Day One is a Success

I would say about two-thirds of our stuff is now packed. Our house is a maze of boxes, stacked nearly to the ceiling. The kids are having a blast weaving in between them, hiding behind them, and playing with toys on top of them.

Jake and Jolie acted as moving assistants today. Jake was tasked early with helping to pack up his toys. Justin was a big fan of this request. Believe it or not, the older two spent the entire day chatting the ear off of the nice woman helping to pack up their toys. Jensen spent the majority of the day requesting "hold you." He is going through a clingy stage, and having strangers in the house didn't help his cause much at all.

The kids' bathroom is stuffed full of everything I deem too precious to allow the movers to pack...the filing boxes, photos, jewelry, instruments, coin collections, medications and undergarments. That's right. I'm not a big fan of having other people mess with my skivvies, thank you very much. We'll load all of those items into the vehicles Thursday before heading to our hotel.

I am looking forward to completing the moving process. We haven't been eating very well since getting back from our house-hunting trip. Knowing that we would be leaving, we stopped stocking up at the commissary and instead were trying to finish up what we had. I think we learned our lesson and look forward to getting settled and finding the closest farmers market and getting our garden started.

Tonight, we are sleeping in sleeping bags scattered throughout the house. Justin is concerned that the slick sleeping bags will slip off the bed, so he has positioned himself on the "little" couch. Jensen is asleep on the "big" couch. Jake is on his floor, enjoying having his own room for one night. Jolie decided to take up camp in the office, one of the only rooms without boxes. I think I'll go ahead and grab a sleeping bag and tempt fate with the slick bag and see if I can avoid slipping off the bed.

Sorry Shredder…What would I do Without You?

I love getting ready to move. It gives me a chance to purge, reorganize, and rearrange. With one week to go, I am starting to feel the moving crunch take hold.

Today I tackled the office…a small 9’x9’ room one third occupied by workout equipment, one third occupied by Little People toys, and one third occupied by office “stuff.” It was the office stuff I was concerned with: the overflowing “in-box” shelves, the messy desk, the stuffed file cabinet, and the computer program disks strewn about the book shelf.

I tend to be a keeper of papers. If the kids scribbled on it, it must be preserved. I am equally bad with our financial paperwork. I’m trying to do better. After leaving our house in central-Washington and downsizing nearly 500 sqft, I’ve learned that some things must go. I don’t have the space to keep every scribbled-with-love paper or the water bill from eight years ago.

According to Bankrate.com, it’s okay to purge your financial documents from time to time. They have a great chart on when you can part with those bank statements, tax forms, and gas bills.

Though it took me nearly all day, the in-box shelves are empty, the desk is cleared, the file folders are purged, and the information from our old floppy disks have been transferred to CD. The poor Recycle-man/woman won’t be too happy with me tomorrow morning. We have 4 paper bags full of recyclable paper (not including junk mail and newspapers) and 3 bags of shredded documents, with more paper to shred when the shredder has recovered from today’s duties.

Although purging always feels good, I’m glad I won’t need to have another paper purge for quite a while. I’m just hoping that I will have a place for all the paperwork in our new home. Right now the papers have a place to hide where I can just close the door if they start to get out of hand. Our beautiful open floor plan in the new house won’t accommodate games of hide-and-seek with stacks of paper…there’s nowhere to hide!

Getting Back in the Swing of Things

It has been a while since I last blogged. My family has been working hard at getting ready to move.

Hubby and I spent ten days on a house hunting/mini-vacation without the kids. This was my first time being away from my baby and my second time being away from the older two. It was really nice to get away and have some adult time, but we aren't big on leaving the kids and just gallivanting around. We were on a mission, and if we had a spare moment to enjoy a walk on the beach or a romantic dinner, then all the better.

We found a wonderful house and are now getting our stuff prepped for the movers.

Last week Justin took vacation time so we could finish seeing all the local sights we were interested in seeing before we leave.

I'll get caught up on all my "back" blogs as I find time.

Be patient with me and check back when you can. I'll get you all caught up slowly but surely.

The Generosity of a Little Girl

A few months ago, I was reintroduced to Locks of Love. I showed the web video to Jolie, who was immediately hooked. She decided that she wanted to donate her hair to a little girl who didn’t have any hair. We discussed the different reasons why a child might not be able to grow any hair, which instantly intensified her desire to give.

Locks of Love requires ten inches of hair in order to make a hairpiece. Jolie had just about ten inches (which would keep her new hairdo from being too short), so I encouraged her to wait a few months and then we would get her hair cut. I’m pretty sure I was asked to measure her hair at least every other day to ensure that she was making progress and would eventually have enough to give.
Well, at the end of April, the day finally came. My neighbor watched the boys and Jolie and I made a special trip to a salon to get our haircut. This was her first “professional” hair cut. I had trimmed her hair several times up to that point, the first of which being when she was about three.
She did a fantastic job. She sat still, looked down when told, and seemingly enjoyed the experience.
When we got home from the salon, we placed her ponytail in an envelope and sent it to Locks of Love.
I am amazed at the generosity of my daughter. At only five years old, she is already starting to display the character traits that would make any parent proud. I’m sure I’m biased because she is mine, but she impresses me everyday.