Jeb Mortier, Laurie Mortier, Jordan Mortier, Aubrey Mortier & Amberly Mortier's personal website

We're officially moved in.  It has been a crazy series of events around here lately in my part of the world.  Just before the Feast, we decided to move out to the a vacant property that Jeb's parents own out in the country, and put up our house for sale.  Since then, we have been busy packing, and cleaning and getting our house fixed up a bit to sell.

Sunday of October 25 was our moving day.  We got some help from Jeb's parents, Jason, James Roth, and Matt to move most of our big stuff.  By 6 pm we were settled in our new place and started to put our and the kids' rooms back together.  It is quite interesting moving into a house where it has been vacant for a while.  Some of the issues we ran into were:

• laundry dryer won't work due to wrong outlet switch installed in the wall
• stove/range won't work -- so we didn't have any cooked meals for about a week and a half (eating out and PBJ sandwiches can get old fast)
• we had to evacuate the house Wed/Thur night due to gas leak in the house.  We spent the night at Jeb's parents house for the night.  I thank God for my good sense of smell... I might have just saved my entire family
• the next day we went back to the house after getting the gas leak fixed, we didn't have water.
• and the heater won't work because there was no water -- heat runs from hot water running through the pipes.
• dishwasher don't work right.  I ran it once and my dishes came out all icky and greasy and gross smelling.
• you have no idea how dirty filthy a house can get when no one lives in it!

Anyway, everything is working fine now, thanks to Jeb, and his parents for fixing things.  We have pretty much the entire upstairs all unpacked and set up, master bedroom, kids room, living room, kitchen, dining, upstairs bathroom; and for the downstairs, furnace room (Jeb's workshop), laundry room, downstairs bathroom and the office are all set up and unpacked.

Other things that happened since we moved here:

• Jordan celebrated his 4th birthday in our new home (October 28)
• We got a puppy (for Jordan, but mostly it is our family pet).  She's a blue heeler / border collie mix.  We named her Sheba.  She is one smart dog.  And the kids just loves being around her and playing with her.  Interestingly, Jordan was all into the puppy in the very beginning while Aubrey was scared of her (all dogs in general), but now Jordan doesn't pay much mind to her but Aubrey loves playing and spending time with Sheba.  I'm glad she got over her fear of dogs.  She still gets a bit scared of Sheba especially when she scratches her or jumps on her but otherwise she loves her, and takes walks with Sheba outside while helping Grandpa take care of the chickens and sheep.
• We got a new dishwasher! Yay!  And Jeb got an awesome deal on it too.
• We have internet again... and TV!  Moving out here, we knew our internet options are very limited.  We were searching for some options and came down with either radio internet or mobile internet.  None of them gets any signal from this house.  We have another option, satellite internet... so we went with that.  I say it gets getting used to getting an 18Mbps speed (while we were living in town) down to an almost 1.5Mbps speed.  However, it is not that bad... it is still a pretty decent connection and a lot faster than the very last option that is out of the question... dial up!  No way!

I will try and get some pictures up of the house as soon as I can, and post some videos of the kids.  I still don't have a camera but my camcorder that can take still shots will work for now.  So far, we are enjoying living out here at the tree farm.  It is absolutely gorgeous looking at all the fall colors on the trees.  Our house is practically in the middle of the woods. :)  And it has been interesting to see all the wildlife out here.  I already shrieked like a sissy girl when we saw a garter snake while going around the property for a walk.  Jordan wanted to pick up the snake and pet it! (I later learned that Jeb and Jordan actually found a snake and Jeb let Jordan hold and play with the snake when they went out here on one of the moving trips). I know it would have been perfectly harmless, but still... I DO NOT LIKE SNAKES... or anything creepy-crawly, just the thought makes me shudder.  The kids were laughing at me and picking on me for screaming like a crazy person, and running to the house for cover. LOL