A stolen meme....

I don't have any time to write about my hate of cardboard right now (it is everywhere I tell you...pizza boxes, packing boxes, shoe boxes - scratch that I would have to have time to shop for new shoe boxes and right now I don't have time to put on my contacts much less shop for shoes!) so I thought I would be hokey and post a meme...

Copy the list and highlight the ones that are true about you.

(The ones in bold are true for me)

1. Started your own blog

2. Slept under the stars

3. Played in a band (a middle school marching band not a cool band)

4. Visited Hawaii

5. Watched a meteor shower

6. Given to charity

7. Been to Disneyland

8. Climbed a mountain

9. Held a Praying Mantis

10. Sung a solo - yes on my wedding day, still not sure what possessed me!

11. Bungee jumped

12. Visited Paris

13. Watched a lightning storm at sea

14. Taught yourself an art from scratch

15. Adopted a child

16. Had food poisoning

17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty

18. Grown your own vegetables

19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France

20. Slept on an overnight train

21.Had a pillow fight

22. Hitch hiked

23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill - yeah it was called my senior year!

24. Built a snow fort

25. Held a lamb

26. Gone skinny dipping - uhhh...family blog!

27. Run a Marathon - as calories are my witness..one day

28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice..I heard it stinks there! I'm not jealous or anything Sally
29. Seen a total eclipse

30. Watched a sunrise or sunset

31. Hit a home run

32. Been on a cruise

33. Seen Niagara Falls in person

34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors - ummm does Texas count?

35. Seen an Amish community

36. Taught yourself a new language

37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied

38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person

39. Gone rock climbing

40. Seen Michelangelo’s David

41. Sung karaoke

42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt

43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant

44. Visited Africa

45. Walked on a beach by moonlight

46. Been transported in an ambulance

47. Had your portrait painted

48. Gone deep sea fishing

49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person

50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris - anyone else notice the lack of world travel????

51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling

52. Kissed in the rain

53. Played in the mud

54. Gone to a drive-in movie

55. Been in a movie

56. Visited the Great Wall of China - again with the travel!

57. Started a business

58. Taken a martial arts class

59. Visited Russia - starting to get a complex

60. Served at a soup kitchen

61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies

62. Gone whale watching

63. Got flowers for no reason

64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma

65. Gone sky diving

66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp

67. Bounced a check

68. Watched a baby be born

69. Met the President

70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial

71. Eaten Caviar

72. Pieced a quilt

73. Stood in Times Square

74. Toured the Everglades

75. Been fired from a job - Thing's Remembered and I didn't get along, I didn't remember the right things and really liked flirting with the boy who sold cookies across the way, the manager said I wasn't productive enough, whatever! I'm not bitter

76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London

77. Broken a bone

78. Been on a speeding motorcycle

79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person - Oh I have so totally been there!
80. Published a book

81. Visited the Vatican

82. Bought a brand new car

83. Walked in Jerusalem

84. Had your picture in the newspaper

85. Read the entire Bible

86. Visited the White House

87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating - no I let Kroger's do that for me

88. Crossed the Golden Gate Bridge

89. Saved someone’s life

90. Sat on a jury

91. Met someone famous

92. Joined a book club

93. Lost a loved one

94. Had a baby

95. Seen the Alamo in person

96. Swam in the Ocean

97. Gone to Australia Gone to Canada - Ofcourse I have

98. Ran through a corn field

99. Been stung by a beeBeen stung by stinking fire ants

100. Talked your way out of a ticket - I'm from the south!

Under the boxes....we began school

We started school this week, usually my very favorite part of the year. I love the smell of new school supplies and having all of my books organized and arranged in some sort of functional and a little fung shue manner! However this year it didn't happen that way! This year we were in the middle of a move on the first day of school without a functioning computer or kitchen sink, by weeks end I had developed a slight twitch and an automatic startle reflex when someone said, "MOMMMMMM!"

My husband came home on Friday and and asked, "what's for dinner." That is a benign question that I usually don't mind, but I think that my twitch must have become noticable because I'm pretty sure a little tear escaped the corner of my eye as I said, "sandwiches". He chuckled his sweetest most protective chuckle and said "I think the kids need a dinner out and mom needs some quiet time."

It was a wonderful hour of quiet. It was after a week of starting school, having all our stuff under, in, or on top of all sort of geometrically sized cardboard boxes with the occassional tote thrown in for color. It was also after dealing with every workman in a 10 mile radius who would make it a point to simoultaneously say, "Mrs. G, I need..." at the same time my children would say "Mom, I need..." It was work, work I tell you, to remember who I could say "I told you just a moment" in my I-have-already-warned-you voice and who I had to say in my most pleasant June Cleaver voice, "yes!" So somewhere by the end of it I think "I went to the boxes" (only understandable if you were made to watch the Godfather!) I lost a brain cell or two. So that was our first week, hope yours went better!

