The five W's

Virginia Beach, June 2010 

(yes, Abby had to go to the bathroom!)

Something that's driving me crazy lately is that Abby is having a problem distinguishing between interrogative pronouns (who, where, what, when, why... and no, I didn't remember what they were called, I had to look that up. Thanks internet!).

Here's an example of how a conversation with her will go:

Hannah: Abby, do you want to come in the kitchen and help me make some cookies?

Abby: Where?

Hannah: In the kitchen.

Abby: Where??

Hannah: In the KITCHEN!

Abby: WHERE?

Hannah: cookies?

Abbie: ok!!

Or another example:

Hannah: Abby, lunchtime!

Abby: Who?

Hannah: umm.... lunch.

Abby: WHO?? (she's getting frustrated now)

Hannah: It's time for lunch.

Abby: WHO??

By this time I'm so annoyed that I just ignore her.  I have no idea what she is asking me and it's driving me nuts!  This happens all the time now.  And ideas of a good way to teach kids the difference between them all, or is it just something that eventually comes to them?

In other news, we went to the beach a week or two ago and the girls had a great time.  Ellie took a couple face-dives into the sand and didn't seem to mind at all.  It was a great day, made complete by 2-for-1 fish tacos and a great night's sleep.

A fly on the wall

If you were a fly on the wall of our home, you'd find that most of our conversations since moving here are about the following:

• "No, that won't fit in our apartment."
• "Why is Abby being so naughty lately??"
• "We can't afford it."
• "Mmm, leftovers!"
• "The car won't start...... again."
• "I can't believe you have to start working again!!  This is going to take some getting used to."
• "ABBIE, SIT DOWN AND FINISH YOUR DINNER!"
• I really need to go to the library (we aren't going to get cable here)
• "Where is my i-touch?"
• "Why isn't my computer working?"
• "Maybe we should get around to putting the pictures up on the walls."
• "We are out of milk."
• "Did you ever find my contacts when you unpacked?" (Still no, Garrett)
• "Abby, PLEASE stop snatching toys away from Ellie!"
• "I really want the new Evo phone."
• Happy Birthday Garrett!
• Happy Father's Day!
• "Abby, please stop jumping off the couch.  That's how Ava BROKE HER ARM!"
• "When are you going to take that stuff to Rob's garage?" (dolly, bike, skis,. ladder)
• I need a better stroller. (yes. need.)
• Abby, SIT DOWN AND EAT!"
• "This room is a mess."
• "I wonder when we are going to get callings at Church" (done.)
• "Thank heavens for the gps in our phones."
• I have to study/take a quiz/read.
• Thank goodness our closets are so big."

And that, my friends, is what we've talked about over the last two weeks, in a nutshell.  We live extremely exciting lives, I know you are jealous.

And to expound on one of the above.... one morning Abby woke up waaayyy too early (we're talking 6 a.m.) so Garrett gave her his i-touch to play with so she would be quiet and let us sleep.  A few hours later he asked her where it was, but she didn't know.  This is really strange because Abby always knows where EVERYTHING is (case in point: the other night she asked for her doll as she was going to bed.  She had been playing with it that morning, but hadn't seen it since then and didn't know where she had put it.  I asked her where it was and she said, "In the stroller.  In the living room corner. Facing the wall.").  So anyway, it was pretty surprising that she didn't know where the i-touch was but we figured it would turn up.  Well, it didn't.  Three DAYS later we were still searching for that darn thing and asking Abby over and over again where it was, and each time she said she didn't know.  Finally, we decided to kneel in prayer to ask where it was (I know, we should have thought of that earlier).  Not THREE MINUTES LATER, Garrett found it in Abby's room.  I know I looked there before, but there it was!  But it was a great lesson and we were able to teach Abby about the importance of prayer, and also the importance of saying "thank you" in prayer afterwards. 

My Dad, 20 years ago

In May I posted something I'd written about my mom about 20 years ago.  This is what I wrote about my dad:

"My dad's name is Chris.  He has brown hair.  He lets us drive on our [bus] stop 'cuz it is not busy.  There are only 2 or 4 cars [that] go by.  He is nice.  When I am done with a piano book he takes me to Toys R Us to get a toy.  Dad I love you so much.  My dad is 36.  He beeps the horn in the car at houses just in case I know them.  But I don't.

My Dad got great pleasure out of embarrassing us.  We always hated when he drove us to school in the mornings, because starting about half a mile from the school he would start honking his horn to "warn people that we were coming".  Once we arrived in the parking lot, he would lean out the window and yell, "Here come the Siebachs! The Siebachs are coming!  Here we are!"  All while honking is horn.  I remember just crying from embarrassment and begging him to stop.  It never worked, though.

