But in the interests of posting about new happenings, I need to mention a few things. I see that Shane as posted about his new job so go ahead and take a look at that as well. Unfortunately the sublease we thought we had all lined up didn’t work out.

Instead we found a woman in Woodbury who leases an apartment attached to her home out as corporate housing. She wanted someone who would stay through the entire winter so we have a lease here until the end of April. This way we don’t have to look for something and move in the winter again. Those who have moved in the winter know how unpleasant that can be.

The apartment is fully furnished with two bedrooms, 1 1/2 bath, den/mediation room, open office/second living area, living room and kitchen. One main floor bathroom has a stackable washer/dryer unit, and the upstairs bathroom doesn’t actually have a tub, but the shower is quite large.

Besides being fully furnished, it also includes all the utilities, DirectTV and internet.  On the down side the internet is only about a 256K download and upload, which isn’t fast enough for Shane to do his schooling online.  We will be seeing if it’s possible to increase the internet connection or we may have to supply our own connection so that Shane can continue his degree.

For the record, and for those that missed the announcement, I will no longer be working on a teaching degree. After finishing my Associates Degree last month, and doing a lot of research, I have found that I will be better off in the long run staying in the IT field, and this job is in that field. I will be working with other developers on a scheduling system used primarily in the EMS field. I have met one of the developers already and though he is not as much of a geek as I am, it looks like we will work well together.

We will travel to Hudson on Monday, July 25th to tour the office (both old and new, they are moving soon which will be fun) and look at a place to stay. I have found an apartment in River Falls, 25 minutes away, that we can sublease for three months. During that time we will look for something suitable in Hudson and finally have our own place again in November.

With this new job I am just going to stop all the other stuff i have done to make money. No more blogs, web sites, hub posts, or anything else of the sort. I will work during the day and spend time with family and on hobbies during the evenings and weekends. It will be great to get back to a normal life again. Heck, I might even start posting here on a regular basis again!

In September, I will be going back to school to work on a Bachelors of Science in Information Technology. I am fortunate that 57 of my 62 earned credits will transfer, but I do have to take one extra math class for this new degree.

I have chosen a concentration in Multimedia and the Visual Arts. This will teach me skills I need to build the consumer facing side of web sites and other online communication. With a firm understanding and 20 years experience working on the server-side of things, the classes I will be taking should give me a well-rounded set of skills for the entire aspect of web sites and online communications.

I am both excited and just a bit nervous. Previously, I would be assigned two classes that each lasted nine weeks. This spread the work load out a little more. When I go back, it will be one class at a time in 5 weeks. Though I will only have to focus on one subject a time, the shorter time period and more advanced classes will likely mean more work for me. Oh well, it will be worth it.

I know in the past I said that I really wanted to teach, and that nothing will stand in my way, but I have to look at the facts. I know the IT world – I have lived in it for many years. I am comfortable here, and quite honestly, I am much more valuable to employers with the experience I already have.

Apparently we’ve been too busy with the day-to-day living of life to take the time to update this blog.  Or too busy with the changes to write about them, and then when things settle down it would slip our minds.  Who knows, all I know is that lots have changed in the last 7 months.

One of the first changes from the last blogs, was that Shane is not working for his former employer.  There was a parting of the ways due mainly to a misunderstanding.  Apparently the boss thought that as Shane’s employer he should be in control of when and IF Shane should have free time.  Our family plans didn’t apparently mean much to his idea of deadlines and launch dates, even when notified well in advance, or when it was the weekend.

With that change it became more difficult to complete the trailer in a timely fashion like we hoped.  One of the things that really needed completing before we could work on the interior was the roof.  Well, CraigsList helped us out there with finding the right sized trusses and a wonderful price  for them to redo the roof.  Unfortunately there was several rather heavy rain storms before we had a chance to start on the roof, and with other hold-ups as well we weren’t able to complete the roof soon enough.  What do I mean about not being able to complete it soon enough, well simply that things took too long and the interior became very heavily mold infested.  Too much so, for us to feel safe to complete the trailer or move in.  Therefore the project was abandoned.

In September we moved out of Karen’s.  Instead we moved in with Shane’s brother, Scott, and his wife, Charity.  So now we are living in Arcadia, WI.  We had thought/hoped that with Ashley Furniture and Golden Plump here in town, there might be job opportunities locally.  Unfortunately we are the wrong ages and have the wrong skill-sets for those employers apparently.

December 13, my cousin, Brandi Lynn Allen, was fatally injured in a car accident.  It’s hard to believe that such a bright young woman of only 19 is no longer with us.  She will be missed by many.

Allyssa made out well with Santa this year.  She received some Thomas the Tank things, TinkerBell items, a couple of dolls, and a few other things as well.  It took her about 30 minutes, I believe to open all her gifts and she enjoyed every minute of it, and then became busy playing with her new gifts.

Unfortunately the 26th we seemed to have a bit of a flu bug around the house.  Allyssa seemed to have it first, during the late night of the 23rd, but Shane and I seemed to have a bit of it on the 26th.

So how do you pay rent and put money aside?  Well, you either find the cheapest possible place to rent… or you try to buy a cheap trailer house.  To this end, we believe we have found something that could suit our purposes.  It’s an older trailer house, 1976 or 1977, a 14×70 with 3 bedrooms and 1 3/4 bath.  It’s very rough right now, but at the price we would be able to go in and make improvements before moving in.  Naturally we wouldn’t be able to make all the improvements we want right away, but enough to satisfy our immediate needs.  Then we would be able to move in and plan to make other changes over time.

If this works out not only would we have the space we need (including an office for Shane), we would also be able to put money aside for a down payment for a home in three years when Shane graduates.  Please wish us luck, we can use all the help we can find.

