finding my way back to the face of the earth

Yep, I fell off the face of the earth, but no worries, I'm back. We found out we could move into the new house on Monday the 22nd so got right to work moving our stuff. We just got the internet hooked up at the new place this morning, so I'm back in business. We rented a big truck from Monday afternoon til Tuesday aft and moved all our big stuff during that time. By Monday night, we had enough stuff set up that we spent our first night in the new house. It's so nice to be back in the country, it's much nicer hearing crickets at night instead of noisy neighbors. Though we're creating enough noise ourselves tonight. New Years Eve is celebrated majorly down here and both WE and angel #4 blew a whole wad of their Christmas money on fireworks today. They've been setting off firecrackers, smoke bombs and a whole bunch of noisy stuff for the last couple hours. WE set off a smoke bomb on the porch and the whole house smells like rotten eggs now.

We're living up the mountain now, at about 1200 ft above sea level and it's a whole lot colder up here. Yeah, you roll your eyes and think, how cold can it get in Hawaii? Well, lemme tell ya, the low 60's may not sound too cold, until you live in an unheated house. Our bedroom was 62 degrees the other morning. Sure makes it hard to crawl out of bed. Hopefully our blood thickens up soon and we won't feel the cold quite so much.

We had an unwelcome surprise on Wednesday morning. We spent the night at the new place, then in the morning I had to meet the carpet cleaning guy at the old house. While I was there, I noticed the water garden had been drained and there were dead and dying fish lying in the bottom of it. I couldn't figure out who in the heck would have siphoned all the water out of there. I called our neighbor, Mark, and asked him if he knew and his response was, "oh-oh, you mean I forgot to take the hose out?" Turns out he was trying to catch a few of our red fan tailed guppies and put them in his aquarium. He was going to siphon the water down a bit so he could get them easier. While he was doing that, someone he knew came by and he got to talking with him and forgot all about the siphon hose. There was about a foot of muck and sludge in the bottom and it stunk like a swamp. I made Mark come over and clean up the mess - he would have been a perfect candidate for that Dirty Jobs show, standing there covered in green slimey mud scooping sludge out with an ice cream bucket. Yeah, I laughed, I'm evil that way.

We've got about an hour before the new year, which means you all have already done your celebrating and more than likely have been in bed for a couple hours (or more) already. Here's hoping we all have a wonderful and happy 2009!