Settling in South Dakota

So the journey began on a Friday morning.

We rigged up our moving truck and car trailer in the LG parking lot, Lando of course had to arrange the outside furniture one last time for the group coming in that weekend, then we headed off to a final doctor's appointment (no gestational diabetes here!) and then hit the road for Vegas! Stayed in Vegas with my cousin Jenny - where Charlie had a blast playing with her 2-year-old son William - looks like Charlie will pass the "kid" test!

Saturday we headed off at 4am to put in a 22 hour driving day all the way to Sturgis, SD. It was that day I experienced my first real pregnancy symptom - swollen ankles :-) It was long, but definitely worth it because we got to spend all day Sunday at Lando's aunt's house. They have chickens, goats, horses, cats, dogs, a turkey and a llama - Charlie didn't know what to do with herself!



Monday morning we headed off again to Sioux Falls. Made it to town just in time to do a walk through of the house before heading off to our closing. We've been working with some great people out here - our realtor Gregg and mortgage person, Norma - and they were both their at the closing so it was really nice. We are official first time homebuyers!!!

We've spent the last few days unpacking - which has sort of come to a standstill because we don't have a lot of basic furniture pieces, but we LOVE IT HERE! It's so nice to have space. Charlie and Chloe just chase each other around the house and it's hysterical when they get to the wood floor cuz they just slide and don't actually go anywhere!


Today Lando went to Lowe's and spent more money at one time that I think we have ever spent in our lives. So now we have a washer, dryer (we bought the same ones we had at camp!) and materials to fence in and seed our lawn. We decided to take care of the outside first, then the inside.

We are heading to Rosholt next week for a few days to help out Lando's parents cuz they just sold their house and they are moving out to a house in the country that they are redoing. Then we start work on Friday! We are really excited about that. This down time has been nice to get settled, but we are anxious to get started! Our first two weeks on the job... we are taking kids to CONFIRMATION CAMP! What a way to start!

I don't think it has set in yet that we aren't going back to California anytime soon. I am still expecting to see all the amazing people we left behind. Leaving our Wednesday night bible study was probably one of the hardest things we had to do! Here's a pic from our final night.


I guess we should rename this blog - we haven't used it in over a year! I guess we'll get to that eventually! Comment away! We would love to hear from you!