I last posted on Tuesday, and oh so much has happened since then! Allow me to catch you up - and my apologies for not posting sooner!
wednesday: Dave took, and passed, his Spanish test. He walked out of the exam room with no confidence, and was surprised when they told him he passed. He went through some check-out procedures in the afternoon, visited with the doctor who pronounced his shoulder fully healed, and then met us at a happy hour to celebrate all of the recently diploma-ed Spanish speakers. The conversation was entirely in English, and I enjoyed the chance to meet many of Dave's colleagues and see him as the social one while I minded the kids.
thursday: Life entered warp speed. Done with class, Dave is also done with work until his first day of work in Caracas. We both spent the day tearing apart the house, and running last minute errands. We sorted and packed and stuffed into Ziplok bags. We made last minute runs to Target. We went to bed at 2am, about 3 hours short of being finished.
friday: Expecting the movers to arrive at 10am, we awoke at 7:30 to find them already parked outside the house. I almost threw up. We were not ready. However, the movers were both kind and helpful. They went about their business without any of my help while I finished organizing the upstairs. They packed our air shipment, our sea shipment and our consumables shipment. Hence the organizational mess. We are allowed 800 pounds in air shipment, and we expect to receive this in early February. We did not come anywhere near meeting our sea shipment allotment - this is everything else, and it will arrive somewhere between mid-March and early May. Our consumables are basically an extra shipment of groceries, and this will arrive alongside the sea shipment. We are also storing things at my parents' house in St. Louis, and giving things to my niece in Chicago as well as carrying over 500 pounds of luggage onto the airplane. The logistics were incredible, and the morning was stressful. However, at some point I gave up the idea of being in control of my move and simply trusted the movers to get everything there well. Within each shipment, nothing is organized so unpacking will be messy. And I believe I shipped most of our socks on the slow boat. Otherwise, everything went just fine.
saturday: Compared to the previous three days, Saturday was a breeze. The logistics of packing for the next few weeks are complicated as well, but seemed quite simple when compared to the day before. We organized, we cleaned, and we cried for the families in Connecticut. The children who died at Sandy Hook on Friday were 6 and 7 years old - the same age as Sophia and Lilly, respectively. We could picture all too clearly the scene in each classroom, and could not begin to imagine the pain felt within those walls. We stayed close to each other all day.
The girls spent the afternoon and evening at a good-bye party hosted by our neighbors and their best friend. All the neighbor kids were there, and the girls had a fabulous time and left feeling loved and valued.
sunday: We went to church this morning. We cried some more for the families in Connecticut, and felt the loss of this our church home. We prayed together with friends, prayed together with the pastor, and hugged the girls' Sunday School teachers good-bye. We felt comfort that although we may never return to our home, our block or even the girls' school, we will be back in Virginia and we will return to our church.
Dave and I spent the afternoon packing again, while the girls both enjoyed a last playdate with a best friend. The day was good, but the evening was hard. It seems that a weekend of last playdates will wear on a 6 or 7 year old, and the girls both melted down once we reached the hotel. Our family has a Sunday night ritual of watching a movie and eating pizza together. We have this ritual precisely because of times like these - our surroundings, our friends and our home may change, but our family and our Sunday nights will always remain the same. We picked up a pizza and came back to the hotel to watch our movie. Except I forgot to pack the movie. And we picked up a fancy pizza, which the girls didn't like at all. An hour of Nickelodeon and a few oranges simply didn't fill that comfort zone that Movie Night usually holds. We had a lot of tears, a lot of hugs and an early bedtime.
this week: The movers return tomorrow to pack the things going to storage. This is most of our furniture, all of our outside stuff (bikes, patio furniture... sniff, sniff, sniff) and any cold weather items. The landlord hopes to do her walk-through on Tuesday afternoon, so we will be spending the rest of tomorrow and most of Tuesday cleaning the house.
