Just over 5 years after we purchased our first house, and almost 4 years to the day we sold that house, we are once again house hunting. This time, we are in St. Louis, as opposed to the last time around with https://going2colorado.com/ and ultimately https://ourcoloradolife.com/. I don’t envision building a full blown website like we did last time around, but who knows, maybe I’ll get creative one evening and do it.

So, why St. Louis? With all the bad stories lately (#Ferguson and the fact that Missouri is rated poorly) you might think, “Who in their right mind would want to live in Missouri?”.

This video kind of fits.

Today I had my first eye exam in 15, probably more, years. It is time to get glasses. So. I have that going for me.

For those friends/family who haven’t heard yet. We have two announcements here for the blog (besides the whole glasses thing).

1) We’re having another baby! #2 is on the way in June 2013, no other details just yet.

2) We’re moving! Again. Go figure. We’re headed back to St. Louis, our lease starts on the first of December. We’ll hopefully get a 2012 Xmas card out right after Thanksgiving with the new address for everyone. If you need it before then, email me.

Answers to a few questions:

No, we don’t know if the baby will be a boy or a girl yet.

Yes, I will still be working for DotNetNuke.

Things have been quiet around here, so I figured it was a good time for a status update that is longer than 140 characters.

We are in the middle of the process of planning our next move, true to our nature, we’ve been in Half Moon Bay for less than 18 months, and we’ll be heading back east. We’re going back to St. Louis in December, and currently looking for a place to live. I’ll be working from home and travelling back to San Mateo at least once a month to be in the office at DNNCorp.

The move and planning for such is taking up most of our time, though I am also travelling a lot for work lately, headed to Columbus next week and San Antonio after that.

Here’s a photo of Natalie and Jacqueline taken earlier this evening.

This was supposed to be our final day of moving, 2 of 2, now it is 2 of 3.

This morning Macy Movers showed up with one truck, they informed me that the larger truck broke down (lost the clutch) climbing the hill to our place in San Carlos. So they were not going to be able to load everything up today

They ended up getting another truck, but smaller than the one they had, so we brought two truckloads over to the house today. We’ll head back over tomorrow and hopefully finish up fairly quickly.

So far the new house is great! The dogs love the backyard, and Jacqueline is spending her first night in her own room. So far so good! I wonder if Mommy will get any sleep?

Here’s a video of Jacqueline earlier in the week showing off her rolling skills for the camera

So here we are, it’s just after midnight, that means today is officially moving day 1. The guys should be here in 9-10 hours to pack up the house. I’m hoping it only takes them a few hours, we’ll see how that goes.

Tomorrow they’ll be here to load up the truck.

If you are looking to move, and are looking for movers. Take my advice, NEVER fill out a form on a website requesting a quote. You are far better off calling a company. Tell them you want a visual estimate done. Do NOT accept an estimate over the phone, without them looking at your stuff.

If you fill out a form online, be sure to use an email address you can throw away, and a phone number you can throw away as well. I thought I was filling out a form for a single moving company, I think it was Reliable, but it really just went into a pool and I had over 10 different companies emailing me, calling me, and being just down right annoying.

One company even went so far to tell me I DIDN’T want a visual inspection, it would only double the cost of my move. Really? So I told him, over and over, and finally he said he wouldn’t do a visual, so I said thanks and hung up. I checked out their Yelp ratings, holy carp, all single stars, all people complaining to never use them. Glad I ditched that one real quick.

We’re using MacyMovers.com, based on a recommendation of a friend. Hopefully it turns out okay!

So here we go again, we’re less than two weeks out from our scheduled move. Time to start throwing things away!

This weekend will be spent going through the closets, and mainly through the garage. I am hoping to get a collection of things together to take to the Goodwill store this weekend.

We’re also hoping to get out to the bay shore trail. Natalie got a new bicycle for Mother’s day, so we are hoping to make our way out to the trail so she can ride as I push the baby along in the running stroller. I’m hoping I can skate with her, we’ll see how that goes.

