Digging Out and Looking Up

Our long awaited sea shipment arrived yesterday!


We are so happy to have our cozy couches here to flop onto... the ones that were in our apartment looked chic and all, but they were sort of like sitting on bricks. Not quite the cozy factor.


In addition to our couches, several other important pieces of furniture were in the shipment. Dressers! We have been making do with two very shallow (maybe four inches deep!) drawers in the closet of each room... not quite adequate for two people to share. So the dressers' arrival was a good thing.


We had a lot of books arrive in the shipment, which I have been busily arranging on various shelves, in the kids' rooms and in the living room and office. We have More Books Than I Realized. They feel like friends, though, and I am happy to have their company again.


Our bikes are here, and for the time being they are in our round front hall. This is not their permanent home, thankfully. The only trouble is that we're not sure where their permanent home will be. We have a small room, a little larger than a twin bed, behind the laundry room. Hoping that magically all five bikes will fit in there. It's more likely that we will end up locking some of them in the hallway outside the main elevator... we shall see. I am quite anxious to have them out of the main thoroughfare of our home!


Also in the shipment came coats and winter clothes for six... hmmmm. With no coat closet, and no extra storage, I wonder where I will put these? Perhaps the small room behind the laundry room? No, bikes are going there. It is definitely time to get creative!


Various items from our playroom and the kids' rooms also arrived. I was kind of liking the streamlined life we had here, less is more and all that. Well, that is no longer. I truly did get rid of lots of things before we moved, you remember my posts about the fully loaded Yukon going to Goodwill. How did I end up with some of this junk to sort through today? I let you in on a secret I'm not telling the kids... I made a few trips to the large garbage can in the back hallway outside our unit this afternoon. But there are still dress-up shoes, doll clothes, etc. to find homes for... I made great strides in the girls' room today. More to do tomorrow.


All of Madelyn's school things arrived in the shipment, the books I had ordered and received before we moved. I got excited as I organized them this afternoon... there are some wonderful art books in the lot that I am anxious to dig into with her, as well as fun literature.


I forgot what it's like to find new homes for things after a move. This one is easier than our last, because many of our things did not make this move but are safely stored away. But it's not a task that can be completed in an afternoon, like I was thinking yesterday. This morning, faced with the chaos, I was pretty overwhelmed and even discouraged by the job ahead of me. I am learning slowly that my ability to relax and have a good attitude cannot be based on whether or not everything in the house is in order. I think I have made progress out of this faulty self entrapment. But when there's a job looming like the one I saw in every room of my house this morning, it's easy to jump back into that line of thinking. I literally had to drag myself to a place of joy and thankfulness today.


Now the house is dark and the kids are sleeping. It seems peaceful. We left for a while this evening, had a yummy Chinese dinner at a place called "Queen", and did a little grocery shopping. It was good to get away from the stuff, the stuff that doesn't matter anyway.


Gwen used to ask me to sing the "Many Matches" song. It refers to the verse in the Bible that talks about how Jesus is preparing a home for us in heaven (thus, "Many Mansions").


I'm looking forward to that final move... and there won't be any unpacking!