Volcanocus Overwhelmocus

So really our house does not look like a volcano erupted in it or like a tornado came through here or whatever that saying is, but all this stuff and all of this space is quite overwhelming.  It was so much easier to find things in a three bedroom apartment with one floor and with only about 1/100 of our belongings.  I'm not sure how I ever thought that we had gotten better about purging over the last 3 years...it seems that our stuff might have gotten busy and multiplied on the voyage to the New Country. ;0)
The house is great though.  We've had the keys for a full week now.  Started cleaning last Friday evening, had some help (very little help considering the size of the space to be cleaned) last Saturday and movers came and got us unloaded and unpacked last Monday through Wednesday.  Daddy had a quick trip to Ohio Thursday and Friday. 
We've done a lot in a week, but I have felt a little like a prisoner in our home walking from room to room trying to find everything we own its own "home".  I'm just way too Type A most days.  Rome wasn't built in a day, right?  Not sure why I feel the need to have everything just so, right now.  It is either in my blood or has come from 10 years of moving with a sense of urgency.  MUST UNPACK QUICKLY.  NEVER KNOW WHEN PACKING PROCESS WILL START AGAIN. 
My whole body aches from all of the stair climbing, lifting, cleaning and moving.  This house is my new gym.  My hand was too sore to open the milk this morning.  Seriously.  It took two tries. 
The kids seem to be doing well in spite of the chaos and stress.  It is terribly unrealistic to cram as much as we have crammed into one week with three young children.  They are all at interesting stages in which they can entertain themselves, but the entertainment generally involves making a mess and they are unlikely to clean up that mess without a "reminder" (sometimes a gentle one and sometimes less than gentle) from the mom who gets more and more grumpy and tired as the day goes on.
The older two had four days of Vacation Bible School last week that ended with a taco dinner on Thursday night.  Against my better judgement I took them to the dinner sans papa and it was nearly a disaster.  It is so hard to manage three kids their ages on my own in a situation where there a lines for food, multiple bounce houses and 200-300 people (most of whom I do not know).  We waited in line for 45 minutes for tacos.  I had to have them wait with me because I needed help getting the food and I just wasn't sure I could keep up with the little one while waiting in line.  It just didn't work.  All that considered, there were no major meltdowns (mom or kid).  I tried to keep myself in check.  It was a church sponsored FREE event.  I know how hard it is to put something like that on (on a much smaller scale) and I know that a person who had no part in helping to organize it has no business sitting around and complaining about the organization of the event.  I want to set a good example for the kids.  I made sure they knew that it was just hard in our situation, not because of the dinner itself.
Little Miss started her ballet class last week.  Two mornings a week for the next 6 weeks or so she gets to dress up like a ballerina and dance with Miss Olivia and lots of other little ones.  She was proud that it was just hers.  The class is larger than expected because the early and late class were combined.  A good thing for me since I accidentally scheduled the class at the same time as drop off for the VBS and other summer camps I signed them up for.  Not sure how I planned to manage that.  I'm still new to this activity overload thing and must say I wasn't terribly disappointed when cheer leading camp was canceled--just disappointed for the little girl who was so excited about it. 
I'm overwhelmed by all of it.  The house, the activities, the children (they need me less from moment to moment, but they are getting busier in other senses), the extra children in the neighborhood coming over when I don't really know where everything is yet, and the to-do lists running through my mind.
The real reason I have volcanoes on the brain is because of the e-mail Hannah's teacher in Belgium sent last week. I finally took the time to share the video clip with her on YouTube this morning. I've been meaning to, but just had to get the office in order so we could actually come in here and sit down.
This morning she enjoyed watching her friends in Belgium (dressed in jackets and scarves in June)at the grand opening of their volcano in Belgium. The rest is explained here:


I find it amusing to see the teachers hand preschoolers some of the sharpest scissors ever to cut the ribbons from the volcano. Nathan had those scissors in his school supply pack in Kindergarten and First grade. For some reason he had some more child-friendly ones in Second grade...
I miss that school and those people. The kids do too, but I can tell it is becoming a distant memory to the kids already. They are excited about new friends, neighbors with two little boys around Nathan's age, a sister who is twelve and wants to babysit and a pool in their backyard, lots of room to ride bikes and run in the backyard, the trampoline that is up and running, and the new swing set we found on Craig's List that Daddy spent all of Father's Day putting up. So I don't really have any pictures yet. I got the camera out a few days ago and the battery was dead. The battery is now still sitting in the charger where I left it and now I need to get back to work.
We've got a weekend full of yard work and housework ahead. Daddy is off on another trip next week (can't remember where) and we have mostly free time for the big kids, a babysitter coming on Thursday so that we can celebrate our 10 year anniversary (not as big as we had wanted to celebrate--but, as I often tell our little people, "You can't have it all!")
Okay, really going now. Back to work.