The Week Ahead

If all goes well, this time next week, we'll be in a beautiful new house in a nice neighborhood across town. Lauren will be filling up boxes this week (she is the family packer for trips of any kind), and I'll be getting boxes, and doing the other last minute things. This will be move #6 in just over 5 years of marriage. And we do not anticipate another one for a long, long time.

The house we are leaving is/was our first (owned) house. It's been a great place: low maintenance in a great neighborhood. We think Cate might remember this place vaguely, but Ava will not. We'll definitely miss it in many ways. There have been many great memories here, and I can still remember the joy and relief of moving in, now 2.5 years ago. It felt like a castle then (coming from a Memphis apartment). Who knew that adding one more child to the mix would make it feel so much smaller, though we agree that the child that was added has a lot to do with that.

Speaking of the girls, Ava obviously has no idea what is going on. She has come to accept the presence of boxes lining the walls and likes to pull out the contents if she can reach one that is not sealed up. She also fills them up with things like Cate's shoes and toys. Other than that, her life is normal, still revolving around the vital things like eating, sleeping, and Dora.

Cate knows we are "moving," but doesn't understand what "moving" means. She thinks that it might be like our recent trip to Florida. We stayed in a brown condominium there, and so she is asking to go to the "brown house." She is aware of the "white house," and she knows that the white house has a swingset in the backyard, but she can't wrap her mind around the concept that we will live there, and she can't grasp that we'll be taking all of our stuff with us. Tonight, she told me that she wanted to take all of her books, and her bookcase. I said, "Cate, we are going to take everything. We are going to take your books, your bookcase, your clothes, and your bed." She looked at me like I'd lost my mind. "How can we take my bed? It won't fit." I told her that it would fit, and we were going to put it on a big truck and put it in the white house. She thought that was the dumbest thing she'd ever heard. I can't quite wrap my mind around it either.

We'll post some chaos pics when we get in next weekend.