On the move

After weeks of packing, we finally loaded up the truck and made the 465-mile journey to our new home in Virginia.  It was sad to leave our home in Augusta.  We had so many friends there, and so many people in our situation that we could relate to (poor students with kids).  Medical school was hard (haha doesn't that make it sound like *I* went to medical school?) but we absolutely loved our time in Georgia.  Yes it was hot and humid and there really isn't much to do in Augusta, but we had people we loved there, and we made some great memories.  Such a fun time of our life!

But, life goes on and I am especially excited for THIS chapter because it brings a PAYCHECK!  (still waiting for the first one, but still.)

Anyway, back to the move.  We rented a 24' Budget truck.  For weeks, Garrett stressed that not all of our stuff would fit in the truck.  I knew it would be fine... we had spent weeks helping our friends load up their trucks, and we have (much) less stuff than some of them have.  Besides, we were already getting rid of tons of stuff not only for the truck space, but because we lost 350 square feet of living space when we moved here.

So, on a Tuesday morning some people from the ward came over and helped us load the truck (a surprisingly great turnout for a weekday morning, thanks everyone!).  We were DONE in about 1.5 hours and spent the rest of the day doing last-minute packing, errands, and cleaning.  The plan was to leave at 5:30 on Wednesday morning.

We rolled out of the driveway around 5:45 the next morning - 15 minutes behind schedule, but not too bad!  We were lucky enough to be moving to the same city as some of our best friends, the Egberts.  We decided several weeks ago that we would all caravan to Virginia.  It made it a lot more fun since we all had walkie-talkies.  Rob did a great job of warning us when a great mullet was on its way to pass us in the left-hand lane! (Thank you, North Carolina).

Garrett did a great job driving the truck, and towing his sedan behind.  That's Rob in the background with his Penske, towing his truck with the canoe on top.

My view for 465 miles.  Garrett set the pace for us all.  At first we thought that we'd have to go 55 the whole way (there's a governor on the truck), but thankfully Garrett found an override button that allowed him to go 70 - woo hoo!  Made ALL the difference.

My rear view - Haley was behind me and Rob was in the back of the caravan.

We only made one stop, somewhere in NC for lunch.

The girls did great in the car! I thought it would be rough because we don't have movies or anything but they did really well (although they didn't nap, which was annoying).  And we made great time.  We got to our new hometown in just about 8.5 hours - not too bad considering we took a long break about 2/3 of the way through.

When we arrived at our destination we decided that we'd go straight to the truck place and drop off the hitch and the car.  That way, when Garrett returned the truck later that night, he'd already have his car there to drive home.  Would you believe that that dang car wouldn't start to even take it off the trailer??  He'd been having some problems with it the week before we moved, and I told him that the last thing we want to do is haul a no-good car all the way up to Virginia.  I told him that it probably would break down in the first week we were there.  I was only too right... we couldn't even start it to take it of the trailer.  So, we pushed it off and left it there overnight, and I drove Garrett back the next day to fix it (YouTube has saved us hundreds of $$ over the last few months. Seriously.).

Anyway...... we got to our apartment complex and some people from the ward came to help us unload the truck.  It took a few hours but it went great - we were so thankful for the help.  It's amazing how much stuff you can have, even if you don't REALLY have a ton of stuff.  Does that make sense?  Let's just say, I'm glad we got rid of so many things before we moved.  I don't even remember half the things we ditched - that's how "important" they were to me.

So, that's our story about our move to Virginia.  WHAT A DAY!!  It was fun (traveling with friends and walkie-talkies), it was challenging (unloading boxes and dealing with 2 whiny kids with no naps), and it was awful (dealing with the car not starting when we got there).  And sad (I got some family news that was very upsetting).  Thankfully it's OVER and now we can just move on with the new chapter of our lives here in residency!  Let the games (and paychecks) begin!

I'll post some pics of our apartment complex/neighborhood soon!

Take me home, country roads.......

For my birthday in April, my mother-in-law gave me tickets to see Carrie Underwood in concert!  Amazingly, Carrie was coming to Augusta; sadly, I couldn't go that day.  So we drove up to Columbia, SC and saw her there.

It was a lot of fun - we had great floor seats that I found online at Stubhub.com - it's a website where you can buy tickets from other people.  It was surprisingly hard to find a place online to buy tickets that I could just print up.  I was buying them just 2 days before the actual concert so I needed to get electronic tickets, and it was kind of hard to find some.  However, we found awesome seats for a great deal and it was great!

Haley and me

singing "Take Me Home, Country Roads"

It was a lot of fun - I just love loud, live music.  There was no way Garrett was going to be dragged there, so I brought my friend Haley.  Good choice, too - Garrett probably would have been miserable the whole time, thus making it not as fun for me!  So instead we just dropped him and kids off at Haley and Rob's house, and he put the kids to bed there and hung out with Rob.  Win-win.

This was probably my second favorite concert I've ever been to.  I don't think anything will ever top George Strait. :)

Ready... set....

I can't believe we are moving in 2.5 weeks.  I think I'm actually in denial.  We haven't started packing (AT ALL.... we don't even have boxes yet).  We haven't rented a truck yet (hey, don't blame me, that's the man's job).  We haven't really started saying goodbye yet either (if I had my choice, I'd just skip that altogether.  It's easier to just leave without acknowledging anything, in my opinion).

