Last Night In Arizona

It has been a very stressful week, very draining both physically and emotionally. I'm way to tired to start downloading pictures from our last week here in Yuma, but I figured that I'd try to sum it up some here anyway.

- The rest of (most of) our belongings have been put into storage.

- The house has been cleaned from top to bottom on Thursday and on Friday we had the carpets cleaned.

- The twins had their good bye party in school with yummy cupcakes.

- Cassandra has had her last week in school and has been spending as much time as possible with her friends.

- We have been packing, organizing, been running errands.

-Yesterday we finished up in the house, and today we had the walk through with the owners that we have been renting from, and it felt so good to have that over with, turned the keys back and know that we left the house in better shape than what we moved into.

- This afternoon, I met one of my dear friends here in town, and it was wonderful to find some time to meet.

- Later this afternoon, Cassie had her very much dreaded goodbye's from her friends. I took them out for ice cream, and afterward it was really rough. Heartbreaking to say the least! Gosh, so many tears and so many raw emotions. I cried a river for her myself...I know too well how hard it is to leave your friends behind..

- Tonight we have finished up packing our suitcases here at our friend's house, and tomorrow morning, we still have a few errands to run, and around noon, we will start our trip by heading to San Diego.

Let the adventure begin!! I will try to post here and there from the trip, but it all depends on how well I got internet and time. Still, it feels very strange to think that we will already be in Okinawa on Friday, and next weekend instead of packing madness, we will finally be able to relax a bit!! Can't wait!!

Friendship Pictures

As I mentioned in the previous post, the girls went for a photo shoot with one of the girl's parents in the desert one Saturday in the end of January.  The girls had talked about wanting to get some nice pictures together before Cassie moves away. I thought that was such a great idea, and if i hadn't had my hands full with the yard sale that day, I wouldn't have loved to come along and fire up my own camera aswell. I'm so grateful to H.'s parents that took the time to do this with/for the girls, and they took a lot of pictures. I looked through them again earlier and cropped some here and there, to pick out a few to print. Looking at some of my favorites from this shoot, I can only imagine how much fun they had!

 2015

A Good Morning After All..

This morning (or I should write, Wednesday morning as we now past midnight), we overslept. Cassie had switched off her alarm, too, and I had been up a lot with Isabella who now is in the order to have a lot of coughing going on at night, so I was very tired this morning too, and at 7.20am, I looked at the time and jumped out of bed! But, we were all dressed, and ready out of the door at 8am, and Cassie and the twins eat breakfast in school, so it worked out well. Cassie's school is luckily on the way to the kid's Preschool, so we could drop her off there first. She got there in time! While there, I noticed the light came on. Only a few more miles left of gas...really, on a stressful morning and all..!?

So, I knew I couldn't make it to Preschool, so I had to turn around, knowing that we would be late for their school that start at 8.30am. Being stressed I didn't really check the price on the pump, and while the gas was pumping, I was washing the windshield and didn't pay attention. Not until it "clicked" and it was done, I saw - what could it be right? I only looked at the $$ sign first and not at the gallon, and I thought it must have switched off too early somehow.

 Full tank for under $40!! Wohoo! 

Normally, just a few months ago, it would cost me around $70 for a full tank.

We broke the $2 mark!!

So, with this, my mood lightened up a lot and we put the radio on "louder" as the kids "demanded" from the backseat while we drove to Preschool, singing along to all the songs. We only got there 10 minutes late too, and the kids still had time to eat breakfast. It was a good morning after all!!

A Walk In The Desert

It's been a lot going on here as always, and there hasn't been much time to sit by the computer. We are hoping to hear more about the move this week, with hopefully some flight dates. When we got those, we can backtrack and get movers and book our three dates when they are coming to pack. So, crossing my fingers that I know more in the end of the week!

As not all my family are on Facebook and Instagram, I thought I'd share the pictures here aswell from our walk in "our backyard" from last Sunday. At the end of the street, this is the view we have. Normally we don't go out here as it's way too may scary animals here, that like the desert heat. Read, scorpions, lots of snakes with the rattle snake as the only one that i recognize of them! Lost of spiders and most of these animals are venomous!! So, not a place that I like to take the kids to poke around in the sand and play at normally, BUT, with the chilly temperatures that we have had in the end of last year and this week, it felt safe to go there.

It was cold, barely about 50F/10C, and yes, for some used to colder temperatures and lots of snow, this might seem like warm. BUT, keep in mind, we are used to temperatures where it's hotter than hot, over 115F/46C for many months over the year. We have actually had a cold spell for the last couple of weeks, nearly 20 degrees below normal, and not until this week it's starting to warm up and get back into the 70's. Still, we pulled out fleeces, hats and enjoyed our walk. Enjoy the pictures: