Anticipation

Time. Is. Moving. So. So. So. Slowly.  I feel like a 5 year old waiting for a summer vacation my parents shouldn't have told me about yet.  We have 2 1/2 days before "those people get out of our house" as Hannah says.  Saturday the house will be cleaned (part of the contract) and on Sunday we're having new furniture delivered.  Monday around 8 AM, our container will arrive!  We're so excited and so ready. 

Over Memorial Day weekend, we spent several hours in a furniture store deciding on a bedroom set for Hannah (we got rid of the crib Sarah has been in before we left Belgium and will move Sarah into Hannah's old twin).  We started early in the afternoon on a Friday before Nathan was out of school.  Then I went to pick up Nathan and he joined us.  Literally, we were there for 4 or 5 hours.  It was insane.  Needless to say, over that time period our children observed some things.  One of those was a sudden knowlegde of the movie Doomsday 2012 by our almost 8 year old son. Yesterday when he was going into quite a lot of detail about parts of the movie (I haven't seen it, but Daddy watched it on a plane), we could not figure out where in the world he'd seen it.  In that store where we bought Hannah's bed...was the answer we got.  Along those same lines, Sarah learned the word "Avatar", recognizes the blue people and therefore, the DVD case upon sight.  Yesterday in Target she threw a huge embarrassing fit begging to buy and watch it.  Yes, my 3 year old is already demanding to watch PG-13 movies.  The future scares me.

The best observation came a week or so ago.  We were driving along and Nathan said, "I saw a truck from that store where we bought Hannah's bed over there.  But there's one problem...." (Pause for dramatic effect) "The workers weren't driving it.  I think they were robbers".

He had the immediate attention of his 5-year-old sister, "Oh, you mean because they were wearing those French hats?  Or did they have stripes on their shirts?"

I was completely lost for a minute, but after a quick conference with my husband figured that the truck drivers Nathan saw were dressed somewhat more casually than the salesroom people he saw in the store.  We decided that he assumed that since the truck was from the store with the nicely dressed people, the people he saw driving the truck, must have stolen it.  Hannah's questions refer to her limited knowledge of robbers, we think.  Although they did become all too familiar with theft while we were living in Belgium, they never actually saw the robbers.  In her mind all robbers must look like this:

I'm fairly certain she knows that all policemen don't look like this:

We've read this book for a long time.  I remember once when we were still living in Texas, we were playing at a friend's house.  Nathan was playing store with his little friend, Gracie, when all of sudden I heard my son say something like "I'm a robber!  I'm coming to take all of your money!"  He was somewhere between 2 and 3 years old and I was mortified. 

Anyway, we cleared up the mystery of why the delivery guys dressed differently than the sales people.  At least I hope so....

So we're just hanging out and waiting... 

Wearing sunglasses and yogurt beards.

Hey Mom, Look I'm being Dora!

Getting wet.

Even a little bowling.

Visiting our 2nd grade brother who now only has 2 half days of 2nd grade left.  He shared some things he's been working on:

The first picture is a book that he wrote and illustrated himself about our last trip to Disneyland Paris.  The second is something he wrote about himself:

I am from...

I am from eating dumplings in Hong Kong.

I am from having a small fur ball named Max who is very gentle.

I am from a grandma who gave me a DSi for my birthday.

I am from having a great uncle Eddy who saved my dads life.

I am from having five best friends named Sam, Will, Tyler, Ryan and Rylan.

I am from visiting Texas for my birthday.

I am from two great parents who have raised me.

(sniff, sniff)  This move has been very emotional and difficult.  Knowing that his "5 best friends" live no where near us now is hard.  He's growing up and because he's first, we're not sure what to expect or what to do in every situation (and contrary to that last line in Nathan's writing: we are not done raising him).  He's missing his dad who's work schedule is still very busy-- still traveling part of every week and still home too late for us to eat dinner together.  Hopefully summer will mean later dinners and more time with Daddy.  We're ready.  Hurry up!  Are we there yet?