Where is Ela's bed?

The move is in progress! My biggest complaint so far with this move is the timing.  We requested two consecutive days for the movers to pack everything, and then a day later in the same week to move it into the new home.  Those days were apparently unavailable, so what we got was three days spread pretty evenly over two weeks.  On the Friday before MLK weekend, some very nice ladies came and put all our stuff in boxes.  Then they left it in the house in DC all weekend long.  No, really.  So us girls hung around to watch the boxes get packed and then left poor Zack to deal with the rest.  The pay off for him is that he won't be around for the day it all arrives at the house.  Lily is about the same age as Ela was last time we moved, so for her, the packing up was something interesting to watch.

Ela is old enough now to wonder where her favorite things are.  She kept asking about toys that were already sealed up.  It took her awhile to process that the stuff was in the boxes to go on the truck.  We did find one way to amuse her, though (sorry about the flipped picture, I'm not working on my usual computer).

So we are living with my parents now.  Tuesday, Zack reported that movers came and picked up all our stuff.  The trouble was that they had another load to put into what was left of the truck.  We hoped they might make it to North Carolina anyway, but we're not that lucky.  Instead, our stuff is due to arrive Monday.

In the mean time, we've been working at the new house, though I admit most of the work was done by my family before we arrived.  Mom and Minjee painted everything, and I mean everything, and it looks super.  I helped with the finishing touches, but there was very little left to do.  We've put up curtains and shower curtains and gotten a dryer (the washer was installed by Dad and a friend before we got here).  It's all ready, and now we just wait.

And Ela gets progressively more confused.  I have been calling Mom's house "home", and she got very upset about that.  To her, this house is "the dog house" because that's where she sees all her favorite doggies.  It is NOT home.  I never would have thought that she'd get tired of being here, but she's starting to express a desire to go home.  Whenever we go to our new home, she goes to "Ela's new room" and hangs out.  She's started saying she wants to sleep there.  I keep telling her that she can as soon as her bed gets there.  That led to lots of questions about where Ela's bed is.  I think she gets that it's on a truck, but I'm sure she can't figure out what's taking that truck so long.  It must be the slowest truck ever.  That's what I keep telling her.  We're looking forward to Monday!

Moving Preparations

One of the things I am looking forward to in our next home is the garage. Our current place has one scary spot in the back, with the potential for a nasty run in with the stairs to the basement if you pull in too far. Any additional cars have to find places on the street in two hour parking spots. And if it rains on grocery day, bringing stuff in is cold and wet. Also, it makes finding a spot for a moving van rather hard. In fact, part of the moving process has been reserving parking for the moving van. It took one hour of sitting on hold, a search of a website and fifty bucks, but I got the reservation permit. Today, I went to print off the posters that warn the neighbors not to park on the street. To do that, I had to track down the nearest Police department, where I was assured that there'd be a kiosk to print the posters. Sure enough, the kiosk was there, and I got all set to print, and the copiers jammed. :::sigh::: I had an immediate flashback to teaching at West and the constant copier jams we dealt with there. I was pretty sure I could fix the problem, but breaking the copier in a police station seemed like a bad idea, so I hesitated. I asked the very nice police officers what to do, and they said it wasn't their set up. Great! Feeling I had the green light, I started following the instructions on the machine and, sure enough, it was the same sort of issue we had back at school. It often resulted from overfilling the paper tray. I felt pretty good about fixing the machine, until the next page jammed too. Frustrated, I called the department of traffic, who owns the kiosk. This time I wasn't on hold for an hour, but the only thing they suggested was going to another kiosk. At this point, Ela was laying on the floor crying for no apparent reason and Lily was whining in her car seat. Going elsewhere was not an option. So I opted for a two pronged approach. First, I wrote down all the information that the printer was supposed to put on the posters with the intention of may be just writing it in myself. Then, I took a bunch of blank posters from the paper tray and set the machine up to try again. It worked! Just like our copiers back at West Forsyth! Who knew that unjamming a copier was such a useful skill. Even better, the copier automatically reprinted the posters that had jammed. I was glad to take the finished products and go. So now we've got the parking for the moving van. Now we just have to get the house ready. Six days to go!

Pardon Our Dust

I know I said I was going to try to get caught up before the move, but that didn't happen (as you might have already guessed). Now we're back in the USA and in full unpacking mode. If you have tried to contact me and gotten no answer, it's because I'm way behind. I will update the blog again someday, I promise. But it'll be awhile. In the mean time, have a Merry Christmas!

Moving Part I

On Monday, the movers came to gather up part I of our move: the household goods. This was the bulk of the move. It's all the furniture and everything except what we'll take in our suitcases and some basic necessities that will get us through. The weekend before, Zack and I spent a LOT of time sorting out the things that either a) couldn't go or b) we wanted to keep and putting them away in safe areas so they wouldn't accidentally get packed. We set aside clothes and dishes (and the computers) and we pulled food out of shelves and things like that. We were still finishing up our sorting process as the movers pulled in around 8:30 Monday morning.

The movers were three Japanese guys. I walked one of them through the house pointing out the things that should not get packed. He marked each thing or area with a piece of blue tape and then the guys got to work. Our house was filled with packing materials. One of them took the kitchen, and the other two started upstairs. By 10:30 the upstairs was packed and the kitchen was mostly done. They took a quick break and then finished boxing up the downstairs before taking a lunch break. Ela discovered that she HATES the sound of the packing tape coming off the roll, and Zack and I spent our day with her mostly just trying to stay out of the way.

After their lunch break, the movers called in a few more guys to help out with the removal of everything. Rather than hauling all the stuff down two flights of stairs (one in the house, one that leads to the street level), they decided to lower everything off our balconies into the parking garage. It was cool to watch.

Finally, everything was inventoried, out and ready to go. Zack was signing the papers that said they'd done a good job when the people from housing came with our rental furniture.

One of the amenities offered by the housing on base here is rental furniture for when a family's household goods is not here (either because it's on the way to Japan or on the way back to the States). We got a bed, a crib, two dressers, a table, four dining chairs, two arm chairs, a sofa and a coffee table. Once that was in, we got to work pulling all our stuff out of hiding places and reorganizing it in our new space. I miss having more table space, but we're making it work. We'll stay in this situation for two more weeks, then we'll pack out the rest and move to the hotel before heading back to the States. Now that this first step is done, I feel a lot better. It seems like all the rest should go smoothly, too.