First Week in Wisconsin

 We stayed in a few hotels on the way from Ohio to Wisconsin and Winnie loved getting out of the car and spreading out in the bed!

 Our first day in Waunakee, we took school tours for all of the kids new schools! Sunny's intermediate school for grades 5 and 6 was amazing! It is a brand new school!

 Emery was so excited about his locker in kindergarten! We even had the principal give us an awesome tour!

 Emery's new kindergarten classroom!

 Elle's new 3rd grade classroom!

 Our first day in our new house, we were greeted by the most amazing gift basket from the Swalve family full of treats, food and drinks since we didn't have anything! WOW! What a way to feel welcomed to Waunakee! We slept in sleeping bags and blankets in the basement for the first 2 nights since our moving truck had no been delivered yet! What a fun adventure!

 Since we came to Waunakee the day before Thanksgiving, we were planning on just going out to dinner for Thanksgiving, but a week before, Regan's new boss invited us over to have Thanksgiving with their family! WOW! This was one of our most favorite Thanksgivings ever! The Steffan kids were so kind to our kids and just made them all have such a fun time! I have never met teenagers so willing to play with little kids and so kind to them! My girls were just in love with Peighton the 15 year old,  and my boys loved Mason the 17 year old and Cade the 12 year old! WOW! Such great kids!

The boys played a game of Football in the backyard! We were over at the Steffans house for 8 hours just having such a great time! The food was amazing and the company was even better! We felt so welcomed to Waunakee and so blessed to be able to go somewhere for Thanksgiving. Truly blessed.

 We had a few other blessings while we were moving into our house! On Saturday when the moving truck came and it just was chaos at our house, one of Regans amfam friends asked if he could take our girls on an adventure with his family since he has 2 girls the same age while we were moving in. Such a huge blessing. The girls had SO Much fun rock climbing, bouncing, eating lunch and to the movies to see Moanna. WOW! Such a great thing to do since there was so much going on and so boring for the girls to just stay home.

The other was our friends that live around the corner from us, their daughter Taylor came to our house while I was unpacking box by box and just asked if she could help! What? She is 12! So I put her to work for 4 hours! She unpacked, sorted and organized all of the kids books in each room, organized the movies, unpacked a bunch of boxes and played with Winnie! What an amazing girl! She is so great!

 Cardboard and markers are the perfect form of entertainment for this 8 year old! Riley's 6th grade teachers put together a cute bag of things for the kids to do and eat while we were traveling and moving in! These markers were very much used with love!

 I told the moving guys to just leave the Christmas Tree in the family room instead of in the basement! Perfect way to make us feel at home!

 Our sweet friends the Allenders sent a package for the kids with personalized notebooks for their first week of school! The blessings and love was so appreciated!

 While I was unpacking, Regan took the boys to their first UW Football game! Regan even had to borrow his friends hat!

Okay, so everything sounds just perfect and lovely by now right? Well, lets just say it was until the first day of school. I wanted to be a good Mom and make sure that the kids all got to their classrooms okay so I drove them to school. Now I am a directionally challenged person, so when my phone wasn't working since the data was off and not working, I should have not relied on my sense of direction! I made it to the elementary school alright and delivered the little ones with no problem. Feeling pretty good at this point.
THEN, I get in the car to take the older kids to the intermediate and middle school. This is where all of my problems began. I had written down instructions from Regan's phone of how to get there from the elementary building, but I took a wrong turn and I got SOOOOO lost! I was on a farm county road named Q and I lost it. Tears, tears and trying to hide my face so my kids wouldn't see how sad, frustrated and scared I was! I keep saying I was so sorry that they were probably going to be late for their first day at their new school to them and just started praying to Heavenly Father to get me to the schools!
I still DO NOT know how I did it, but after driving around lost for 30 minutes, I found the Middle School and Riley got there RIGHT when the first bell rang. When I saw tears in his eyes as I was driving around lost, thats when I just lost it. I wanted the first day of school to be amazing and this was not helping that out at all! I felt lost and deserted and frustrated while I was lost. Why was my phone data not working? Why did we move? Why was I getting lost in a SMALL town? Why WHY WHY!
I then miraculously got Sunny to her Intermediate school and then Winnie and I back home. I was a mess when I got home. I'm usually so put together and not emotional but this situation just put me a bad place! I called the ONLY person I knew and just told her how sad I was. Then, the painter came over to finish the family room built ins and that poor guy...he had no idea what to say or do when he saw me. I was a wreck! I was red faced and teary even as I talked to him!
I got the kids to school, everything was fine, and as I locked myself and Winnie in my closet and just had a moment, I keep thinking, man, there are SO many other things to be upset about and this should not be one of them! We are healthy, Regan has a great job, we moved into a beautiful home...But at the time, I felt alone. No help and just wanting my kids to adjust well and have the best start to school!
They all got home from school and had THE BEST first day of school! That made it all okay in the end! I think moving in the middle of the holidays, in the Winter and when there are family things going on far away from you {My Mom's accident}, all of these things made for a very hard transition for me. Much harder than Ohio was for me. Its been a month and a half and things have already looked up significantly! I have met neighbors, amfam friends and church members. I have gotten on a schedule for volunteering in the kids schools, I have unpacked everything and made this house our home, I got to see my Mom in Utah, and things are finally beginning to feel more like home.