Tips for moving with kids

I'm very happy to report that THE GREAT MOVE OF 2013 is almost entirely finished. I think we almost died a few times, but thankfully God had mercy on us and we survived. Mostly. I wish I could say with any sort of seriousness that we are never. moving. again. Alas, we'll be doing this all over again in a year or two. This is definitely a lesson in keeping tomorrow's worries for tomorrow because the thought of doing this all again makes me break out in hives. For real.

In any case, since we did just survive a move with kids, and one that had us packing up after having lived in the same home for nearly a decade, I have a few tips to share for those of you foolish enough faced with moving. I figure most people think of the basics - things like, start organizing and cleaning out closets early, check for used moving boxes on Craigslist, and so forth. So I thought I'd share some slightly less common tips for moving, especially if you have children.

1. Put a sign up somewhere prominent that says, in very large, clear letters, "IF YOU DON'T KNOW WHERE IT IS, IT IS PACKED." Below that, in smaller lettering, you might include, "Why? Because we are moving." Then you can direct every question about where some particular item is to the sign, saving you at least some wear and tear on your vocal chords. Somehow, despite the fact that your house is full of moving boxes, half the furniture is cleared out, and you've read every picture book ever written about moving to your kids, they will still ask, at least 800 times a day, if you know where to find their blue truck or white teddy bear or Lego instructions to make the Hobbit Warg Attack set. Instead of allowing yourself to become exasperated with answering the same question multiple times a day, simply point to the sign. And if you have children who don't read yet, you can accomplish the same thing with some cute clip art pictures. I'm filing this one under "do this next time," because I didn't think of it until it was too late, and found myself rather frustrated with the results.

2. Bring your sign to the new house and post it prominently (and perhaps make two) because questions about where particular items are will undoubtedly begin 10 seconds after you walk in the door, even while people are still hauling boxes and furniture into your new house, the whole place is in chaos and nothing is even remotely close to being put away.

3. This one might sound crazy, but if you have a day of work to be done (such as, cleaning your old house from top to bottom) and your kids are going to be with you, a new Lego set can buy you a few hours uninterrupted work time. Yes, I realize giving your kids something with 8 billion little parts during a time you are trying to pack and move and clean sounds crazy. But, at least for my kids, a new Lego set means hours (not minutes, as with so many toys) of occupied time. There is the initial build time, and then lots of time playing with it afterwards. If the thought of breaking out a new Lego set during a move makes you question my sanity, the principle applies to a lot of toys - the novelty of something new and interesting can give you some much needed packing/working/cleaning time.

4. When you can, enlist the kids' help. My kids did great with things like spraying weeds in the patio cracks with homemade weed killer (vinegar, salt and dish soap, thankyouverymuch Pinterest), and wiping walls with those magic erasers. Seriously, magic erasers are not only magic because they work pretty well in getting walls clean, but magic because the kids think they are super fun to use. You can go behind them and clean up the streaky parts later.

5. Ella had a lot of concerns about what we'd be taking to the new house. It was helpful, and reassuring, to walk around and point out the things we were bringing with us. It was a little bit tedious, as she needed to point out every last small thing she could find and ask, "Are we taking THIS to the new house?" But indulging a little child's curiosity and helping ease her anxiety was time well spent. Yes, we are taking the pink kitty. No, we aren't taking the closet door. Yes, we are taking the box of baby doll clothes. No, we aren't taking the toilet.

6. Plan ahead for things like where you'll sleep and what clothes you'll wear, during the big moving days. We used Door to Door Moving and Storage, so they put moving pods in our driveway, we filled them, they picked them up and dropped them off at our new house. That whole process definitely does not happen in a day, so we had to be without our stuff for a couple of days. We had to make sure we thought ahead and kept out things like sleeping bags, air mattresses and overnight bags with a couple days' changes of clothes. Otherwise, we would have found ourselves with nowhere to sleep and nothing clean to wear - not a happy prospect when you're no longer a carefree couple with no one to worry about but yourself (ahem... like last time we moved).

7. Lower your standards for a while. My kids have watched an enormous amount of TV and played more levels of Candy Crush and Angry Birds than I want to admit, even to myself. But we have been in survival mode for the last couple of weeks and sometimes the magical screen of flashing light needs to babysit the kids so you can get things done. I don't usually want to rely on massive amounts of screen time, but in the short term, you kind of do what you gotta do and let go of the guilt. It won't last forever and I don't think their brains will melt.

