Caitie: August 2009

Well, sorta... I guess you could say I'm preparing Caitie for school. Gotta learn your ABC's and 123's, and such. Caitie's known all the letters of the alphabet for a long time, and can count to ten easily, and sometimes counts to twenty. I'm having her say the alphabet at least once a day, and write the letters of the alphabet with the help of a preschool scholastic kinda book; I got it at Target for a couple of bucks. What can I say, I go all out. Of course her favorite part of school is recess, or as she likes to call it... playtime. Go figure. Anyhoo... here are a few pics of her 'first day of school'...

Writing the letter " T " in the alphabet book.

So far she thinks school is waaaaay too easy, and this puzzle board ain't helpin' any(don't worry, i don't plan to homeschool her). I think it's time to upgrade it to her skill level; this puzzle board is for children under the age of two.

I tell her it's time for recess, of which she's thrilled, as you can see.

But then I interrupt playtime to take a few more 'school pics' outside. I decided to use the quilt her Grandma H made for her back in 2006. I thought this made a nice background.

Singing the school song: Itsy-Bitsy Spider.

Here is a short video clip of Caitie saying the alphabet, and bein' silly while doin' it. That's my girl!

You read the title right... we're hard-core packrats, we can't let anything go. But we did have to let our storage unit go recently, which left us with several, no, make that many, MANY, boxes and items to pack away. We gave it some thought and decided we would store the stuff at our trailer up north near Seligman; it's still a shabby shell at this point, so storing stuff there right now made sense. We went to our storage unit and gathered up all the boxes and miscellaneous items and put them on a trailer to be hauled up north; we kept the trailer stored in our garage until heading up north this past weekend. Michael did a good job of packing the trailer, making everything fit nice and snug, then added thick, black plastic over the top and taped it down, then put on some straps for added security. We headed up to the property on Saturday evening; we arrived around 1am Sunday morning. We unloaded the boxes and items into the trailer on Sunday afternoon, then headed home. Here are some pics from the trip...

This is our garage; Michael is preparing the trailer for the trip. He put thick, black plastic on the bottom of the trailer...

then added all boxes and items and covered them with the black plastic so they wouldn't get dusty when on the dirt road that leads to our property.

Caitie grabbed her trike and started riding it. She wanted to keep it as far away from the trailer as possible; she didn't want to take any chances of it getting packed on to the trailer and being left up north.

This was later in the evening... we were on our way to the propery and had to make a potty pit stop.

While Caitie did her thing, Michael checked the trailer to make sure the plastic was staying in place.

We stopped at the Safeway in Chino Valley to pick up some food, etc. We got there just in time, they were getting ready to close.

Caitie wanted this greeting card; she's no longer afraid of toilets. If you've been reading my blog from the beginning, you know what I'm talkin' about.

Here we are at our trailer; this was on Sunday. Michael is trying to get the SUV/trailer in a good position to unload the boxes, etc., as Caitie looks on from the kitchen window. We were going to unload them at the back door...

He's trying to line up the truck/trailer at the back door.

We gave it some thought and decided to try a different door for unloading.

Making his way to the other door, as Caitie continues to look on from the living room window...

Backing into position...

Running into my favorite Juniper tree...

After breaking a few branches, he moves forward, only to get stuck trying to make it between the trailer and my other favorite tree; he breaks a few of its branches as well...

The trailer is now stuck, and Michael's usual sweet, charming demeanor is changing fast... in other words, he's mad! He gets out of the truck and tries to figure out what to do. I'm thinking of the long wait we're going to have after calling either his dad or brother to come get us out of this predicament. I finally decide that we're going to try and get 'unstuck'... I tell him we can do it... so he gets back in, I tell him to stay calm and move forward a bit, then back a bit, of which he did a few times, and was able to get the truck/trailer through unscathed. Well, mostly... the truck wasn't scratched TOO BADLY by the tree limbs... ahem... anyway...

Michael then drives off... considers leaving(that's the way it looked at the time anyway), but comes back to find that the other door I suggested we use to unload is blocked by a huge Juniper tree. This is now Michael's least favorite kind of tree. He then ends up at the place he started, the back side door. This is where he planned to unload the trailer in the first place. If I hadn't mentioned using the other door, none of the aforementioned would have happened. But let's not get into that... oh wait, we already did. Moving on now...

We're getting ready to unload the trailer. I was the one who thought to use the trailer jack, or whatever it's called, to hold the door open. At least I had one decent idea.

Potty break. This is the middle of the kitchen. As I'm sure you can see, it needs A LOT of work.

Preparing to unload...

Still preparing...

Some things were finally unloaded. We put Caitie's train table(this is one of two train tables she has, she's really into trains) in the back bedroom.

This is the living room... as you can see, most of the items are Caitie's toys. Most of what you see here is baby stuff.

Michael moved most of the stuff from the living room to a smaller room down the hall. He was making room for flooring material. The wood flooring he's stacking up in the living room came from the living room in our house. We took it up and put new carpet in; it is now our movie room. More about that in a future post. We plan to install the wood flooring in the trailer; most likely in the living room and hallway areas.

Yay! The trailer is empty! That was quite a job. I helped some, but Michael did most of the work. Not just here, but at home as well. He's my macho man. :) Gotta love that song, or not.

Here's the room down the hall where most of the boxes and items are stored. It's a pretty small room.

Taking a well deserved break. He's actually drinking a bottled water. You usually see him with a 64 ounce soda in his hand. Of course, we weren't near a convenience store, so bottled water had to do.

We had plenty of company... huge flies, I guess they're called horse flies, there were also wasps, and other such creatures. Talk about creepy. Here is a friendly fly... of which I helped get back on its feet, it was struggling on its back. Not too long after this pic was taken, I noticed a black spot on the floor, the friendly fly was now a squashed fly. There was a moment of silence. Poor fly.

Getting ready to head out.

But not before Caitie had another potty break. I thought this made a cute pic... Caitie going potty out in nature with our old, beat up trailer in the background.

We were heading out when I took this pic; the two Juniper trees in this pic now have broken branches. I'm sure Michael is happy about me bringing this up again.

Back at the main trailer, packing up our belongings and getting ready to head out...

Ready to head home.

We saw cows going in and saw them when heading out. I love cows, they're so darn cute. :) This one reminded us of our cat Holly-Hoo...

This one looks like our other cat Molly-Mae. She and the cow are black and white, that's where the resemblance ends. She's not like her sister Holly-Hoo, which happens to resemble goats, cows, etc., and I don't mean just color, but body shape, facial features, etc. You think I'm kidding, but I'm bein' serious... just ask Michael. Never mind, he would say I'm crazy just to get back at me for mentioning his truck/trailer/juniper trees incident. Maybe he won't read this...