I’d like to say there won’t be a lot of posts for a couple of weeks with packing and moving and settling in, but a lack of posts seems to be the norm for this site. So get ready for this blog to be normal! Maybe once we are back and we have things to share we will post more. Then again, we will be sharing those things with the very same people who read this blog, so we may not feel a need to update. Geez, what is a person to do?

Currently I am not working, nor is Laura, except to build up our new business venture. Hey, we already have nearly a dozen clients so things are looking up. We will be focusing on the area around La Crosse, WI in the coming months, so if you know someone who wants a cheap web site, send them on over to $150 Sites, OK?

I am so grateful to Charles for working with me on this. I know that I can provide some quality work for him even if I am not in the office. I will be working part time so I still have time for school and quality time with Allyssa and Laura. It will be some long days now and I know I will get pretty tired, but I have worked out a schedule that allows me to try and keep the weekends open for anything I want to do. Let’s see how long I can stick to that schedule – starting on Thursday.

While I am on the subject of school, I finished my first block of classes on Sunday and submitted my final assignments. I should know by the end of the week what my grades will be but I think I did well in both. With the hassle of moving and planning, and a possible degree change, I was not schedule to start my next classes right away so I have the week off. I will be back to it on Monday the 29th with a computer course and another English course. The fun continues…

I am going to try and make this the second to last move we make for a while. I am tired of moving and always wondering where my next paycheck is going to come from. So this time I am planning to make this job work long term. I will be working part time while I continue going to school. This will be the second to last move only because we decided to put all of our stuff in storage in Minneapolis and rent a room for a couple of months while we look for a place we can call home for a few years. The timing is perfect, with college students all gone for the summer there are lot’s of cheap rooms available. We’ll be able to save a lot of money this way with no ulitilies and cheap rent.

We originally planned to get a large enough truck to pack all the stuff here in Kansas City, then stop in Wisconsin to get the rest of our stuff in storage there and take it all with us. However, I really don’t want to have to move the stuff in Trempealeau twice, and it’s only two hours away from where we will be so we will likely wait until after Labor Day to deal with that stuff. Besides, our camping gear is there and we will be camping at Autumn Rose in Galesville, WI this September, so it will be near by. It will be nice to get all of our stuff together again, and to have a nice paying, albeit part-time, job that will likely become a full time position, if and when I want it to.

Changes at School

This move will effect the degree path I am following in school. Unfortunately, Minnesota does not allow the Elementary Education degree that the University of Phoenix offers. Though I still think it might be fun to be a teacher, reality has made this decision a lot easier. The highest paid elementary school teachers barely make $40K, and if I am already capable of making near $55K in the IT industry without a degree, think if what I could make with one! I will take a week off of school so we can move and get settled, and start back up on May 29th, with an emphasis on Information Technology, hopefully leading into a Bachelor’s Degree for System Analysis. I will keep you updated as I continue my education.

Well today we finally have that storage locker completely cleaned out.  Of course it took two additional trips to visit family in Holmen, WI since our move to Kansas City last month.  But it’s good to see family.

It’s great the storage locker is all cleared out, the not so great thing is that now everything that was in the storage locker which we’re keeping and haven’t been able to take to Kansas City yet are now in a 10×12 storage locker in Trempealeau.

Why all the trouble to move it from one locker to another?  Well, originally we had intended to take everything down to Kansas City with us last weekend when we were in town.  We had planned our trip to do many things all in a long weekend.  These things included going to the La Crosse and Three Rivers Train Show, a party on his side that combined Shane’s birthday, Allyssa’s birthday, and Easter, as well as the moving of our things in the storage locker.

Unfortunately things did not work out that way.  In the end we were not able to rent a truck to haul our things to Kansas City.  And since we had planned on having it all out by April 1st, Shane had given notice on the locker.  When we found out that we wouldn’t be able to get a truck we attempted to see if we could keep the locker another month, but unfortunately they already had it rented out for April.  So we needed to find an alternative.  We did.  It was a different storage facility in Trempealeau, and it was a little smaller.

Last weekend we donated some of the furniture we had in storage which we decided we weren’t keeping to a nearby church rummage sale.  And then started moving things to our new unit.  We had things about 3/4ths of the way moved before we left town last Tuesday, but it was raining on Tuesday and we really didn’t want to finish the move in the rain with an open pickup truck.

We make the 8 or so hours drive to family yesterday, and today we managed in three loads to move everything we had left to the storage locker.  The few last remaining things that we did not want when to his mother’s for curbside pickup.  (Whether it be freecyle or trashman we don’t care at this point.)

One of the things I really like about this place is that it has an enclosed outdoor area.  It has a 4′ stone wall and than a 5 – 6′  wood fence above that, so it’s nice and private.  It’s going to make a wonderful play area for Allyssa once we have a few toys out there for her to play with.    It’s a northern exposure and right now in it’s completely in the shade of the building which I personally LOVE.  I’m told that as summer approaches it will receive some sun, but I actually prefer the shade because how sensitive I am to sunburn.  Yes I am much more sensitive to sunburn than Allyssa is.  I can and have been burned just sitting under shade trees, and at the same time she’ll barely turn the lightest pink.  When I pink up under the trees she doesn’t in the slightest.

The other really nice thing about this place is the fireplace.  It has a brick enclosed woodburning fireplace in the living room.  We arrived last Friday, Feb 27th, and on Saturday we had to purchase some wood to burn in the fireplace.  It was really nice to have a fire on Saturday and Sunday.

Allyssa and I have been to one playdate so far, and intend to go to more.  We have also found a park where she loves the slides, the library and Barnes & Nobles (the last 2 for their storytimes).  I have found some mother’s forums in the area so that we will meet others for us to get to know.