We do, however, have a place to live!  We took a miserable trip up to Virginia early last week and spent TWO FULL DAYS looking.  I say miserable because: 1. it poured rain almost the entire time we were there, 2. all the places I wanted to check out got rented to other people right before we got there, 3. every house we saw in our budget was disgusting, 4. Abby was sick and coughing and although I should feel bad, I have to admit that I was just mad, because it was driving me crazy.  Garrett and I really hate sharing a room with our kids (they are noisy sleepers), and the coughing every 30 seconds drove me insane.  Also, since she was sick Abby was in a pretty whiny mood the whole time.  She kept begging to "go on the trip" that we had been promising her.  She didn't quite understand, no matter how many times I explained it to her, that we were on the trip!!  Poor thing has always correlated "trip" to mean "we are going to see grandma", so Virginia just didn't do it for her I guess.

Anyway, so yes we found a place to live.  It's a little 2-bedroom apartment about 7 minutes north of the hospital.  Not too bad.  It certainly isn't what we were hoping for.  To be honest I'm pretty anxious about living in an apartment complex.  I have only ever lived in one once, when I was a sophomore at BYU.  It was great, but I was single and living with girlfriends.  I'm not quite sure what to expect from an apartment complex full of people I don't know, with two kids to keep happy in a small space.  I'm anxious about noise from the neighbors, lack of privacy, finding a parking space, and safety. 

The the fact that it has two bedrooms doesn't bother me much at all.  I have always planned on my kids sharing rooms, so we're getting an early start and I like that.  I always shared a room as a kid - until I was well into high school, actually - and I think it's great for kids to learn how to share a space.  

We did find one very nice townhouse that had three bedrooms and a small fenced in backyard.  It was in a fabulous neighborhood, with a community pool and playground.  There were walking trails nearby, and it seemed so perfect.  However, it was at the very top of our budget - like, the tip top - and when it came right down to it, we just couldn't take it.  When we created our budget and decided on that number, we still had a couple hundred dollars left over each month, so we figured it would be just fine.  We were even pretty liberal with how much we expected to spend on our utilities, and we still came out with some left over.  However, we couldn't help but wonder if we were forgetting something, or if things would be more expensive than we thought, or if we will soon have a car payment (this is very likely).  So, we went for the cheaper option - the apartment.  And it was at the low end of our budget, so it's not like we're only saving a couple of dimes each month.  It's more like a couple hundred dollars. (I mentioned to Garrett that maybe I could have a small "fun money" budget with the money we are saving by living in the apartment.  ummm... no.  But it was worth a try!  I guess I'll just have to keep spending money on the sly.  "Oh these shoes? I've had them for months!")

Probably the main reason I was so frustrated about settling on an apartment was my own pride.  I guess I always thought that once Garrett was a doctor, life would be a bit easier.  I certainly knew that things would still be tight and that residency wouldn't be easy, but it's a little frustrating to go from a great three-bedroom home on almost an acre of land (during school), to a little 2-bedroom apartment (he's a doctor!).  One step forward, two steps back?  It kinda feels like it.

I have to say, though, that I feel good about our decision about where to live.  I feel like we made the right decision for us.  Another option (a house) was presented to us a few days later, but after a lot of discussion we decided to stick with the apartment still.  It's right.  And as everyone is saying, we can do anything for a year.  I suppose that's true.  I mean, if we were moving to a huge city, we wouldn't even have an option - it would be apartments all the way.  That makes me feel a little better.

One major bright spot about moving into a small apartment: we are getting rid of a lot of stuff.  If you know me you know that I LOVE to declutter.  I love to give things away, throw things away, etc.  It's awesome.  I really enjoy not having a lot of "stuff".  "Stuff" just wears me down.  It is so freeing to see trash bags full of things get taken out of our house.  I love it.

Now excuse me while I go call WalMart.... apparently you can call them during the night shift and request boxes, and that night they will set aside as many as you want and you can pick them up in the morning.  For FREE.  I love that word.

My Mom, 20 years ago

A couple years ago I scanned a bunch of my childhood artwork and such so that I could throw it all away and it wouldn't take up space in my house anymore.  Today I was looking for some old pictures and I found this from 1990 and thought it would be appropriate to share, since Mother's Day was a few weeks ago.  Written by me in first grade:

Translation (in case you can't see the faint writing): My mom's name is Susan.  She is pretty.  She likes to smile.  She loves me.  She has brown curly hair and glasses.  I love her.  She is a good cook.  She likes to tuck me in at night.  She reads me stories.  She is nice.  She likes it in summer.  When I am gone I miss her.  My mom is 39.  Her birthday is in July.


Too bad I didn't draw a picture..... I'll just make up for it by sharing a pic of all of us, in 1991.

Siebach family, October 1991