8. Finally, don't forget to pack your sense of humor and ability to breathe deeply. Or should I say, don't pack them so they are easily accessible and not buried in a box in the garage. The past couple of weeks were seriously busy and hectic and stressful and above all, exhausting. We had days on end of packing, loading, moving, cleaning, and then doing it all over again. It was a huge amount of work, but letting myself get snippy with the kids and slipping into "grumpy Mom" certainly wasn't going to help.

And when all else fails, go out for ice cream.

Hard to say goodbye

There are so many reasons I don't want to say goodbye to this home and community. Today was a big one.

Our lovely homeschool group hosted a picnic for us. As I looked over the RSVP list last night, it hit me how many great friends we have all made since we started out with this group two years ago. My kids have made such good friends, and I have too! Over the last several months I have thought more than once that I need to quit meeting so many great people I want to hang out with - it is making it too hard to leave!

We had a great day at the park. My sweet friend Liberty put it together, and even brought stuff for root beer floats for everyone. So fun! The kids ran around together and had such a good time.

Totally stole this picture from Liberty, who posted it on Facebook.

Although we are only moving about an hour and a half away, it is far enough that we'll be out of the regular gatherings and meetups of our group. We won't be going to our nature club every other week or seeing friends at park days or museum trips or the zoo. We aren't moving so far that it would be impossible to see them again, but far enough that it won't be a regular thing anymore. And that's hard.

David and Grayson with their good friend, Holly.

People have told me that it is great that I'm homeschooling during this move because my kids don't have to change schools. That is true, but this means we're starting from scratch in terms of a homeschooling support system, community and friends. With school, you hope they will make friends with kids in their class, even if it is hard at first to be the new kid. With homeschooling, you don't have that ready-made way of finding other kids to hang out with. You have to work harder to create that social network.

My homeschool group has shown me that the work is well worth it.

Climbing "the hill" is always a favorite at this park.

This group of people have been so fun and supportive and accepting of each other.They've been so welcoming and I will always treasure the friendships I have made. My kids are going to miss their homeschool friends so much.

And that's the crux of it, right there - what makes this so hard. I will still get to keep up with my homeschool mom friends online. We're all on Facebook and they can read this here blog and we can stay connected, even if we go months without seeing each other. My kids? They will be far more disconnected from their friends. My kids aren't on Facebook and they don't have their own phones - and neither do their homeschool friends. They will only see their homeschool friends when we, the parents, make the effort to get together. And I hope that will happen once in a while - but I also know life gets busy and it probably won't happen nearly as often as we'd all like.

Playing in the water is fun!

Whatever the future holds for us, I'm grateful for the wonderful group of families that added fun, excitement and friendship to our last couple of years. And thankful for the Internet, so they can't get away completely!

The weight of all this stuff

It is only a couple weeks until our moving day, and I am knee deep the process of sorting, organizing cleaning out and packing... everything.

We've been here for over 8 years, and it is rather astonishing how much junk one family can amass in that time. It almost makes me feel a little ashamed. There is so much waste around me; things that sat useless for years, taking up space and weighing us down. We've already taken two loads of donations to our local St. Vincent de Paul store, and there is likely to be more. And don't even get me started on how much stuff we are simply throwing away. It makes my skin crawl, to think those bags of trash were strewn about my house. Granted, we're not talking fly infested, rotting food garbage. It is more like old, broken things that aren't worth donating. But still. How could we have produced this much stuff?

I feel the weight of these possessions, and have for quite some time. Knowing that a move was on the horizon brought the enormity of what we own into stark relief. I walk into any room in the house these days, and find myself making mental notes. "Do I want to move that?" Often the answer is no, and I'm hauling things into the garage left and right.

But how did we get so much? Why is it here? We're not huge shoppers (except for maybe Legos... and books, but books don't count). Some things are items we've had for years and no longer need, but perhaps were useful once. Others are things given to us that we can live without, or things we thought we wanted that have fallen into disuse; clothes that don't fit quite right, extra sets of sheets for a bed we no longer have, many things that seemed like we might want to have "someday" so we kept them around. It is easy to do that when you have space, and aren't moving.