Lilly and Sophia will return to their regular routine, with school most of the day, playground in the afternoon, and supper and homework until bedtime. Hopefully this will help to stabilize the household. Good-bye parties on Thursday, and we will take off straight from the school for Christmas in the Midwest - and who can be sad about that?
wednesday: Dave took, and passed, his Spanish test. He walked out of the exam room with no confidence, and was surprised when they told him he passed. He went through some check-out procedures in the afternoon, visited with the doctor who pronounced his shoulder fully healed, and then met us at a happy hour to celebrate all of the recently diploma-ed Spanish speakers. The conversation was entirely in English, and I enjoyed the chance to meet many of Dave's colleagues and see him as the social one while I minded the kids.
thursday: Life entered warp speed. Done with class, Dave is also done with work until his first day of work in Caracas. We both spent the day tearing apart the house, and running last minute errands. We sorted and packed and stuffed into Ziplok bags. We made last minute runs to Target. We went to bed at 2am, about 3 hours short of being finished.
friday: Expecting the movers to arrive at 10am, we awoke at 7:30 to find them already parked outside the house. I almost threw up. We were not ready. However, the movers were both kind and helpful. They went about their business without any of my help while I finished organizing the upstairs. They packed our air shipment, our sea shipment and our consumables shipment. Hence the organizational mess. We are allowed 800 pounds in air shipment, and we expect to receive this in early February. We did not come anywhere near meeting our sea shipment allotment - this is everything else, and it will arrive somewhere between mid-March and early May. Our consumables are basically an extra shipment of groceries, and this will arrive alongside the sea shipment. We are also storing things at my parents' house in St. Louis, and giving things to my niece in Chicago as well as carrying over 500 pounds of luggage onto the airplane. The logistics were incredible, and the morning was stressful. However, at some point I gave up the idea of being in control of my move and simply trusted the movers to get everything there well. Within each shipment, nothing is organized so unpacking will be messy. And I believe I shipped most of our socks on the slow boat. Otherwise, everything went just fine.
saturday: Compared to the previous three days, Saturday was a breeze. The logistics of packing for the next few weeks are complicated as well, but seemed quite simple when compared to the day before. We organized, we cleaned, and we cried for the families in Connecticut. The children who died at Sandy Hook on Friday were 6 and 7 years old - the same age as Sophia and Lilly, respectively. We could picture all too clearly the scene in each classroom, and could not begin to imagine the pain felt within those walls. We stayed close to each other all day.
The girls spent the afternoon and evening at a good-bye party hosted by our neighbors and their best friend. All the neighbor kids were there, and the girls had a fabulous time and left feeling loved and valued.
sunday: We went to church this morning. We cried some more for the families in Connecticut, and felt the loss of this our church home. We prayed together with friends, prayed together with the pastor, and hugged the girls' Sunday School teachers good-bye. We felt comfort that although we may never return to our home, our block or even the girls' school, we will be back in Virginia and we will return to our church.
Dave and I spent the afternoon packing again, while the girls both enjoyed a last playdate with a best friend. The day was good, but the evening was hard. It seems that a weekend of last playdates will wear on a 6 or 7 year old, and the girls both melted down once we reached the hotel. Our family has a Sunday night ritual of watching a movie and eating pizza together. We have this ritual precisely because of times like these - our surroundings, our friends and our home may change, but our family and our Sunday nights will always remain the same. We picked up a pizza and came back to the hotel to watch our movie. Except I forgot to pack the movie. And we picked up a fancy pizza, which the girls didn't like at all. An hour of Nickelodeon and a few oranges simply didn't fill that comfort zone that Movie Night usually holds. We had a lot of tears, a lot of hugs and an early bedtime.
this week: The movers return tomorrow to pack the things going to storage. This is most of our furniture, all of our outside stuff (bikes, patio furniture... sniff, sniff, sniff) and any cold weather items. The landlord hopes to do her walk-through on Tuesday afternoon, so we will be spending the rest of tomorrow and most of Tuesday cleaning the house.
Lilly and Sophia will return to their regular routine, with school most of the day, playground in the afternoon, and supper and homework until bedtime. Hopefully this will help to stabilize the household. Good-bye parties on Thursday, and we will take off straight from the school for Christmas in the Midwest - and who can be sad about that?
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