend who was also moving. So that was a nice blessing.

I ran out of contacts and my prescription apparently expired three years ago, so after stretching my last pair as long as I could I finally made an eye doctor appointment. I did it rolling my eyes because my prescription had been the same since I got glasses my senior year of high school, but it turns out that my eyes have improved significantly recently and I actually did need a new prescription. Apparently lots of people's eyes start to improve around age 28. I've always had the same contact prescription for both eyes, so I never had to worry about getting different ones, but now my left eye is a little better than my right, so for the first time I had to buy two different boxes. I was sort of embarrassed because I accidentally fell asleep wearing my contacts the night before my appointment, which I never do because it hurts, and the optometrist said my cornea had some spots and I shouldn't wear any contacts for a week. She seemed to believe me that I don't normally sleep with my contacts, but I was still embarrassed.

Kevin had various end-of-year things happen at school. His class had their monthly birthday party and I decided to take the girls for the last one since they would be celebrated Kevin's birthday. The school district has a rule that they can't have class parties with food, which is actually great because the classes seem to end up getting creative and doing some really fun activities instead. This year they had a scavenger hunt, an obstacle course, a Christmas music jam, and elephant toothpaste. For the last party they made and decorated paper airplanes. Heidi and Ann Marie enjoyed seeing Kevin's classroom and making planes.

Right after the class party I took all he kids to the dentist. Yay for no cavities! They talked to Kevin and Heidi about their thumb-sucking habits and how they are growing up and need to learn not to suck their thumbs anymore. Kevin didn't seem to care, but Heidi was actually rather distressed at the idea that she can't suck her thumb. She seems to be trying not to suck her thumb as much even though she's sad to give it up, but my guess is it's going to be a while before she gives up the habit. Kevin's been dealing with comments from kids at school (to which he responded that it's his body and they can mind their own business, although he was still upset), so we've told him no sucking his thumb at school or on the bus, but he still sucks his thumb a lot.

On the last day of school Kevin had an appointment with his ENT to get his ear tubes checked. I wasn't going to bother taking him to school since the appointment was right in the middle of the morning, but the night before Kevin said, "Mom, you have to let me go to school in the morning because they're going to announce my birthday in the morning announcements and I don't want to miss it!" It made my heart melt and I decided if it was that important to him I would let him go. So he rode the bus to school and I checked him out an hour later, and then since the appointment was short he wanted to check back into school. So it was kind of a fragmented last day of school, but I think it was nice to say goodbye to his friends.

At the bus stop one of the dads in the neighborhood had a basket of water balloons waiting and he had a water balloon fight with all the kids when they got off the bus, which was so fun! Then we all gathered at the playground and there were pool noodle light sabers, more water balloons, otter pops, ice cream, and lots of fun. It was fun for Kevin to get to play outside with kids his own age because normally those kids have after-school programs or other things and he doesn't get to play with them after school.

We have seen so much growth and development in Kevin since he started school. He has gone from not even knowing all the letter sounds or names to reading chapter books independently, and his social skills have really improved.

Ryan was busy trying to finish his second paper and submit it to the journal for publication, and then he perfected the art of applying for university teaching positions. I think he applied for about 20 in less than a week. He packed up all the books and movies because he got tired of Ann Marie pulling them off the shelf all the time.

In the middle of June Ryan took Kevin to UNC Neurology and Kevin was officially diagnosed with Tourette's. We've known for a long time that he has Tourette's, but we felt that it would be good to have an official diagnosis on paper so that if his teachers ask about the mouth noises he makes we can have a doctor's signature to back us up when we explain that he can't help it. They do have medications for Tourette's, but the side effects are generally worse than the tics except in the worst cases.

We explored a little nature trail in Chapel Hill that we had never seen before.

We enjoyed free blackberries growing wild all over Baity Hill.

After I got stuck on my Warthen ancestors I got brave and decided to redirect my attention to my Danish ancestors (whose Family Search pages were kind of a mess), and I think I've made a lot of progress cleaning up their pages on Family Search. I was very excited when for the first time I found some relatives who need their temple work done! I have ordinances reserved for 23 people now (many just need sealings, but some need all the ordinances). It wasn't easy--my discoveries are the result of many hours going through parish records and census records, and most of those weren't indexed, so I had to read through them page by page. But it's been very special to see the results of that work and I'm excited that soon these people will have the blessings of the ordinances of the gospel. There's also still a lot of potential for more research on my Danish lines, and I haven't even looked at the Danish ancestors on my dad's side much yet. I also had a message from a distant cousin who was very excited when I found christening records for our ancestors.

