Two Steps Forward...

Well, we're in. In our new house. Us and 8 extra people. My bestfrister, Jennie, is here from Texas with her 6 kids and husband. The trip was planned long before we decided to move so we only had 2 days to get as settled as possible before the Central Hordes of Asia descended upon us. (I mean that in the nicest way, of course, Jennie.)

We have furniture set up in most rooms. Ok half.

Our kitchen is unpacked. Minus all the food. Minor detail.

The new dining room table has been purchased, put together, and set in place. The chairs, however, have not. (Thanks a lot for being out of stock, Stupid Swedish Discount Furniture Store Starting with I and ending with kea. I would hate you if your chairs weren't so cute and so cheap.) So we're using the old dining room chairs for now. All four of them. For all 12 of us. We eat in shifts. Once the 4th breakfast shift finishes up, we wipe down the table and begin seating for the 1st lunch shift.

We have most of our clothes unpacked although Big Daddy and I have recently discovered the downside of previously having had built-ins in our closet: Now we have no dresser! So we have our socks and underwear and belts neatly folded on shelves in the closet. It's kind of hard to fold bras to look nice sitting on a shelf. No matter which way you twist and turn and tuck them, they look wrong. It's like solving a Rubik's Cube pretty much.

The most important room, the family room, is far from set up. We are short several sets of furniture including couches for the family room. We put our one giant sectional in the playroom/home theater downstairs. It was too wide for our family room. So now we have no family room furniture. But sitting on bar stools and an ottoman and the old dining room table with no chairs is kind of like having a picnic in your front room. Sort of. Not really.

Our patio chairs are all set up. The patio table, however, is still at our old house. So we sit around the patio in the evening on chairs in a big circle with no table in the middle and it feels so much like we're at a group therapy session that if we're not careful a few family secrets could slip out. But who knows. Maybe it'll be cathartic.

I haven't figured out yet where the hose spigots are. I have figured out, however, that tropical plants don't do so well in high dessert sunlight and no water.

I have also figured out that cats don't adjust well to moving. We've tried to keep Flossie sequestered in the laundry room, but 8 children always want to pet her, so the door gets opened and then she runs under our bed and then the kids offer her salami to coax her out, not knowing that cats hate salami (DUH), so the salami gets left under the bed, causing various husbands to accuse the cat of peeing under the bed and threatening to return her to the cat pound. (Does anyone know what product best removes the smell of salami from the under side of your boxspring?)

Well, that's where we stand. With some rooms set up, some rooms not set up, lots of boxes still unopened, the kitchen clock being in one of them so I never know what time it is unless I walk right up to the oven and peer at it with squinted eyes to see the dim digital read-out, lots of extra kids to keep my kids occupied, lots of fun activities planned to keep the kids entertained and me from finding the kitchen clock.

Ya, that sums it up. Be back soon, when peace and quiet and the kitchen clock have been restored.