The truth is, at least in part, that I'm kind of lazy and tend towards procrastination. I tuck things away to deal with "later." But later didn't come until we decided we needed to move, and now later is most certainly here. And I have eight years of junk to sift through.

I'd love to say that, going forward, I will be more mindful of what we bring into our house; that I'll be willing to part with things we don't need and bless others with them. I don't know how true that is, in reality. It is a lesson in letting go, of the things that weigh us down, and I'm glad we've been forced to go through this process. In the future I need to think about the usefulness of the things we buy and bring home. Maybe we can begin to live a little more simply and not let the urge to buy and store and amass so many things overtake us.

We shall see.

In the meantime, the process continues. I'll keep tackling rooms, cupboards, closets and shelves and weed out what we don't need. Hopefully as we unpack in the new house, I won't be left wishing I would have downsized more.

Except for books. They still don't count.



The end of an era

Nine years ago, David was commuting an hour to work each day, I was pregnant with our first baby, and we had officially decided I would not be returning to work after the baby was born. Despite how much we loved our little house, and our location, it made sense for us to move to be closer to David's job. We wound up fulfilling a long-held dream, building a brand new home right next door to our best friends, just minutes from David's office.

Standing on the site of our future home.

This wasn't a location we would have chosen without the added factor of his job being here, and it took the first few years of living here to feel like this community was "home." But over the last 8+ years, we have built a support system, a community of friends and loved ones, and put down roots in ways I never expected. We made new friends, came home to our Church, coached sports and invested our time in this community. We have created a support system of friends, a homeschool group, my Crossfit gym, our Church, not to mention our trusted doctors, babysitters and other important people in the life of our family.

We brought our babies home to this house. We walked these hallways at night as they fussed, tucked them in at night in these bedrooms. We watched them grow and play and learn here. This is the only home they have ever known.

The boys with Ella on the day we brought her home.

David and I are no strangers to moving. He moved often as a child, and although I don't have as many moves under my belt, growing up we never lived anywhere longer than four years or so. We've more than doubled that here.

Not to mention, the last time we moved, we had one very young baby (who didn't require much in the way of stuff); and our last house was less than half the size of this one. Two more children, and a mountain of stuff later, this move is going to be something completely different.

Photo by little David. I seriously don't know how they have amassed this much stuff.

When we moved here, we didn't know what to expect. This isn't a city with a lot of IT jobs, so we knew that when David felt it was time to move on to another job, chances are, it was going to mean moving. And when he took his current job a year and a half ago, we knew that was the beginning of the end of our time here.

It isn't going to be easy to leave. We love our home. We love living next to our best friends. There's nothing like knowing you can run next door if you need anything - from the proverbial (or even literal) cup of sugar, to some laundry soap because you just ran out, to help with your children because you have to rush one of them to the ER with a broken arm. Before we lived here, we used to dream out loud with them of how great it would be if we could be neighbors. Then we did it, and it was better than we'd hoped. And now we're moving away.

Sparkler swords with friends at our annual 4th of July extravaganza, in our shared backyard

It is with mixed emotions that we prepare for the next chapter in our lives. We will miss this house, this neighborhood, this place. We will miss the people we've met and the connections we have made. We have to pull ourselves up by the roots and replant ourselves somewhere new. It isn't all bad, not by any stretch. Living within 15 minutes of David's office is going to feel like a miracle, after the last year and a half of commuting an hour and a half (or more). Having Daddy home at dinner time, every single day, will be heavenly. The strain of his drive to work has been hard, and it is hard on me and the kids as well, having him gone for 12-13 hours so often. Plus, we'll be closer to a lot of our family, which will be wonderful as well.

It is the end of an era. An era of our lives that saw our family grow, saw us through changes and challenges. This place has been good to us; we've grown tremendously in our faith, made and nurtured lifelong friendships and been touched by so many incredible people. I will always look back on this time with fondness. There is so much I'm going to miss.

We look ahead with optimism and hope. It will take time to feel at home there; to build up a community around us once again. Moving with children will be different than the days when it was just David and I, but as we keep reminding each other when we're stressed, home is where we are. Being together as a family is the most important consideration, and this move will give us so much more of that. I am seriously giddy at the thought of knowing that as dinner time approaches, I can look forward to the sound of his truck in the driveway and watch the kids race to the living room window to see Daddy come home.

This is what it's all about.