May photos from Ryan's phone

It was insane how many times we found Ann Marie coloring on the walls in the weeks leading up to our move. I kept any and all writing devices in our room, but despite that she always seemed to find the stragglers and go straight for the walls. We tried having her scrub the walls with Magic Erasers, but she enjoyed it enough that it wasn't exactly a punishment. We were very blessed to have some friends who offered to clean and ended up doing all the wall washing for us and probably used up four Magic Erasers. We might still be there scrubbing crayon off of walls if it weren't for them. :)

Ann Marie's 2nd birthday

Ann Marie turned two in June. For dinner she asked for macaroni and cheese. Ryan made her a rainbow chip cake with rainbow chip frosting and he decorated it with some red glitter icing that he bought on manager's special several months ago.

When we sang Happy Birthday Ann Marie started singing along and it was very cute. If you'd like to see a video, click here.

Then we opened presents. She got a Princess Sophie coloring book and a stroller for her baby from us. The grandparents sent some fun gifts and cards too. Unfortunately, the stroller broke less than an hour after she had unwrapped it, but it worked out okay because Target had no problem letting me trade it for a new one. We'll see how long it holds up. I would say 95% of the toy strollers I have seen have been broken, so my expectations aren't that high. Ann Marie loves baby dolls and she is loving her stroller. She was also very excited about the gift bag that her presents came in. She insisted on hanging it on the handles of her stroller while she pushed it around, and when it ripped she was very sad.

Ann Marie's trip to the emergency room

After school a few days after Ann Marie's birthday the kids were playing out in the hall with some neighbors. When Ann Marie woke up from her nap I brought her out and I was watching everyone play while sitting outside our front door. At some point Ann Marie turned around and started running without looking where she was going and she ran straight into the sharp metal corner of a fire extinguisher box. As soon as it happened I knew this was not going to be good. I ran over and there was already a lot of blood seeping out near her hairline, so I told Kevin to run and get a towel and one of the other kids offered to go get her mom. It was hard to tell how bad it was because it was bleeding so much, but I put pressure on it with the towel and after a minute the bleeding had slowed down and we were able to see it better. I think I knew from the beginning that we were probably going to have to go to the emergency room, so when a few of our neighbors looked at the cut and agreed that she needed to go the hospital it was nice to know I wasn't being paranoid. I called Ryan and he was still about 20 minutes away from home, so one of our neighbors offered to take Kevin and Heidi.

I tried going to an urgent care first because it didn't seem like that bad of a cut and I figured it would probably be cheaper and faster, but the doctor said to go to the emergency room because Ann Marie is so little and they didn't really have the tools to restrain her if she resisted (which probably wouldn't have been an issue since in the end the only restraining she needed was for me to keep her hands away, but actually it was probably better that we ended up at the emergency room because the doctors were so good with her). So then I drove home and asked Ryan to drop us off at the emergency room because parking is a pain at UNC and we live just a couple of minutes away. We gave Ann Marie a pancake since we figured we'd probably be at the emergency room for a while and then Ryan dropped us off.

After checking in at the ER they took us right back to our room in the pediatric section, and then we had to play the waiting game. I don't let my kids use my phone at all, so I don't have any kid apps on there, and let me tell you, I was really regretting that policy that night. Let's just say I wasn't successful in convincing my two-year-old that she should sit down and rest because she had a head wound that was still bleeding. The things she wanted to play with the most were the IV pole and the buttons on the supply cart lock. I managed to entertain her for about 3 minutes looking at the pictures of animals and bugs on the walls. Then we tried crackers, which was great until she started jumping and the entire bag of Ritz crackers scattered everywhere, mostly under the bed. She insisted on picking them up herself and despite my best efforts she managed to take a bite out of a few of them, which was disgusting. I also didn't appreciate her lying down and crawling on the floor. We tried looking at pictures on my phone and making a video of her talking, which she then enjoyed watching a couple of times before running around the room again. She clearly wasn't in much pain at all. She was just so excited to be in a new place and wanted to explore everything.

