let me tell you a little about my week...

i would say this move was more painful, stressful, and exhausting than that 40-hour labor i was once in.  seriously.  

we were planning on closing on our house on november 13.  and i was going to spend a little bit of time each day for two weeks packing and cleaning.  then the buyers wanted to bump up closing--the dad is in the navy and he got orders for a month-long training and he wanted to help move his family in before leaving.  i was more than happy to close earlier--if we closed early enough we wouldn't have to pay mortgage for november.  so i told our realtor that was great!--let's go ahead and close before november!  it wasn't until i hung up the phone (on wednesday) that i realized november was a mere two (2) days away.  so...tear the band-aid off in one big swipe, right?!  i spent all thursday and friday packing.  there was the short-term 6-month packing going on, as well as the long-term-stay-in-the-storage-unit-until-we-came-to-pick-it-up-at-some-unnamed-future-date.  i closed my eyes and saw boxes.  my finger tips were numb. 

saturday we spent moving around the corner to an apartment, and the storage unit.  the boys spent the day at heather's house playing with her girls and a babysitter for part of the day, while heather helped us, then she watched the boys the rest of the day.  it was a long day for all of us.  heather then fed us dinner and sent us on our way to our box-filled apartment.  we at least had the boy's beds set up so they could crash when we got there, but the rest of the place was a maze of boxes.  after we got the boys situated and david crashed by their beds, i went back to the house with a handful of friends to finish cleaning our house before the power went off.  you know you have really, really good friends when they gladly come help you scrub cupboards, floors, and shelves all the while joking about being ninja cleaners if the power were to suddenly switch off.  

the next day, sunday, we opted to keep the boys home because church clothes were buried in a box in some unknown location.  i had already committed to singing a song in relief society (before i knew about the speedy-move), so i spent about 30 minutes trying to find things that would turn me into a decent-looking woman, actually took a shower(!), and went to church for just the relief society hour.  then we spent the rest of the day finishing up one last storage unit trip, the final mopping back at the house, and checking things over one last time.  thank heavens for more good friends, denise and kent, swooping in and having us over for dinner, and letting us leave our boys there while david and kent finished the heavy stuff and i finished the cleaning and mopping.  as i was wheeling down our trashcan i went over to our neighbors, the gonzalez's, to let them know they didn't need to be nice on monday and bring our trashcans back up, as they always do for us (it's rare when i get out there before them to return the favor!).  we talked for a long time, getting teary-eyed and laughing about when they first moved in and pace was afraid of pedro and ran screaming if he even saw pedro.  they are excellent neighbors and friends.

max had fallen asleep on denise's floor when i went to pick up the boys, so bedtime was a snap.  david and i then spent sunday night putting our bed frame together so we could sleep in a real bed.  i had just laid down and my muscles were starting to relax and melt into sleepiness when pace started crying.  so i went into calm down his night terror (this kid has been having these night terrors lately--he is literally terrified of something, gasping for breath and eyes wide open in terror--and he remembers nothing of it in the morning), then crawled back into bed.  then an hour later max woke up crying.  he had thrown up.  what i was hoping would be a one-time thing turned into an all-night-on-the-hour-every-hour-stomach-bug.  i at least knew where paper bowls were in our box disaster zone to help us all out...sunday night was simply added to the two previous sleepless nights.  max's stomach decided it had had enough by monday afternoon (david thankfully got the day off work to let me sleep a little bit--and we closed monday afternoon, so it was great he was home for that, too, to sign the papers), and we tried to get some things put away.  (oh, also--just when you think things couldn't get worse...our bed frame broke.  the one thing we had going for us.  good thing glue and new screws did the trick...)  and then on tuesday, max's low-grade fever spiked to 105.1.  yup.  first time i'd seen that on the thermometer.  no other symptoms, just the fever.  so we made a dr's visit to make sure he would survive the night.  his fever broke the next day, although he was a couch potato and sleeping for most of it.

have i taken a breath yet?  i think that's it.  after 5 days straight of the boys eating pb and honey sandwiches 3x a day, sleeping hodgepodge, having maybe 2 showers between the 4 of us, eating out for all the other meals...we're finally on the other end, all the boxes unpacked and put away--yes, everything put away--and i even have my fall decorations out!  there are even two boys in the apartment just below us, and the four boys are having a BLAST together.  

i don't know HOW IN THE WORLD this would have happened without the help of our awesome friends--heather and brian, kent and denise, danene, jade, chris, justin, milt, trevor, pedro--we really felt so fortunate to have such willing hands and such good friends we could rely on.  we feel so lucky and blessed we are still living in our same neighborhood, that the boys can still participate in all our same activities and schools within walking distance, heather and i can still run and kickbox with jillian michaels (because mama's sanity is very key in this whole operation...), and david can still bike-commute to work.  

i can't believe we're going to do this again in 6 months.  but that'll be it.  the final one.  that's the plan, anyway...