Chani Meyer's Fabulous Top 10 Packing Tips

Tip #1: Don't move. 

Tip #2: If that's not an option, start preparing and planning early.

Tip #3: Save all different sizes of boxes, recruit friends to start collections for you. Check local free sites (such as Craigslist, or FreeCycle), if you need more, before buying any!

Tip #4: Work room by room, don't overwhelm yourself. It's not worth the headaches or panic attacks! (Ask my husband, he had to deal with said attacks. Usually at crazy hours too!) I prefer to have a Dry-Erase board handy, keeping track of all the important notes I need to know about each room I'm in!

Tip #5: Another thing to collect are old magazines. I prefer that to newspaper, the thicker paper usually does a better job cushioning things. We like to ball each page up and use as filler, too. Who wants to deal with those packing peanuts! Only thing is, be careful when unpacking that you check everything, make sure you're not throwing out some small, delicate chochke!

Tip #6: Label your boxes well. It will make unpacking SO much easier!

Tip #7: Use Space Bag 12 Storage Combo Packs. But these things are really great! They have so many uses. Baby clothing stores better when the air is sucked out, otherwise oxidization causes all the stains that we worked so hard to remove just come right back up! Linens pack into much less containers when they're squeezed tight into these bags! Seasonal clothing being packed away until needed will survive much better in these as well!

Tip #8: TVs and radios should be the last thing on the truck. Bopping along to music makes packing so much more enjoyable. The TV is for those few minutes you steal between boxes to keep up with your shows. Priorities!

Tip #9: Wear a roll of packing tape as a bracelet and keep a Sharpie Permanent Marker in your pocket at all times. If you can figure out a way to safely hang a razor off your belt, do that too!

Tip #10: Don't forget how stressful packing and moving can be. On everyone. Keep that in mind when you're about to snap at your two year old for emptying out your just-packed boxes. Or your spouse for putting something in the wrong place. It's not worth it. Take a deep breath and think hard about how your reaction compares to the situation. Chances are, it's not that bad!

All in all, moving can be a great thing. You will find everything you've been looking for since moving into your house, and then some! You will be able to organize all of your things, get rid of unneeded clothing and toys. If you're lucky, you might be able to score some nice, new swag too!

Don't sweat it!

So Many Things!

We got our new computer today :) Yay us!

Just a quick update of what's happened in the past few weeks. Electronically speaking, things have not gone well. First, my almost dead laptop died. Final blue screen and it was done. Kaput. Then Shuky's phone received the kiss of death. Bought a cheapo replacement for now. Mine's been on the fritz for a while but I'm not even going to think about what will happen when it has to go to the 'phone farm'!

But wait, we're not done! With two weeks left until our move, the heating element in my dryer decided to go on vacation, laundry downstairs is no more. And of course I was waiting until the last minute to wash everything going into storage. Cost us $20 to get rid of the dead machine. Next, Shuky's laptop went haywire...the screen just internally combusted on us! Sitting on the computer one day and Shuky hears a loud POP! and there are suddenly millions of colorful horizontal lines instead of whatever he was looking at! So we kept his laptop attached to our TV and watched Hulu on that screen, put on Benny's videos from the hard-drive - it worked for us.

Then, last night, our TV crapped out on us. Started going dark on the top and just shut off. Did some research and, unfortunately, found that this was pretty common with the specific model TV we have. Or had. And of course, it was only fixed by electricians. Everyone else had to dump it. And there's a $20 charge to dump a TV as well. Kick us while we're down.

So, officially, we were going to wait until after the move, get some loan money, get a new computer. Save what little cash we have now for the first few weeks of Ames-ness. But we found an amazing deal and decided to take a leap. And you can thank our insanity for this blog post at 1:40 am. When I should be sleeping.

But, alas, here I am. Let's talk! Being that there is less than two weeks until The Big Day, there are tons of projects going on in the house, aside from packing and keeping our sanity! We have tenants coming into the house four days after we leave so the house has to be ready for them right away. So of course, we waited until the last minute to get things done. Today, our handyman was stripping wallpaper in two of the bedrooms. Tomorrow, the flooring in the kitchen and upstairs bathroom will be redone. Three bedrooms will be repainted. The small nursery/storage room upstairs will get carpet. I still have to get someone to deal with the mold in the basement. It's been a very wet past couple of months!

