October

Tomorrow is October 1st
You know what that means??????
The start of the holiday season, which I love so much.

Matt's job

First I must thank everyone of the support I received by way of the comments left on my blog about being a renter. They made me laugh. Clifford I think I may go out and buy a set of bagpipes and learn to play!

But I got some good news. Matt got a job in Burley. He will be working with a plumber here doing some commercial and industrial plumbing. It will be a lot different from residential plumbing, which is what he was doing. He will be making about the same and will get at the minimum 40 hours a week. The guy he is working for got the bid for a chicken factory that is being built. As most of you know with Matt and most construction workers it is either a feast or a famine so it was nice to hear 40 hours.

Matt will be moving here and will start work on October 13. Pretty exciting. Now only if pour house would sell! We may have to rent it......

The Joys of Renting

Maybe the quircks that come with renting are normal, but if you have not rented in a while it may be annoying!
For those who do not know we are renting a house with the basement as a seperate unit. So we only have to share with one family. However, my complaints are huge!
I hate out landlord, he is quite a jerk. He does not care what happens in this house as long as we pay the rent on time. Getting him to fix things is a joke and he thinks he still has rights to come into the house when he wants. Yea it is lovely.
Now the family that lives below us.
First, they are slobs. By their back door is a pile of garbage sacks (not so sure what is in them), kids shoes, tool box, fishing poles, and on occasion empty beer bottles left on the porch.
Second, we rented somewhere that allows pets and has a little yard. We agreed to take care of the yard in exchange for $50 off the rent. It is a small yard so I thought piece of cake. Well the neighbors below us have a huge dog, not cute little one like Bogie, they have a huge dog. Huge dogs mean huge poop and we clean it. No they do not clean up after their own dog we get to.
Third, when we take care of the yard we usually have to pick up all of the kid toys off the yard.

all of this is nothing compared to my last complaint. They smoke. At first they would smoke outside, but right by the windows. If the window was opened it would come inside, but the smell would only last for a little while. Well they are from Arizona and it is getting a little chilly in the mornings and evenings so they have began to smoke in the house. Matt has commented that at times things from the house smell like smoke. One day I came home and our house smelled so bad. It smelt as if we had smoked in there. So I bought two frebreeze noticeables. I am not sure if any of you have used them, but they are pretty strong and you can always smell them because the smell changes. In fact we have one in our house in Idaho Falls and it is almost overpowering when you walk in.
Well I have two up and this house is much smaller than our house in Idaho Falls. Well I can't smell the smoke as bad, but I also cannot smell the Febreeze. It is as if the Febreeze is working overtime to keep the house smelling good!

However, we have began to look at houses to buy. Ours still has not sold, but we are looking non the less!

Patrick

Just a little update.......
Patrick seems to be doing better. Last week at school was a good week. He ate lunch with someone, talks to people, knows some new people and what their names are. He came home in much better spirits!
Hopefully this week continues to be the same.

Slow Weekend?

I know this my seem crazy but I long for a slow weekend. One where all you do is sit around bored. OK really I would be bored and wish we had something to do!
Well this last weekend was busy as usual. Matt was going to come into Burley and did not get off work until 8pm so I went to IF. We went to his friend's house, it was his friend's bday). Then Saturday we went to the last day of the fair. We did the normal there, looked at the booths and animals and ate. The normal foot long hot dog and scone nuggets for me, rice bowl for Matt. Then Sunday we went to Lagoon.
Now that was fun. We went with Jennifer, giving us an even number of riders. We hit every ride and then got to go back on all the rides we wanted to in a matter of 7 hours. There were hardly any lines it was great! For those who go to Lagoon, late in the season on a Sunday is the way to go!

Grease

For those of you who do not know, I am a huge Grease fan. I mean huge! I love the movie; in fact the move made me a huge John Travolta fan. I guess I am just a sucker for musicals. My nieces have the soundtrack on their MP3 players. I mentioned that I needed to buy the soundtrack so that I could listen to it on my way back and forth to Burley.

So this weekend my sister gave me a copy of the soundtrack! I listened to it the whole way home. It was so fun to listen to! I hear the songs and can tell you exactly where it plays in the movie and what is going on in the movie.

Thanks Jennifer for the great CD, it made the drive so much better.

Labor Day

Labor Day in my family is usually pretty busy. Well this year things were done last minute. We will try to go on a family trip. Well this year it was just not happening. My brother and sister-in-law were going out of town and my little sister cannot really go too far due to the complications with her pregnancy. So Jennifer invited us to hike table rock with her brother-in-law. Well last minute my brother and sister-in-law were staying in town and wanted to do something and Matt’s grandma decided to have dinner over the weekend. So the crazy weekend began.

Table rock is not the hike that is in Boise, it is much harder. Table rock is by Targee ski resort and when you get to the top you can see the Tetons. An amazing view, not so much fun as a hike. It is 7 miles up and starts out with some nasty switch backs with some nasty inclines! Well every time I hike I have to think about my breathing. Well this time we were going too high too fast and I could not concentrate on my breathing and I could not breath. I had to stop Matt and make him wait with me. Well Jennifer tells me that I probably have asthma and I should go to the DR. I struggled all the way up. Well we hit a point when Matt got sick. Apparently he get high elevation sickness. He was dizzy and very sick so we did not get all the way to the top. About ¾ mile away from the top we had to go back, however, when we got down we both said we would do it again, just prepare a little better. The views were amazing though. I can’t wait
until next year to make it to the top.

Sunday we went to Matt’s grandma’s house for dinner. Which was the relaxing part of the weekend and I was so tired that I am glad that we had that day.

Monday we went to West Yellowstone with my little brothers and older sister. That is always an adventure! First we went to Mesa Falls, it was early and pretty. On the way to West Yellowstone we stopped at some little gas station. My little 12 year old niece gets back in the car with a lazar pointer with different images. So I look at the box to see the images. One just happens to be a woman in a sexy looking pose. Kind of like the playboy pose look. Well I bust out laughing and pass the box around. Before we know it we are all laughing hysterically about it and my sister (her mom) is asking my brother-in-law did you look at this before you bought it? Looking back and telling the story it is really not that funny, but we laughed so hard about it.

We got to West Yellowstone and watched bears at the Imax, went to dinner, and then went to the shops. It was a lot of fun.

It was really hard to leave IF and go to Burley. I really miss being in IF. The weekend was a lot of fun and even though I miss I IF I am glad to be back in Burley to sleep in my own bed. I am tired and my muscles hurt! 14 mile hike, who really does that for fun?

Right Choice

I have been struggling lately. I wonder did I make the decision that I should have made? Was moving to Burley the right decisions. Patrick hates school and is not making any friends. He comes home sad. Matt is having a hard time finding a job and our house is not selling.

Friday on the way home to IF I noticed that he was really down. I told him that he was the only one in charge of himself being happy and that he needed to make the best of the situation. Apparently that was not what he needed to hear. He cried for about 20 minutes. I did not know what to do or say. I just let him cry. After a while I told him that I am going through a tough time myself and that he needed to talk about it so that it just did not build up. We talked a little more about it and what we could do to make the situation better.

I miss not having Matt with me everyday. I miss not having my family in one house. It is still really hard to stay goodbye at the end of the weekend. But our house is not being looked at as much as we had hoped and those who look at it are not interested. So that makes me wonder if I made the right choice. Did I move us somewhere that will not work for us?

Matt is great about it and says things that make me feel better about moving here, but I know he is frustrated also. How long to we try before we throw in the towel?