All signs point to yes! So here we are, a year after moving, and what are we going to do again? Move, of course. I hate moving, but you couldn’t tell by my history of moving!

So we got verbal confirmation from the real estate agent in Half Moon Bay that she’ll be getting us a lease this week for the place we looked at over the weekend. Now I need to get a moving company over here for a quote on packing and moving out stuff!

If you have a 3 bedroom house for rent in San Carlos California, and are open to dogs, we can be your future tenants!

Natalie and I are looking to find a larger place than we currently are in, as we feel the baby needs her own room, and I need to maintain an office. The baby doesn’t necessarily need a room for herself, but we need a room for her so we can try to start sleeping more!

We actually love the place we are in, the location is great, we are up in the hills and have some amazing views! But we have just outgrown the 2br space. We’ve asked the landlord if he could just add another bedroom on for us, but no luck! He’s a great landlord, and I’m sure if he could make it happen he would!

We are looking for a 3 bedroom place in San Carlos, Belmont, Redwood Shores, Redwood City, or somewhere similar. If you have something, use the Contact Form here on the website.

Keep them doggies rolling, is that how it goes? That’s how we go. We’re in Carlin Nevada tonight, on our way to California hoping to find a truck full of our stuff there on Friday.

Today we went through Wyoming, Utah and some of Nevada. We had sun, rain, wind, fog, sand storms, salt storms, and even got attacked by thousands of tumble weeds. But we made it. Hotel here lost power for a bit due to wind. Here’s a shot of the salt flats today, I’ve got more (near whiteout conditions) on the camera that I will upload when we get to California.

That’s all for tonight, gotta sleep and do some work in the morning before we hopefully complete the rest of the drive to San Carlos.

So things have been really hectic lately, so blogging has taken a backseat. So here’s a brief update on what’s been going on. I’ve been in California for almost three weeks now, minus a few days back home in Colorado for my Birthday. Work at DotNetNuke is going great, I enjoy being back in an office again (after working at home the past 7 months).

I’ve been staying in a hotel this whole time, switching locations after my trip to Colorado so that I could test how I would handle commuting. So far so good with commuting. I’ve been driving about 26 miles each way the past few days, which takes about 40-45 minutes around 8am. On Friday leaving 40 minutes earlier it only took me 25 minutes, so I am going to give that a shot again Monday to see what traffic is like.

Finding a place to live hasn’t gone as smoothly as I would have liked. We were surprised to learn that the rental market on the peninsula is competitive! So far we’ve only actually applied to one place, not getting selected. There are a number of places available, though most of them aren’t what we are looking. We’ve come to accept that we’re going to have settle for about half the square footage of what we have in Colorado. I found a couple of places today that I think are interesting, one that I am really hoping works out. I’ll post more info if it does!

I’ve decided I’m going to sell my 18’ car trailer. We towed it out here to California and it’s in storage. I figure I am not going to be racing much over the next year, so holding onto the trailer isn’t something that is going to be necessary and paying storage fees on it doesn’t make too much sense. I’m going to put it up on Craigslist later this week.

Back in Colorado the house is still on the market. We’ve had 14 different showings in the 6 weeks it has been on the market. We’re hoping that something happens with it this month, we’re working on lowering the price right now. If something doesn’t happen this month we are likely going to rent the place out for a year or two. I figure that putting some money into a mortgage will be better for us than simply paying rent out here in California for a few years and not getting any equity out of things.

Yesterday I got to have a little bit of fun, after being frustrated with the housing search. I went to dinner with my best friend from 8th and 9th grade when we lived in Riverside California. Back in the day Jaysen and I were inseparable. I have only seen him a couple of times since we left Riverside back in the summer of 92, the last time being a few days before Natalie and I got married in 2006. I met him and his girlfriend in San Francisco last night for dinner. We had a great time catching up. I spent the afternoon driving up the coast and taking photos.

I have a ton of photos to go through, though I am not sure when I’ll get to them! Here are a few that I have uploaded. (you can see more on my California 2010 page)