We have already taken some of the furniture out to our 'Storage Unit', aka my father's large garage and basement. We have many boxes ready to go and all of Benny's baby things will be going there too. I bought enormous garbage bags (like 30/40 gallons enormous!) to cover all the toys (rocking horse, jumperoo, highchair, etc.) and am praying it all remains pure!

My kitchen is probably halfway packed. My table is no longer visible. We have a boxspring leaning up against a bookshelf in the living room and our fridge is in the dining room. The stove will be joining it tomorrow morning. I still have to clear out the storage room for the new carpet and then I will go veg in my father's lovely air-conditioned home for the day.

Did I mention our current house does not have central air? We have a window unit in our room and we put one in the room Zalmy (Shuky's younger brother - he's been here since the 1st) has been staying in. But he has been relocated, for the next few days anyway, to Shuky's office. His room is one of the ones being de-wallpapered and painted. And Benny's bed is in our room as his room is on the same to-do list.

Wish us luck! Hope everyone is enjoying their summers so far!

And, on a fun note, just wanted to share an awesome wall storage unit I found an older link to :) I want these all over my house!!

HAPPY 2ND BIRTHDAY BENNY!!!!

For Benny's second birthday, we planned a great afternoon of outdoor fun! We had a coloring station, a sidewalk chalk station, bubbles, plenty of toys, and the bounce house of course! I went with refreshments instead of a BBQ, figuring families would be doing their own things for dinner time! My cake was a huge slice of watermelon and was greatly loved by everyone!! I scattered toys and candies around the table instead of making goody bags, wanting each kid to be excited about the prizes they got to pick instead of possibly not liking what we would hand out!

Of course, about an hour before the party, it started raining outside -- everything had to come inside! We brought the little jumper in the house, cleared out the big dining room table and created a backyard inside. We used his little picnic table and one of his plastic sorting bins to create an indoor bubble station (time to mop my floors now!), put toy bugs all over the big table, and pulled out his train set as well! The kids had a blast, the moms got to sit inside and chat, no one wanted to go home! I would call it a successful indoor backyard party!!

Also, last week Friday, we took Benny for his two year old portraits, just wanted to share that link with everyone! In my unbiased opinion, they came out amazing ;)

Still Hungry

My diet is still on. That puts me at 12 days. I deserve a medal :)
Well, Shuky and my boss really deserve the medals. I was not easy to deal with last week!

This is the last week of school for me. I'm excited and sad at the same time. I will really miss my students and the staff I work with! But I will NOT miss grading papers! Uch!

Once school is over, it's time for potty training intenseness! And Zalmy, my youngest, taller brother-in-law is coming to visit next week!! He started out with just the flight here, so we may get to have him around for quite a while! Very excited!

Today was supposed to be our end of the year trip, thunderstorms had other plans...it has now been pushed to Thursday afternoon. :)

PS Benny is cleaning his trains as I'm typing. He's singing, at the top of his lungs, "IT'S KEELUP TIME! IT'S KEELUP TIME!" Sigh. I love him!

Responsibility Bites

Why is it that as a child, your main goal is to speed things up to adulthood? And now, as an adult, all I want is to slow things down and get to live more like a child. Why do I need responsibility and all the other fun things that come along with my old age of 24???

For the past few months, since our drive to NY really, my Blazer has been in and out of the shop. One thing after another. Thousands of dollars later, I basically have a new car. Probably added a good ten years of life to the car. Which means I now have no excuse to get another car, unless I decide to have quadruplets or something of the sort :/

P.S. I've started my LONG overdue diet today so excuse the crabbiness but hunger can do that to a person. Why didn't anybody warn me that dieting instantly adds 15 hours to your day???

Blah.

A Little Bit of This, A Little Bit of That

The past few weeks have been fun. Benny's personality is developing right before us and it's an amazing thing to see!

He is a non-stop chatter box. I chalk that one up to Shuky.

