The Lieslands

1. It seems like traffic moves slower. The speed limits all seem a little low to me. That being said, it never takes long to get anywhere.
2. The grocery store parking lots are smaller, and I bet the grocery stores are too.
3. Speaking of grocery stores – in Des Moines, and probably all of IA, they are not required to put the cost per unit on the grocery items, which makes it a lot harder to compare prices.
4. Yesterday we were out during rush hour, shortly after dusk, and it was raining. Traffic was actually moving. Susan and I were positive that had we been on I-75 at this time, we would have been parked.
5. On all of the traffic reports they always mention that it is harvest time, so watch for slow moving farm equipment on the roads. I have not seen any yet, but I don’t leave city limits very often.

I bet there are more to come.

It looks like our 2911 Montclair mortgage is now officially paid off. That is nice. Now, to start a new one.

We received our first piece of mail in Des Moines today. It was actually just the USPS confirmation of our forward, but I guess it counts, right?

We also set up some new bank accounts.

Tomorrow is my first day at ‘work’. I need to get the new office all set up and then get down to business.

We live in Des Moines now. Currently, we have a nice one bedroom apartment in Erin & Nate’s basement. Hopefully we will be out on our own in a couple of weeks.

All done.

Fall Back + Going West = Trouble

We all had a busy day today. Andrew had school and then went to some friends’ houses afterward. The rest of us, with a lot of help, starting loading the moving truck this morning, and sent it on its way this afternoon.

Tomorrow we close.

Susan, Mari, Elliot and I went downtown this morning to cast our vote. We waited in line for about 1/2 an hour. All-in-all, it was not a bad deal. It was not as easy as walking to the church at the end of our street on election day, but since this year that would be a 600 mile walk, we thought that we better just go ahead and vote. Now we just have to wait for everyone else.

Afterward we enjoyed some hot-dogs from the stand outside the BOE and then picked up a few more boxes.

So, as you may know, we sold our house. We are set to close on Friday. There is a truck coming to take all of our stuff on Thursday. It is going to be parked in Des Moines for a couple weeks while we get things finished up there.

Things have been a little crazy lately, with getting out of our current house, trying to get into a new house, and trying to live our normal lives. The three kids have certainly kept things interesting for us.

I would say that 75% of our house is packed. We will finish up over the next few evenings, dwindling down to just the things that we will keep with us for the couple weeks that we are staying at Erin & Nate’s.

We are definitely excited to have finally sold our house, but leaving Cincinnati will be hard. We had a couple of parties over the weekend and it was hard to say good-bye to everyone, not knowing when we will see them again. I know that we will see most people again, but I also know that things will never be the same, and a lot of the relationships that we have here will fade away with time.

There is a good chance that a week from now, I will be blogging from Des Moines. I’ll let you know.

After being offline for a few months, I have now successfully updated the Dinner Blog through a complete cycle.

Now if only I could convince Susan to start posting here, we will be all set.

We just put two items on craigslist – the couch and entertainment center that were in our basement.

The Couch
The Entertainment Center

If you are interested in either of them, let us know. They are all yours, whoever you are.

Andrew was working on jumping rope yesterday for 2 hours straight. When he woke up this morning his legs were tired and he could not be convinced that it was the rope jumping.