Maybe Moving Day 3, 4, & 5

Well, day three and four were so crazy with normal life that I didn't get hardly anything 'moving-wise' done.  I think the only thing I actually accomplished was cleaning the rest of the blind in the laundry room.  On those two days, I had three visiting teaching appointments, back to school night, a meeting with a teacher, a primary visit that fell through, dinner guests that fell through (so grateful for both of those cancellations!)...anyway, you get the idea.  I was busy.

Day 5 was a little different.  We had the moving guy come out and give us a quote for packing up our house.  Actually, we asked for two quotes, one with them doing the packing and one with us doing the packing.  Wanna take a guess as to the price??

I'll give you a minute to figure it out.

Done yet?

I made a hazard guess and so did my husband and my son.  The frustrating thing was that we all chose the same number at different points in time and we all thought it was totally ridiculous!!  But it was accurate, which was totally scary.  OK here are the numbers:

Ya!  Over $10,000.00, for them to do the packing and only just over $7,500 for us to do it.  And you know that would be low because you know they do not have an accurate weight of all of that stuff!  Drew said we could hire a few guys from the YSA branch and pay them $500.00 a piece and probably do it cheaper.  So totally nutso!!  I am still just a little envious of those who can afford to do that or have their company do it for them.  Whatever.  That has never been, and I guess will never be, our lot.

But we also had some break-through in that because the moving guy was coming and I home school Sun, I didn't want to freak her out.  So I prayed about it and had the thought that I should just tell her why he was here.  Just before he arrived, I pulled her aside and told her that her father had applied for another job far away, that we were considering moving, but a lot of things had to happen before it was something that would happen.  I also asked her not to talk to anyone else about it because I hadn't told any of the other children.  But that I would probably tell Shorty soon, because I thought he would have the most difficult time with the process.

Slim was good enough to share with me some of the struggles he had when we made the move from Utah to California.  He told me that for him the move was too fast.  He didn't have enough time to process what was happening before it happened and that is why he pretended to be sick the first week of school.  He needed more time.  All of that is emotionally valid and I have even thought that if we make this move, I may just home school everyone until Christmas so they have some time to adjust to a new house, new neighborhood, new ward, etc...  Moving is hard emotionally on people, even little people and we need to think about them too.

(I decided to put in some of the same photos from a post I published on the day I wrote this.  See if you can find it.)

So later that afternoon, while Smilely was at piano and before Speedy was home, Sun asked if I was going to tell Shorty.  I thought I should, so I did.  He didn't take it so well.  He spent the evening talking with Slim and processing stuff.  I went to a RS activity.  By the time I was finished, Slim and Shorty were at the building with a list of Shorty's concerns about the move and how it would affect him.  After the activity, we spent 1/2 an hour at the building, talking quietly about those things.  He was much better and seems to be happy today so we will see how things go from here.  I was clear with him too that the reason I didn't want to say anything to him was because, at this point, we do not know if we are going.  So stressing and crying about it is wasted emotional energy.  I asked him if I shouldn't have told him yet, or if he is glad for the time.  He said he would want to know and he was glad that I told him.  Sun and Shorty spent the rest of the evening playing ping-pong in the garage by themselves so they could talk about their feelings.

So much emotional drama.  Luckily we are going to process it one person at a time. :-)