Finally the PA came in and we told him everything that happened. He was the nicest guy ever and so good with Ann Marie. A while later the resident came in to look at the cut. He said it was right on the border between needing stitches and being okay with dermabond, so he wanted to have the ER doctor look at it and we had to wait a while for the ER doctor to be available.

Ann Marie's hair kept going over the cut because it was right on the hairline and her hair wants to grow forward, so they asked if I had a clip or something we could use to keep it out of the way. I actually found one in the depths of my diaper bag. I have to admit that it was an old one with the ribbon mostly hanging off and it had a little rust on it, so that was a little embarrassing, but it did the job.

They brought some graham crackers and water for us, which Ann Marie enjoyed.

When the ER doctor looked at the cut he thought at first that it would be better to do stitches because he thought it would heal better, but then he looked again and decided that dermabond would work fine if he could pull the skin tight while the resident put the glue on. We decided to go with dermabond because it would be faster and less traumatic for Ann Marie.

First they had to clean out the cut really well because that's supposed to be the most effective way to prevent infections, so we put Ann Marie on the bed over an absorbent pad and they poured the cleaning solution (I think it was mainly sterilized water?) over it until it was nice and clean. Ann Marie cried a bit because it stung, but she was very brave.

We had to wait a while because the ER doctor had to deal with a life flight that might be coming to UNC hospitals, then he came back and they got ready to put the glue on. We reclined Ann Marie to the side on my lap and the ER doctor pulled the cut closed by pulling the skin tight to the sides while the resident put the dermabond on. Ann Marie whimpered quite a bit, but the PA talked her through it and distracted her by asking if she had liked the graham crackers and offering to get her some more when they were done. They did three applications of the dermabond and then they let it dry for a few minutes before putting a band-aid on. After that we were done, so I called Ryan and a few minutes later he was there to pick us up. Kevin was passed out in the backseat because when he goes to sleep he really sleeps.

When we got home we found that the neighbors down the hall had brought over some sidewalk chalk and a little stuffed animal as a get well present, which was so kind of them. Ann Marie was so excited. It was interesting because while we were in the emergency room I had been praying for Heavenly Father to help Ann Marie be okay, and when I said the prayer I heard the words, "I already helped you," and the images of our neighbors coming to help us filled my mind. I had never talked to one of the moms until that afternoon when we were both picking up our kids from the bus, and then that very evening she ended up being a big help as we were cleaning up blood and deciding what to do. We've actually talked several times since then and I'm wondering why I didn't get to know her sooner because she's so great. And the other neighbor who watched my kids is a good friend and she was so eager to help with whatever I needed. It was nice to know that Heavenly Father had put some great people there to help us out.

[This paragraph written a couple of weeks after the ER trip, in mid-June.] It's been a couple of weeks and I think the cut is going to heal pretty nicely. The glue is still there, but the cut is just a little pink line about a quarter inch long, so I don't think the scar will really be noticeable. We have to try to keep her wearing a hat or sunscreen because sun tends to make wounds scar worse, so I'm trying to encourage Ann Marie to keep her hats on by telling her they're cute (her favorite word of late) and they'll help her owie (with mixed results). She probably should be wearing hats and sunscreen anyway because with her red-head complexion she's even paler than the rest of us if that's possible, so she burns more easily.

So that's our first-time-to-the-ER-with-a-child story, in excruciating detail. If you made it this far you must really love Ann Marie.

Here are some pictures. Fair warning, there's a little bit of blood.

Waiting for the doctors:

Snacking on graham crackers, with her hair clipped back (this was a functional hair-do):

Waiting for the dermabond to dry:

Ryan wrote this post on Facebook that I thought was funny:

"Last night in the emergency room Ann Marie was seen by three doctors, 14 residents, 85 med students, 468 administrators and a nurse. Between the lot of them they couldn't decide how to fill out the billing information so they were going to call in a few more administrators, accountants and legal counsel to figure out how much treatment would cost. The nurse slapped a band-aid on her and sent us home. No stitches were needed.

"I think they also glued her head back together.

"As can clearly be seen in the photo, she was extremely traumatized by the event and has sworn to never go into health care administration, and her parents fully support her in her decision."