Sunday, April 25

Make a new plan, Stan

Yes, I've been singing this song all day now. I like Paul Simon though, so it's okay!

Poseidon and I spent Saturday morning crunching numbers and deciding which was the best way to move a family of four across the country. After two hours of writing, adding, subtracting and bouncing ideas around, we made the decision to fly everyone out instead of the cross-country drive we were hoping to make. We will still make that drive, but are now saving it for a future visit back home in a year or two.

So, here's our new plan for leading up to The Big Move:
This weekend, we've listed things on Ebay that were going to be sold anyway.
May 2-8: ship everything sold there, list other things on Craigslist.
May 8-9: Mother's Day weekend - for the last two years, I have had Mom and my mother-in-law over for a "tea party" the day before the holiday; this year I may still be able to do that, and I also want to invite a wonderful lady who used to work with Poseidon (she retired in January) and our landlady (if she isn't busy with her daughter).
May 14: be totally finished with Ebay and Craigslist selling and shipping.
May 15: yard sale! (Let me know if you need our address! LOL) We're selling off almost everything, as we've mostly decided what we actually *are* moving out to Portland with us.
May 18: the kids are out of school for primary elections, so we might just set any yard sale "leftovers" out and try to get all of it sold.
May 22-31: we are hoping to box up most of our non-essentials, and store them at Mom's house for a while. (Things like winter clothes and heavy blankets, stuff we won't need for a few months.) Dad said he'd ship these out to us once we've found a place to live out there.
May 31: our last day in this house! We'll turn in the keys and hug all our neighbors who will be missed!
June 1-3: the kids' last 3 days of school. Still working on the actual plan for getting them back and forth for these days, but it *is* only 3 days.

After school on the 3rd, we'll all head over to my in-laws' place and camp out there for a week; we hope to use this week for some visiting and goodbyes with friends too. June 10th we'll head north and spend a week with my parents, during which time we'll sell the car and have visiting with all the folks up there. We're tentatively scheduling ourselves to fly out on June 17th. That's just the date we used to get estimates in figuring out just how to get moved; however we do still hope to be in Portland by July 1st. Everything leading up to the end of the school year is pretty well set now, and as it gets closer we'll finalize the details for June. I will still keep this updated as originally planned!

Now, we have much to do and little time left in which to do it all! Have a great week everyone =)
Enjoy some music from my library:


Love and blessings,
Amphitrite

Friday, April 9

We've been kinda busy

In just a few weeks we'll be packing up to move! Lots of things that have to be done around here in the meantime. So here's a quick little update on things, and a rough timeline of when it's all going to happen...

Just want to mention my father-in-law Ty (that's going to be his blog nickname now!). About 6 weeks ago, he was rushed to the ICU and no one knew what was going on - or if he would even survive this ordeal. Incredibly scary time for the first week, for all of us, but especially my mother- and sisters-in-law. Thanks to modern medicine and some seriously skilled medical staff, and his own good health, Ty recovered with no lasting effects! He's back to the Ty we know and love =D

The kids were on Spring Break recently and we spent the week at home. We did have plans to go to a few places, but my back started hurting - for the first time in my life - and I spent most of my time laying on the hardwood floor in the living room. I haven't been seen by a doctor, but I'm guessing it had something to do with my sciatic nerve (not something I've ever dealt with, my guess is based on a Google image search - I could see that yes, that's where the pain is); all the pain is on my right side. No fun. Now even a week later I'm still in a little pain, but it is much better and I can move around all by myself now! Thankfully Poseidon was home too and he is a *wonderful* Mr. Mom.

Last week was the first anniversary of my friend Timmy's passing. Not a nice anniversary to remember, but it was good to be reminded and to think about him for a while, and to send out love and comforting thoughts to his family. The gang got together up north to have a little party for him - he is very much loved and missed.

A few days ago the weather finally warmed up enough for me to swap out the seasons in our closets. I asked Poseidon to get the boxes out of the attic for me, and when I was able to stand (or sit sometimes) with little pain, I worked on moving batches of clothes around. The kids helped with theirs and I did our closets. Blankets and outerwear are the last things to be put up, and I'll have him do that. In the meantime, our living room is a bit of a mess because it has taken me almost a week to get everything sorted and picked through - there are many things that each kid has outgrown, so we have "yard sale", "ebay" and "craigslist" piles and boxes laying around too. That is the only downside to storing off-season clothing... the weeklong mess that inevitably ensues!

