Moving Makes Me Mental

I've realized a lot in the last seven weeks, mainly that I'm not nearly as detached from worldly possessions as I would have thought I was. Turns out, I want my stuff! Or at least my bed. I've been in an abusive relationship with an air mattress for almost a month now and I think it's time to break things off.
Some trials become so tedious and heavy that you start to wish for a change of hardship just for something different, I call this request a trial transfer. A good example would be pregnancy. By the end you are saying, "Please get this baby out of me!" Even though you know that just rings in the new trial of Zombie Motherhood where you function without sleep, with sore everything, while serving tiny minions at all hours, day or night.
Moving internationally is a lot like that.
I'm so ready for a trial transfer from this empty house where a 4 year old Ander is, not figuratively, but literally climbing the walls. I'm so ready I may weep tears of joy when the moving van pulls up this morning. Sure, it heralds in untold piles of boxes and innocent movers endlessly asking "Where should this go?" until my ears bleed and my head answers, "I DON'T KNOW!" But my mouth is forced to give a civilized and decisive answer. There will be lot's of "Why did we keep this?" and even a few regretful, "Why didn't we keep that?!" And at the end of the day the movers will drive off into the sunset leaving me with piles of "things". And by then I may start to feel repulsed by all of our "stuff" and "things" closing in on me. I will probably think to myself, if I was asked to walk away from my worldly possessions right now, it would be the easiest decision ever.
That, good people, is the insanity of moving. I've wondered why few of my friends have talked specifically about how difficult it was for them to move. Then I thought, maybe they just have more self control than I and don't talk about it publicly. But I think the answer has more to do with how the very instant it's over, you lock those memories behind a very sturdy door and throw away the key.
So today, I'm just hoping I find that key in my shipment.
And my bed...
I really miss my bed.

Nomads

Nomads, wanderers, gypsies, aaand Jensens. Over the last month or so we have felt akin to those in the world who roam and move often from place to place.
After our our delayed flight in Japan gave us the "opportunity" to spend the night and day there, we finally made our way to Houston. Our dear friends the Furni offered to watch our jet lagged kids while we house hunted in Dallas, because they love us. We took Ander with us because, well, we love them.

We lost a day house hunting but over the next few days we were able to find a lovely house not even a block away from the elementary school(!). Next on the list was to gather our chicks up so we headed to Houston and then we were able to spend a day with our friends back in Dallas.
The next couple of days were spent running errands...

(photo creds go to Kennedy)

...And car hunting... with 5 kids in tow. On a separate but related topic, I was struck with an idea of how we could really punish the non-violent criminals in our nation.
Not wanting our children to spend hours (I'm talking double digits) on the iPad we let them work on their "problem solving skills" and "interpersonal skills" for large chunks of time while Nathan and I left the car to wander a car lot. Those were long days for everyone. Eventually we found what we needed, and it was in the nick of time before we had to pack up and go to Boise for our first Christmas there in about 6 years.
In case you're wondering what it looks like to live in a small space and then try and do the laundry/organize/pack all in the same small place? Umm, something like this:

(I'd like to title this picture "Erin's personal hell")

But the next day when our 2 short little flights had us to Boise by early afternoon, we were all in awe of how slick the travel was. Glorious! Punctual! Short! 

We arrived in frigid Boise (about 26 F/ -5 C.) and all of my kids were ecstatic to see snow, even if it was the dirty weeks old mounds left about. Ander had a cruel shock when he excitedly shoved his hands into snow for the first time and got two big fist fulls. It took about 3 seconds before he was crying in pain from the cold. Ouch! And there were other signs that they were novices, like when I found Kohen warming his hands in the exhaust of the rental car. We had some teaching to do!

Nathan's sister Tara met us at their parent's house with head to toe snow clothes for all 5 of the kids that she had gathered for us (she is my hero!). We were teaching the kids how to put on the clothes so they'd know the best tricks, when it suddenly started SNOWING. We couldn't believe it. 

It was a Christmas miracle! It was like heaven sent that snow just for my kiddos. What a great memory. It was the perfect way to start off our Christmas vacation.