The PA life

Living the life of a P.A. in PA!

We were sort of welcomed into our place with two events, first an earthquake and then a hurricane. I now know what that shaking was. It wasn't strong so I questioned it. I was in that little bathroom minding my own business, if you know what I mean ;)  and I felt a shake, but at first I thought it was the people working on the apartment next door, so I looked out the window and saw nothing. Then, I thought I had just gotten dizzy. Later, I read a text message that Jahvel had sent to me asking if I had felt the earthquake; that's when I knew! LOL! The Hurricane arrived here Sunday morning. There were strong winds and rain the night before. I have to admit I got a little scared. We have some huge trees in front of our apartment that were shaking and making lots of noise. On the news we also heard that tornadoes could possibly form so I started to worry even more. The children were already asleep and I kept thinking what we would do if we needed to take shelter. We have no space in our closets, all of the rooms have windows and we have no bottom level. I got worried, but I was also very tired and sleepy so I just went to bed! If anything happened I would be asleep. Luckily nothing happened here. Around the corner, on the other hand, a tree fell. It came out with soil and all. No one got hurt, but it was pretty cool.

Did I ever tell y'all that it took me about a year to finally get the streets of St. George down? I really doubt I'll figure Philly out. Traffic is horrible and I don't know the good areas from the bad ones, so I don't know if I'll ever venture out on my own. I guess I have plenty I can do around the house with the kiddos.

Well, we finally settled in! The girls' room looks good and ours has a crib in it, but other than that they're alright. We still have to get another dresser to put the baby's clothes in and hang up some decor on his part of the room. The living room is probably the simplest looking room in this tiny apartment. It is the biggest room as well, but we didn't really bring anything for the living room, except MY comfy couch!! The kitchen finally has a real table in it, but I'm still hating the smallness and the no counter space. The restroom, let's just say it serves it's purpose!

Moving on.

Jahvel is getting the ball rolling in school and Velani will be doing the same pretty soon! Let me just express in one word how I feel about that "WHAAAH!!" is that even a word?! I am excited for her because I know this is what she wants, really! But I am sad. I can't believe my little Nani isn't so little anymore. She is 5 years old now and ready to conquer the world, not really, but I mean she has grown so much. I know she will succeed in school and will always give 100%. I am just amazed at how much she knows.  I was telling Jahvel the other day how she doesn't play pretend because she knows what's real and what's not. Mia would start playing pretend dinosaur and Velani would ruin it for her because she would be like " that's not even real, Mia!" On the bright side, I get to spend one on one time with my Mia before she grows up and leaves me too!

Velani will be in a fake school this year! Fake school building that is. Apparently the school she should be attending is going to be demolished! It's an old building so they are in the process of rebuilding a brand spankin' new one, but we won't be here for it, HOPEFULLY! And darn! Her first year in school and she's going to be in a modular or portable building. That's not fair! I'll try to make the pictures of her first day of school look good!

Oh and Adan is doing great! He's getting chubby, smiling more, making noises and growing healthy. I love that he is such a good boy especially at night!!  We will try to make the best of everything while we are here and enjoy the ride! So far we have only been to Ocean City in New Jersey and enjoyed a few hours at the beach. Hopefully we get plenty of other opportunities to go out and explore the east coast!

Stefani

A new chapter

We have started a new chapter in our lives and so far it's not going the way I thought it would.  I was really excited to move, not knowing what was ahead of us. Sometimes things just don't always work out the way we want, but we just keep on doing our best.

It all started with getting our stuff ready to move to Philly. It was a HUGE pain. I thought we didn't have much, but I was wrong. We had to leave a lot more of our stuff in storage than we expected, but looking at the stuff we brought with us, I guess I am ok. We loaded and up and as we pulled the trailer around St George, we got a little worried. We had never pulled a trailer before so we thought we were a little heavier so decided to leave the heaviest thing we had, our super heavy marble top table. We left Sunday morning and I was still a little scared. The trailer kept swaying side to side, but once Jahvel got the hang of it we were good. The trip was long. We drove all day and pulled over every night about 9:30 pm at a hotel to sleep. We did this for 3 days until we finally arrived on Wednesday at around 5 pm.

       *funny story: As we were entering Pennsylvania, Jahvel told the girls that he had forgotten something back in St George and that we had to go back. Velani immediately responded "You're going back alone!" Jahvel asked her why and she said that it was a long trip and she didn't want to go back because it wasn't her "thing" that was forgotten.

The girls were good and I understand how tiring that trip was and I am surprised by how well they behaved. They did fight a bit, but I don't blame them. We all got cranky once in a while, but it sure felt good to have finally arrived.

That is until the following day when reality finally hit. We went out to look for a place to rent and didn't have much luck. Everything is so expensive and UGLY!! I began to feel sad and "homesick" I actually missed St. George. The only place we saw that has been by far the best place yet is a little further than we wanted, but because our student loan hasn't been disbursed, we can't do anything.

We are staying with a very nice family who kindly let us stay in a mother in law suite they have. The only bad thing about that is that we only have until the 20th because they have rented this place out.  We feel frustrated and sad that we still don't have anything yet.

I will keep you posted on what happens. I know things will work out and that we just have to have faith, be patient and keep looking.