He is a flirt. That probably comes from both of us ;)

He's extremely musical. Gonna give that one to my side of the family.

He knows his ABC's. Leapfrog is very proud!! :)

He is a caring kid, he loves to cuddle, and gives kisses and hugs aplenty.

He really comes up with the funniest things, it actually makes discipline very difficult for me. He's usually cracking me up right as I should be putting him in time out!!

Here are a few fun stories from recently:

He got a scratch on his arm and he came to show it to me. "Wook Mommy, I colored a pitcher!" "No Benny," I told him, "that's a booboo!" "Oh," he says. Looks at the scratch, looks at me, looks at the scratch again. "Wook Mommy, I got a booboo!"

Shuky and I went to a Bar Mitzvah so Shuky dropped him off at his babysitter's house. When I went in to pick him up, he dropped the toys he was playing with and ran into my arms. He's like "You wanna hold Benny???"

I will precede this story by telling you that we are slowly working on potty training right now. We have the house on the market, either for rent or for sale, as we are moving in August. I was showing the house to someone and Benny was walking around with me. When we got to the bathroom, Benny got very excited, as he usually does. He looks up at the guy and yells, "YOU WANNA MAKE POOPOO ON THE POTTY?"

We got him a sprinkler toy for the backyard recently. This morning, I told him that he could go out and play in the water so we needed to put on his bathing suit. We go to his room and he sees it and starts yelling, "Wook, it's my baby soup!!!"

Sometimes, if I'm not early to dismiss my students (which I usually am), Benny's teacher will bring him directly to my classroom. Today he comes in and the first thing he asks me is, "Mommy, what a fire truck says?" Instantly, he starts wailing with a high pitched shriek, "WEEEE OOOOOOOO WEEEEEE OOOOOOOOO!"

There are train tracks about two blocks from our house. Cargo trains go through the town every few hours. EVERY time it goes by, Benny turns to us, "You hear the choochoo train?????"

A no-fail distraction method we have is getting him to count fingers. He does it. One through ten. :)

He recognizes a few letters and wherever we go, he points them out. He thinks digital clocks are letters so whenever he sees an 8, he thinks it's a B. Recently, he figured out how to change the time on the clock in our room. He switched it to 8 and excitedly told me it was a B!

I had to be out of the house early one day last week so I had to wake him up as opposed to letting him get up on his own. He has his priorities straight, he did not want to get up! So I crawled into bed with him to try to wake him up. He pushed my head down to the pillow and told me to go to sleep.

Well, hope y'all enjoyed a taste of life with Benny Meyer :)

Time for me to say sayonara and sign out. Good night!!!

Life As We Know It

It's been pretty quiet on the home front. Not a whole lot has happened recently. Nothing big anyway. Plenty of small things to talk about though. Fear not!

I'm starting to get anxious about the move. That's just the way I am though. Some big change is coming up and I start thinking too much. Never a good thing :)

Ames has no Jewish community. Des Moines, which is about a 30 minute drive, has one but it's pretty small. No school for Benny. Not even a playgroup. Explain to me how my social butterfly (we can call him a dragonfly so it's more manly) who cries to go to school is going to be ok with no Morah Nadia for the next five years!

I actually made an offer to the school in Postville. Once a week, I can come down and do an art program if they will let me put Benny in with Nadia for the day! We'll see what they say!

I am also going to try to put something together locally, although I really don't want the responsibility of organzing things. I just want him to have friends!

Let's not even start with how crazy I am going to go! We both need social interaction! I love where I work! I love me students and the other teachers I work with! I have an awesome boss! Sigh. It's going to be sad!

I'm in the midst of planning how we're gonna pack, trying to organize things and decide what should come with us and what should go into storage. Won't need my fine china, won't be doing much entertaining. Won't need my HUGE dining room table, won't have room for it. Won't need our outdoor climber, won't have a yard. Won't need the snow shovels or lawn mower. :)

The weather is great, on a happier note! I'm sitting on the swing on the front porch as I write this. It's absolutely gorgeous out now! Love this season!!

Anyway, I have tons of grading to do between loads of laundry. Much love to all, thanks for being a shoulder to lean on!