Weekly Update

I don't have any particular pictures just now, but I want to get a few words down while events are still fresh. 

We have been packing, packing, packing.  While Matt is here over the weekends, we have been attacking the house with gusto.  Our goal is to have all the heavy stuff downstairs before he leaves: all dressers, bed frames, and computer desks.  The girls were rather thrilled with the "camping out in your own house" notion.  They were first to move out of their room.  They have all their clothes in little stacks in the loft and their mattresses are laying on the floor nearby stacked with abundant animals.  They left their radio in their now empty room so they can have dance parties in there.  They left their lamp too and instead have 9, (NINE!) flashlights laying between their beds.  We found about 5 when we took apart their beds. 

Isaac's dresser is down too, but he can keep his bed how it is since he doesn't have a real bed frame.  We still have ours to move down next weekend (Thursday or Friday).  It's going to be a beast.  This move is so much more involved than any we have done before.  No doubt because this has been the first time we bought furniture.  In the last 4 years we got a bedroom set for ourselves, a dining room table, kitchen table (both with lots of chairs) and a big couch and two chairs.  Now we are prepping it all to leave in a storage facility for the next 6 months or maybe 6 years.  Who really knows!  Ha, ha, good thing we tried to domesticate ourselves with heavy, spacious things like matching tables and chairs and front loading washing machines.  I know I'll be missing the later as soon as we lose it. 

Other news besides packing?  Well, people keep asking if we have more info on our future timeline.  Here is the latest.
Matt flies to Dubai April 23.  He will be staying there in an L3 shared suite, but working in Abu Dhabi.  We are hoping that I will be able to go visit for a week while he is there and my parents are good enough to play host to the kiddos for a week in late June.  Matt will be there for a 90 day deployment which starts May 1.  (There is a mandatory 1 week overlap.) 

May 19th, our house is scheduled to close.  We have been playing host to home inspectors (thanks for letting me borrow your super tall ladder so I could take all our nutcrackers down.) and appraisers in the midst of boxes and packing paper.  Lots of fun.  Luckily the people buying the house are renting it back to us for a month so we can close out Shakespeare, soccer, football, the technical school year, and a dance recital. 

I don't think I have mentioned that Isaac was cast as Dromio of Ephesus in The Comedy of Errors.   It is one of the BIG parts.  He has had to memorize 126 lines of Shakespeare and has been having a lot of fun blocking the play over the past few weeks.  He has a very physical role--being one of the twin slaves.  He has been rehearing 9 hours a week on top of everything else he has going on.  There are 4 performances: Friday, May 6th at noon and 7pm and Saturday, May 7th at noon and 7pm.  We would love to host anyone who wants to see it!

The girls have had two soccer games now.  (I'll blog about those a little later when I upload the pictures.  And yeah, I know I haven't touched the awesome triathlon yet either. . . .)  Jess is one of the youngest, but has been the only player to never get subbed out.  Coach Jared told us yesterday that he thinks he found his new Evan--referring to an older boy who played defense and was like a wall, nothing got past him.  Jess is a great defender.  No scores against the "black widows" in either game.  Makenna has been playing forward and has had some brillant break aways, but no scores yet.  She has to run and run, I know coach has noticed she is consistently the fastest when they run laps at practice.  They ended their first game 0-0, but won yesterday.  The girls love being on the same team, and so do I!

Back to our schedule.  I am planning on being completely out of the house the week of June 13-18. (Makenna's dance recital is the weekend of 10-11.)  We will drive up to Utah first.  Matt and I were discussing "what next" just a few hours ago, and the latest probability is for me to fly to Colorado with the kids and then for me to go on to Dubai from there.  When I return, I either fly back to Utah or drive a rental one way back to Utah.  Be there for July 4 festivities and then Isaac has scout camp down by Cedar City July 11-16, so I will drive him down to meet up with our ward and then pick him up again Saturday.  Then we go back to Colorado for another visit and spend some time with Jen at the end of the month. 

Matt, for now, has a return ticket to CA in early August, maybe even August 1st.  He will work a day there and then we'll figure out where to meet up and get any last minute things out of storage before we all fly off to Germany together. 

The Germany assignment is for the Germans.  We will not be attached to any American base, so it will be different, but we are looking forward to it all the same.  For now he is on the schedule there till mid December.  Then, he's scheduled for Sicily.  We are not buying plane tickets for anything yet, but that is what we are mentally, and physically (as far as packing) planning for. 

Time for bed.  Good night.