Yesterday I had my Spring conference with Miss Hurricane's teacher. There was a singing performance a couple weeks ago, and I have a picture of them together which will be up soon (I'll come back and edit it in). The kids were awesome, and I got some good videos too. Due to school district rules I will *not* be posting the videos online, but we can put it on a disk to be viewed on a DVD player =)
Anyway, the conference went well, as expected. This child is very intelligent (like her father) but can space out at times, and socialize too much (like her mother). She's a good mix of us LOL! Mrs. B. said Miss Hurricane would be well on her way to a creative arts school here in town if we were staying, and told me to let her know if the Portland schools need or want recommendation for the same once we move.
Mrs. B. also works with a lady who attends church with my in-laws, and knew about the last month. She was so happy to hear that he has fully recovered =) All in all it was a good conference. Miss Hurricane scored pretty high on the state-issued tests so far this year and will be moving on to 2nd grade. A very creative child she is, and we have some of her work to scan and I'll post those here as well.

For the move itself, we're going to look into a few options and see how we can save the most money in the process. We went out today, and on the way home ended up behind an RV - with a website on the back. That's an option we hadn't thought of, and we have it bookmarked to get more information about that. Luckily we won't be taking much - we wanted to get rid of our couch and the kids' bunk bed anyway, so those won't be coming with us. And being renters, we don't have large appliances to haul along! So now we're getting things ready to sell and going as minimalist as we can. We want to have everything (not couch or beds yet) sold by mid-May to give ourselves two weeks to pack the rest. Here's the loose timeline:

May 15 or 22 - yard sale. I'm going to talk to our neighbours and see if anyone else wants to set things out for a street-long sale day.
June 1st - have all furniture gone that wasn't sold and we aren't taking with us.
June 2nd - last grocery trip and making sure the house is all packed (minus two days necessitites).
June 3rd - kids' last day of school.
June 4th (morning) - turn in keys to landlady and say our goodbyes to neighbours and friends here.
June 4th (afternoon) - we'll head over to his parent's place and stay for a week or so - likely camping the yard or the awesome treehouse :D But we figure this will give everyone who wants to see us a chance to visit a little while we're still in town.
June 10/11 or thereabouts we will leave to stay a week or so with my parents. My family is bigger (*tons* of aunts/uncles/cousins) and there are more relatives involved, so that week will probably be very busy and nonstop with people coming and going. Glad Mom has a huge yard!
June 17/18 or so we'll leave Mom's and head to his brother's house in Detroit. Depending on how well they like us (LOL) we may stay only a few days... ;)

We will head west from Detroit and we *will* be blogging along the way! Even if it's only a quick post, we are absolutely going to post something daily once we leave Detroit. Be sure to bookmark this page, and if you use Twitter I'll post links there too (that address will come soon). I know some of my friends homeschool, and I'll keep that in mind for pics and links if we visit historical places - I may even take requests!

We're still obviously in the early stages of planning this trip, but we (kids included) do want to see as much as we can without wearing ourselves out too much, or spending too much money along the way. We're thinking we may try to camp a few times if we can find a free/really cheap campground! We are also going to let the kids handle picture-taking while we drive. One of us adults will take pics when we stop somewhere, you'll probably easily pick out who took which quickly... LOL. So far we have only Mount Rushmore on the list, but I have a list with a map and I'm looking for at least one place per state - allowing 2 for Montana because, well, it's a big state.

We are hoping to be in Portland by July 1st but will be taking our time enough to ensure we *get* there. The schools there start right after Labor Day, so we'll have a couple of months to settle and figure everything out while helping the kids do the same. Unfortunately, I will miss one cousin in all this. He's still in Iraq and will have a 2wk R&R in mid-June, but I do want to be there with his wife to welcome him home when this tour is up! They will be the only family nearby.... and they're a few hours' drive away. The flip side to this is I already have some friends in the city there - fellow mothers - so we aren't totally throwing ourselves to the wolves. =)

In the time I've sat here to write, my back has started hurting again, so I'm going to stake out a good place on the floor. We may go out hiking this weekend, and I hope you have a great weekend too!

Blessings,
Amphitrite