Sunny-Side Up: Moving Out...

The movers came on a Friday...

They loaded up the trucks and unloaded all of our things into a storage shed...

But only for two weeks!

The kids and I "manned" the moving out process that Friday and enjoyed a fun night at the house once Daddy got home... our house was empty!!

We camped out on blow-up mattresses on the floors of our respective rooms that evening... for the kids it was the last night in their rooms.

The next morning they packed up and headed to Waco to spend the rest of the weekend and part of the next week with their Nana and Bop!

Meanwhile, back at the ranch I was rounded up all the extras... that annoying stuff that seems to multiply every hour you spend cleaning it up. And when Justin got back home from dropping the kids off, he helped...

We took numerous trips to the dump and Goodwill and threw an occasional trip to the storage shed in between all of the trash and treasure fun. Saturday night we took advantage of another kid free night and headed out to eat at one of our favs.

I took a pic... because well, it seemed like the right thing to do.

Kaki and Caden were LIVING it up in Waco, as per usual. Can you guess where Kaki is???

That's right... visiting the Chuckster and his cheese. And this is why God made grandparents! :)

Did I mention they also got to go to the Baylor Basketball game before that???

Aquariums... Baylor... Pizza and Games... trips to Walmart... Those are two pretty awesome sets of grandparents!!

I snapped a pic of my handsome hubs at dinner... he was thrilled... so then I said, SMILE... and I got this... Nailed it.

We sat on the patio and enjoyed a nice, relaxing and YUMMY dinner. Then we headed back to our favorite air mattress and our empty home. It would now be our last night in our room in our home. Tear.

The next morning we had big plans of going to church, lunch, etc. But my ever-the-wiser husband woke up at 4:30 panicked at the work still before us and then he checked the forecast and really hit the fan, so it goes without saying that I too was up and at 'em early that morning to get started on our day. I think we visited the dump three times before we even had our coffee! We had a winter storm headed our way so we had to get busy... in the midst of the cold rain that started falling that morning.

And we started moving things... out...

That is me... surrounded by stuff... the "extras" attach!

Thankfully, by the time lunch rolled around we were pretty close to finished so we lounged around the house, took our last showers and packed the last few things. We locked up and said goodbye to our home. I wasn't expecting to be emotional, I'm not sure why because I am ALWAYS emotional... it's a trademark of sorts. BUT, I really never got sad until that moment, when I knew it would be my last. It wasn't so much the house that I was mourning the loss of, but the memories that we shared there. Not that anyone can take those from me, but that house represents 18 months of life that I treasure and it all just seemed kind of heavy.

So I cried my tears, called my mom and pressed on.

Justin and I went to grab some dinner just before headed to our friends' home who graciously offered to host us for the night when the ice started to fall. The weather seemed to get worse and worse, so we literally walked out of the restaurant before we were ever served and picked up pizzas and headed to our friend's to take shelter. Cue the second round of tears. After listening to the radio and the reports, it made it seem as though I might not even get to see my kids the next day. I was supposed to pick them up Monday afternoon... what if I was iced in?

I was sad and I missed my kids... and the threat of ice keeping me from the one thing I felt like would cure my sad self was just ticking me off!

BUT... it wasn't the ice that kept me from them that next day.

But my car.

My battery died.

The cold air had zapped it.

But road side assistance assisted and I was on my way just a few hours later than I had originally anticipated.

I picked up the kids from Waco...

Said farewell to sweet Nana who all but completely spoiled Caden and Kaki throughout the weekend and we headed to Belton where we would meet up with Justin for the night.

Justin's grandparents just so happened to be on a two week cruise during our homelessness and offered to let Justin stay there instead of in a hotel for that first week. His commute was easy and it gave us all a place to crash for the night before we hit the road for our week of Whitters fun in Nacogdoches.

But then the car...

It did it again...

Nice.

So we got a jump and spent the rest of the day in Belton getting a new battery, an oil change and the like. So we got to spend an extra day in Belton and another night with Justin, so it really did work out for the best. Plus we got to relax... we were all pretty tired...