It's time

It's almost time for us to move. Only 4.2 miles away, but it will be a ton of work. We have nice stuff that we like, a lot. We don't want it broken. When the military moves us, they send in packers and movers- and they are to blame when things break. If things break this move- it's on us. How dumb to lose something special forever because I was too lazy to take the time to move/wrap/carry/stack/load it properly. It keeps me up at night. 

It keeps Belle up at night too- for some odd reason, she slept in the closet amongst the boxes- 

She and Stormy are 15 yrs old and this will be their 8th move...

I tried to find the silver linings as often as I could in this forced move. We have moved ourselves once before, when we bought and build a house. Moving is always bittersweet- but that time it was more sweet than bitter as we couldn't wait to get into our new house! Or when we move with the military, it is because we said yes to some next assignment that was advantageous to Brian's career and we were excited about the new adventure to come- again, more sweet than bitter. But this move was all bitter. We didn't want to move out of our house, we just had to. All bitter.

Tate's face kind of says it all in this picture- 

 The kids really did help out so much! They are old enough to pack boxes, carry small stuff. Old enough to know how, young enough not to give us major attitude! They were responsible for packing up their own bedrooms for the most part- and did a fantastic job.

And there were lots of teachable moments too- several DIY jobs that helped with- like this one where Brian had to replace part of the dog frame because one of our dogs go scared during storm while home alone and took a little nibble. Sigh.

Honestly, it probably didn't need to be fixed- but we did it because it was the right thing to do, and we shared that with the kids. We weren't going to ignore that damage had been done, as small as it might have been. This was someone's home and we were committed- as a family- to leaving it better than we found it... A great motto to live by.