Moving . . . Slowly . . .

People have been asking me how moving is going.  The answer is most definitely, "Slowly".

In the past month we've had at least 3 donation pick-ups at our house, and many, many bags and boxes of stuff have gone out in those.  Bob has been driving back here to VA most weekends (in fact, his company was so kind of to send him out here for a week's TDY in the middle of April!), and so I have boxed up tons of books (probably literal tons, lol), as well as other random things (like a space heater that has been stepped on in the middle as well as all our sleds, as you can see below), to fill up his car to take back to Ohio where he puts them into my parents' basement.  (Side note:  liquor boxes are so great for books!  I like them way better than "book boxes" from moving companies.  But it does make it look like I have a serious drinking problem!)

Getting rid of the boxes, plus all the donations, seems like our house would be feeling empty, but that is not the case!  It turns out we have way too much stuff, and me packing away what we won't need for a few months is just a drop in an endless sea of stuff.  Alas!  We do have a few bookcases that seem less full, although I can never fit everything from a bookcase into boxes, so each shelf still has some random books that don't fit.  Now we just look like unorganized book clutterers, lol.  I think it will help once this school year is officially over, and we can pack away all the books we are currently using.  Although I have to somehow figure out what I'll need for next year, and pack that last, or at least in a way that it will be easily found . . .

I still am not sure exactly how the end game is going to work.  At some point in mid-June, we will have a moving truck move most of our big furniture.  Then we can hopefully do what we need to do to this house to get it ready for the market--paint, refinish hardwood, and re-carpet--that we can't do while all of us are living here.  There's not really very much time between now and mid-June, however, and what time we do have is pretty full!  I have to finish up teaching chemistry and physical science, the girls have a few more track meets, Nathan and Luke are coming home (and I'm driving down to AL to pick up Luke), I'm in charge of standardized testing (but Micah is still not reading where I think he should be, so I can't really slack on his school), we're doing our annual camping trip, and Grace and Faith are going to Camp Caleb two different weeks in June with their cousins.  Whew! 

Another question is what will we do for a house in Ohio?  That is an excellent question!  I still don't have an answer though, lol.  Our original tentative plan was to buy a cheap house we would squeeze into for a while so we could sell our house here and find a more long-term house there.  But it turns out the housing market for those kinds of houses is, surprisingly, really tight right now, and we don't feel like fighting millenial first-time home buyers with escalation-clause contracts for houses that aren't even our long-term plan.  So we might stay with my parents for a bit, and we are definitely praying our house here sells quickly.  But anyhow, short answer is, we have no idea where we will land as of yet!

 Another popular question is have we figured out what everyone will do for co-ops or whatever for next year in Ohio?  The answer to that is simply, no.  I have had many very helpful contacts give me a great deal of very helpful information.  But it's like I'm stuck in molasses, and I just don't have the mental margin to explore deeper and actually make progress in any one direction.  Ack!  Then I have moments of complete panic, until I make myself not think about it anymore.  And honestly, I'm pretty overwhelmed in a lot of different areas, so I am able to just worry about something more immediate!  So, lots of room to work in that area, ha!   I am praying the Lord will hold open space in whatever places we need, until I get my head back in the game, especially for Caleb and Jonathan.  I think it would help if I was actually there in Ohio, but it may be too late by the time June rolls around.  So, yeah . . . this area is definitely the biggest stress factor weighing on me right now--much greater than moving logistics or where we will live!

In just a little extra note, we got a new (to us) car in April!  Like I said before, Bob was home for a week, and so we were able to drive to Dover, DE, to buy this used 2006 Honda Pilot on April 14!  The plan is for Nathan to drive this and pass the CR-V down to Luke, but right now, Bob has been really enjoying driving it back and forth to Ohio (well, enjoying how it drives, not necessarily all the driving, lol).  Hopefully it will be a good, faithful car, like the CR-V has been!  And it has been really, really nice for there to be the 2 minivans here at home.  That means that both Caleb and I can drive minivans, instead of me having to take the big van when he needs to go somewhere too.

So there's an update of where we are.  It turns out it is really hard to uproot and move 12 people when we have lived in a house 14 years!  Who would have thought?!