What have we been up to....

Well we have been busy cleaning and putting things up and finding places to store things! Sometimes very creatively so, like putting the school books in the bathtub! That works, (hey maybe I have my WFMW idea already!) Oh wait, did I mention that during this nice little interval we will be staying in our travel trailer? Yes you read that right, 6 people in 30 feet!!!!!

GREAT BIG FREEDOM....

itty bitty living space

However, it has been fun, really and truly fun. (yes, really!) In the morning we have picked up the "house" in no time flat! We could only pack with us the bare essentials so the amount of clutter is very small. My husband thinks I rock because I will go anywhere with him - that is pretty cool!

The reasons for living like a turtle with our house on our back. Well number one because we are squiggles, number two we are in a transition period between our summer adventure and our fall adventure, and number three because we can stay right next to my husbands grandparents and allow our children to get to know them better for the next 3 months - an experience that we both are glad that they will have.

These next couple of months should prove to provide for some interesting blogging fodder! Let the craziness begin!!!!

That wasn't easy....

Well, it is official we are Texans!  We arrived early this morning and we got up and rinsed the road off and packed up again to head to the big D, Dallas for my non-Texan readers, to help celebrate my sweet nephews birthday.   It is so great to see the family that we haven't seen in awhile and it is soul warming to be enveloped in a hug from someone truly excited to see you.

 I haven't been to Dallas in ages and it was so fun to see sites that are only here in Texas!  Mrs. Baird's bread, LAND, McAllister's deli, Hobby Lobby (I Heart you Hobby Lobby!), and a about a dozen other things that make this home.  Home, it feels so nice like I'm complete and I understand how the world operates here.    I love that there is a church on every corner!

However, my heart has another love too and because of that leaving California was not easy!

 How can you compete with the weather - it is paradise!  The Pacific ocean and its coast is one of God's masterpieces, the family - the family is something to weep over - and I did!  I will miss them fervently, but at the same time I'm so glad to have left some family behind....not in the, "man that one uncle is crazy"  reason to want to leave someone behind, but in the love they have for me and my family and we for them,  we leave some of our own love behind.  Some of our love that can be left when visiting dear Timothy or a flower placed because they loved him too.   

So you see leaving was not easy, but like most things in life the right thing to do is typically the hardest and so while I feel as if it was tragically unfair for me, his mother, to have to decide to let Timothy go and to decide if I was strong enough to move away from his place of burial (even though in my heart I know he isn't there) it was necessary for my family and so we did, but leaving was not easy.

Unfortunately since sin entered the world mothers have felt that knife blade thousands of time. The grief that has no counterpart - the grief of a part of your own heart dying and beating all at the same time.  The magnitude of pain that hurts so bad it awakens a part of your senses that is shocked that it is survivable.   And while all that whirls around, making decisions for the children that God has entrusted to our care.  

Grief is a crazy thing, this post was originally titled "Oh my, that was a LONG trip..." and all I intended to say was some pithy thing about being all moved and starting to get settled but I guess underlying behind the smile more needed to be said - and basically such is my life a smile and a tear all at the same time.  A heart a little alive and a little not.  

Anyway, we made it safely.

Oh how I really hate packing...

I don't think I can tell you exactly HOW MUCH I loathe packing!!!

I don't mind putting the stuff in boxes, I don't mind sealing them with tape, and I don't mind hauling stuff to Good.will!

What I do mind is:

Waxing nostalgic over everything that was packed away! Baby clothes, wedding dress, photos (hang my head in shame over the photos), high school memorabilia (I wrote my senior research paper on the transition from adolescence to adulthood - my conclusion adults had NO idea what we were going through - that evoked a laugh!), and any other thing that I forgot I had that I felt was important to store!

I also mind making decisions.over.and.over. AGAIN! Goodwill, trash, take, store - Goodwill, trash, take, store - Goodwill, trash, take, store-ad nauseum!!!! My head can't seem to take the monotony.

I also mind the questions once the decision is made -
10 yo dd will say, "Are you SURE you REALLY want to give that away?"

8 yo ds will say, "HHHHEEEEEYYYY, that is my FAVORITE (insert name of any kind of junk) that you want to THROW away!!! MOM!!!!!!!!!!"

I try to remind them that they haven't touched this stuff in forever and that parting is such sweet sorrow, but DEAL WITH IT!!!! we can't keep it all, what would you like to trade in your keep pile for this treasure???

I have to pray for extra patience right now because, really, at this point I want to THROW IT ALL AWAY!!! (I don't think I have used enough exclamations in this post!)

So those are the goings on in my mind right now...hopefully we will soon be settled in our new setting and be at a little more peace. Talk with you soon!