We moved

Well, we did it. We moved out of our house yesterday to my mom's house for a couple weeks until we head out. Luckily she has enough storage space for all our stuff, and man there was a lot of it. We are cluttering up the inside too a bit, but she seems ok with that, as long as it's all here for only a year. Jacob was happy, he made $11, which is equivalent to his monthly allowance. We paid him for helping during the move, packing boxes, carrying them, unpacking, showing the movers where to put things, stuff like that. He was helpful, the other kids (Charlie & Henry) made $0.50 each I think and Elise 0. When we got to my mom's, they watched Cartoon Network (my mom has cable, but we didn't at home) continuously the entire time we were unpacking the truck & boxes. Oblivious.

I was so sad to leave our house of 11 years. We have nothing but happy memories in that house. We had all 4 kids there, planted all those fruit trees, remodeled the house to suit us and had terrific neighbors. We will really miss it I think. Especially when we are on the road crammed in a small hotel room in Asia and when we get back and have to find a new place to live. Ah well.

Now we are tying up some loose ends, still dealing with the house: termite tenting, touch up paint & little handyman things & carpet cleaning. But July 5th is marching closer, whether we have everything in order or not.

So far I have 3 nights accommodations reserved (no money down, just an email) for a 2 bedroom house in Fiji on the beach for $70/night. The hotel is a backpacker "budget" hotel in Lonely Planet, so not super nice but should be adequate for us. I'll post some pictures when we get there. Other than that, I've booked 2 nights in Kyoto in August and right now I'm looking into RV rentals in Perth. I think I may have to start looking at condo rentals in Beijing, just so we know what range there is.

Paul has been flogging the kids to do more of next year's schoolwork. They complain & moan, but it's gotta be done. We're hoping to eke out a month's worth of work out of them in these next 10 days. We'll see.

So Much To Do, So Little Time

This is what I did yesterday. I made breakfast (eggs, sausage & toast) for my kids and took the boys to school before 8am. Elise and I went to Target, then I dropped her at preschool at 8:30am. I picked up Paul’s dry cleaning, dropped it at home, then went and picked up Henry at school at 9am for a dentist appt (he had a cavity) at 9:30am. 10:40am we were at Costco, picking up prescriptions for anti-malarial drugs and antibiotics for the trip. As we were leaving the Costco parking lot, my mom called and needed a ride from the mechanic’s (her car needed a brake job), so I picked up Elise from preschool at 11:10am (20 minutes early), then got my mom by 11:35am and brought her back to my house to have lunch. After a quick lunch, I went through the mail & cleaned up around the house (we were having a showing for potential renters coming at 3pm), then took Elise to swim class at 12:30pm. I swam laps while she was in class. We showered there and by 1:30pm we were at Trader Joe’s for milk and eggs, among other things. 2:15pm I picked up Jacob & Charlie from school. After getting home at 2:35, I took my mom back to the mechanic’s to pick up her car. As soon as I got home at 3:15pm, I scooped up the kids to go to a 3:45pm appt to get the first of our japanese encephalitis vaccines (we need 3 shots). That appt took us 2 hours. When I got home at 6pm, I made us dumplings for dinner and the boys ate, then left with Paul for swim class at 7pm. Ridiculous.

We are close to renting out our house, so that is good. 3 families are interested, so we will pick this week. We will move to my mom’s house in about 3 weeks.