You would have skipped a day too, if you were me.

May 9&10 have passed by in a blur.

Two happy things about Mother's Day 2010.

1.  Darin let me sleep in until 9am.  He got up way earlier, shut the door behind him, and prevented all children from interrupting my morning sleeping hours.  That's why I love him so!  And when I woke up at 9am it was to the smell of blueberry pancakes with walnuts, just as I had mentioned the night before.  So he listens after all.

2.  We had friends over for dinner.  Which meant dinner was really good, dessert was dessert worthy, and we even played a game.

One really bad thing about Mother's Day 2010:

1.  It was the day before our movers arrived.

And though in the military they do try to go out of their way to make moving easier, moving is still a tremendous amount of work.  And overseas moves have added complications and considerations.  So as soon as our dinner guest left, Darin and I still had about six hours of work ahead of us before the movers would be knocking on our door.

And sure enough, when we opened the door at 7:45am to send the boys off to school, here's what we saw down the hallway.  There is no messing around with Korean movers.

The way we are moving this time, is that the bulk of our household goods need to depart first, since they will take a full two months to reach the States.  And we can hold out up to 1000 pounds (but not more!), of "stuff", but no furniture, that we can use to live with until we leave here (the kids and I) on June 1st.  That's what the six hours of work mostly was for me last night, trying to figure out what each person would need for their life to remain happy until we see our home put back together again, sometime in July.  It was as mentally exhausting as it was physically.  I hope I got it right... 

Jane's prayer at bedtime tonight had the words "North Carolina" in it about 25 times (and her prayer was only about 45 seconds long).  She blessed that everything would arrive safely.  That we would all fly there safely.  That our car would get there safely.  Etc.  This is a lot for a little head to worry about.  I'm so proud of the way they all handle it, and take it in stride.

Somewhere in the middle of the afternoon I panicked that I would sorely miss the yellow butterfly end table that I never bought.  The Major is getting so smart in his old age.  Rather than sit and listen to me talk about it all week long (and maybe all summer long if I hadn't gotten it), he walked me right over to the furniture guy and hooked me up: 

I owned it for five minutes before somebody was wrapping it, padding it, and building a box for it.  That was the funniest part of my day today.  I think I'll love it.  But I'm posting the picture here, in case I wake up tomorrow and forget that I bought a piece of furniture today, you know. 

Packing our boxes into the crates.  It's hard to describe how strange it felt that it was our moving truck getting loaded up today.  At Osan, you see moving trucks getting loaded up almost everyday.  You pass by and ponder a moment what that means to that family, etc.  Today it was us.  We took a moment, the Major and I, sitting on the bench watching it all get loaded, to think about what it means to us.  The future is full of possibilities and opportunities, just waiting for us to show up.  It's exciting. 

This picture sums it all up for us:

From Osan- To Chapel Hill.

Here we go.

And finally, at the end of the day when we ran down the list of options where to take the family to dine, nothing sounded quite as good as frozen chicken nuggets, mac and cheese, soup, if you felt like it, and omelets.  When I pointed out the lack of a table, only moments later a solution was stuck upon.  Four happy kids ate dinner at home. 

It was a happy day in Osan.




P.S.

Dear Greenish Couch-

You did not make the final moving cut.  You have only three weeks left with us in your life.  And then, RIP green couch, you will die in Korea.  Don't take it personally.  Somebody in Korea is going to find you one night, on the side of the street somewhere, and feel like Christmas came early.  I think it's best for everyone if we end this relationship here.  Thanks for all your years of dedicated service.  I think every single one of the children has thrown up on you.

Love you always,
Annee