Moving Hacks | Tips for Moving with Kids

Moving always is so bittersweet for me; I’m torn in two with being overly excited and stressed with the amount of things I have to do be at the new place/old place. Thank God our move is done and over with! This move was a little harder since a todller and a puppy attached to either side of my hip.  Every time I would clean something or pack it up they both would be right behind me looking for any reason to open the box back up or make a mess. Luckily, I had a few tricks up my sleeve to make moving a lot smoother with my two running amuck. 

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1. Sell/Donate - Waymon and my goal was to get rid of the crap we don’t use or need before we moved to the new house. Obviously, people should do this more often but I’m a hoarder (there I admitted it) and I like to store everything and anything just in case may need it in the future. Be realistic and sell what you can or donate it. I sold a lot of things on FB and Craigslist. If I couldn’t sell it I donated it to Goodwill or packed it away from family that needed it.
2. Number/ Pack according to room – We packed one room at a time. We tackled one room full force and moved onto the next. Of course, it’s a little harder with little ones because you don’t get to actually pack their things but packing most of it helped us. We also numbered the boxes according to their room (i.e. #100-#110 LIVING ROOM, #500-515 HAIDYN’S ROOM) and a brief description of what was really inside each box.
3. Stack boxes up in one room – After packing all of the boxes we chose one living room wall to stack all of the boxes against. It starts closing in on you a bit, but itll be easier for moving day to do this.  
4. Clean as you go-  I couldn’t deep clean like I wanted to while I was packing, but it made it a hell of a lot easier to pack and clean a little so that when we had to do our final cleaning it was a huge disaster. After the move, we only had to sweep the floors, vacuum and steam the carpets. No other deep cleaning needed!!  
   
5. Make boxes their art project – It’s tough to pack, sort and clean with any age child around. To make it a little more interesting for them instead of plopping them in front of a TV/ipad create an art space for them. This way, they feel like they’re helping you, you can keep an eye on them and they’re actually staying busy.
   
   
   
   
6. Use bubble wrap as a distraction -  I had a lot of bubble wrap leftover and anytime I had a little extra from the boxes I would give it to Haidyn and Rory to play with . You would’ve thought I bought them each a new toy!
7. Pack an essentials box – Everything you know you will need within the 24 hrs you are in your new home pack in this box such as toiletries, bed sheets, important documents, dishes , utensils and etc. This box will be your “go to” when you need anything. You can pack this in a plastic tub so that you can easily spot it or in a bright neon green box like we did. This box makes everything so much easier!
8. Live in your suitcase – When you’re about to pack your clothes make sure to set aside clothes you’ll need for a couple weeks so that you can be completely packed. We knew a month a head of time when our move was going to be so we packed our clothes for a month . It wasn’t hard at all to live out of a suitcase, but you do miss the choices of having your full closet at your disposal.
9. Don’t box up your clothes - While boxing up all of your hanging clothes seems like a good idea it’s not. Instead, use garbage bags to pack all of your clothes. The opening of the bag should be at the top with all of the hangers. This way when you place everything into your closet all you have to do is hang them up again! 

Hoping that these tips helped you as much as they helped us! Happy moving! XO  

Big News!

We can finally share with all of you the news that we’ve been keeping on the DL for quite some time now. It’s been killing us ( mainly me because I'm dramatic) to not tell anyone.  We’ve moved! (Seriously, insert the hallelujah choir here. No more stealing my car space!!!! ) We bought our very first home in the city we love the most and we couldn’t be happier. We now get to plant some roots down and finally settle down in a place that is ours!

Our quiet little home is just that little, but it’s perfect for our family. Waymon and I contemplated on the type of home we wanted and at the end of the day we wanted a simple, clean place that we didn’t have to fix up. We closed two weeks ago and we fell in love with this place as soon as we walked in.  Funny thing is, we bid on a place similar to this one and our hearts sank when we were outbid. Little did we know that another similar home would come up and with all of the upgrades we would've had to put into the previous home. As soon as I saw Haidyn feel like home and so happy in it, I knew this was the right home for us. 

We’re so blessed to call this home ours and excited that we get to share a little piece of our heart with all of you. This home is everything we wanted since we were 14 and we’re still in disbelief we're homeowners together as we envisioned many moons ago.  We’re looking forward to all of our future holidays as a family together, Jon coming home to our forever home and ultimately watching our girls grow up together in our home.

 Thank you to everyone that helped us during our transition. It means the world to us that you took the time out of your day to help us settle in.  A special thank you has to go out to our parents, who supported us in our dreams 110%. This wouldn’t be possible without you guys. Now, to relax for the first time in months with a huge glass of any kind of alcohol I can get my hands on!

Influenster SuperMomVoxBox Unboxing !

I was so excited to be chosen to review Influenster’s SuperMomVox last month for testing. I literally chased this tracking number down and jumped for joy when I opened by mail box! There are so many goodies in this box all geared towards Mom’s!  My particular box came with:

Pilot Acroball Pens 
Daisy Squeeze Sour Cream Coupon 
Plackers Flossers Kids 
Suave Kids Purely Fun 
Palmolive Fusion Clean 
Suave Moroccan Styling Oil
Secret Outlast Deodorant  

I loved almost everything in the box except for the hair ties . These hair ties are way too small for my type of hair ( I use Goody’s extra large hair ties) so this set didn’t work for me. However, they did work wonders for Haidyn!

I had such a great time testing out all of these great Mom products! Thank you Influenster!

 I received these products complimentary from Influenster for testing purposes, all opinions are my own.  Thank you for supporting the brands that make this blog possible.

Fourth of July Weekend

Heaven on earth to me is when I get to spend entire days with my family and that’s exactly what I did this past Fourth of July weekend. I didn’t stress, actually I had no care in the world with exception to being present with my family. Our days were spent soaking up the sun, getting sand between our toes, dipping those toes into Pyramid Lake and not giving two shits about my ceviche and wine consumption. Getting away for those three days made a huge difference for our family. Waymon and I have been working non-stop and the weekend we finally got to unwind. I even slept in until 7:35am. (Yup, you read that right Jannine stopped being an overbearing control freak for the weekend).  

Waymon and I packed up the girls to head to Wadsworth Saturday morning and everyone knew exactly where we were going. The girls freaked as soon as we pulled up to my in-laws’ house. Haidyn got right to playing outside with both of the dogs. We found out this weekend that the dogs have been lying to all of us when they seem to not get along. I caught them hanging out with each other while everyone was busy inside.  We figured they had to keep their affection to a minimum to keep up with the facade of them “hating” each other.

This year was special for us since this was the first year Haidyn got to see the fireworks. She was pretty impressed with them to say the least. If you ask her what fireworks do she’ll tell you that they go “BOOM!” which went hand in hand with her new phrase of “OH YEAH”. You can only imagine how funny the entire weekend was with those two phrases being replayed over and over again. Haidyn also got to meet all of her Wright uncles. She was just as excited to see them as they were to her. Haidyn ran around with her cousins, she kept up for a little bit until she finally gave up and threw a fit to go to sleep. Kudos to her for staying up til 10:00 pm. I was also hanging on by a thread at that time as well so I can’t blame a girl. 

Now, it’s back to reality for all of us and we’re already ready to head back to the lake for more time in the sun. Thank god we get to go back this Saturday!