Well I am now unpacked enough to find my computer!  Here are the fun details of our first week in Berkeley Heights.

We got the keys to the home on Thursday night and took the boys over so they could run around in a big empty house for a while and give the hotel tenants a break.  As we were driving to the house Rock and the boys were telling me about how they’d seen deer in the yards of homes here in Berkeley Heights earlier that day.  As we pulled into our driveway, lo and behold there stood 3 deer right in our yard!  We’ve seen many of our four legged friends since then. 

Friday morning the movers came AND the boys started school.  Let’s just say it was a very intense day.  We came away with hardly anything permanently broken and the boys had a great first day at school. 

First Day of School photo taken at… the hotel.

Unpacking has been an adventure.  And not really a fun one.  But the boys have had a blast crawling in and out of all the millions of empty boxes and piles and piles of packing paper. 

Sunday morning as we were climbing over, under and through boxes getting ready for church, we decided to run the very old dishwasher for the first time (because it took us till Sunday to find our dishes).  And….it broke.  Leaked water all over the kitchen floor.  Then when we tried to bathe the boys in their tub, we found that the drain and shower did not work right.  Then as we went to get the boys dressed in their Sunday clothes I found that my wonderful husband who had been trying to help out by putting away all the clothes had sort of well, dumped them into the drawers and every piece of clothing was wrinkled-including their Sunday clothes.  (Rock has now just informed me that HE did not dump the clothes in the drawers.  He told the boys to put their clothes away and THAT is how it happened.  I stand corrected.)  Ordinarily this wouldn’t have been a big deal because I would have just thrown them in the dryer.  But we did not have a dryer at that point.  Needless to say we were pretty late to church on Sunday, but we did make it, which I consider a small miracle.  And yes, the landlord is going to buy a new dishwasher and fix the tub.  The wrinkled clothes… well, that’s a work in progress.

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday have been closer to normal, though trying to keep up with all of the stacks of papers coming home from school in a house that is upside down is becoming a full time circus act.  I will prevail, though.  Slowly but surely we are finding everything and finding a place for it.  Having a huge basement is very helpful. 

Rock enjoyed his first train ride into New York City on Monday and was only a block away from Wall Street where President Obama spouted his great wisdom on lessons learned from the economy failures. 

And the very best news of all?  We found a babysitter in the ward right here in Berkeley Heights and so we are going out for Rock’s birthday on Saturday without our children!  Weehoo!  What to do, what to do?  Empire State Building, or a concert in Central Park, or Little Italy?  Gosh, I just can’t decide!