moving week - tuesday

i had already addressed our christmas cards but was waiting for the change of address cards i had ordered to arrive, hopefully, in monday's mail so that i could send everything out before we moved. monday night i stuffed, sealed, and stamped our cards and prepped everything for a drop at the post office on tuesday after i dropped matt off at work.

well, that didn't happen as planned and matt drove himself to work. he was going to be home by 1pm so it shouldn't mess with my day too much. i can't remember why the morning didn't go smoothly enough for me to take him to work, but it didn't.

madelyn was very excited to
bring her nap mat home
from school on monday.

tuesday i packed all of the "minimum requirements" for our day to day life - one skillet, one pot, one saucepan, laundry detergent and fabric softener, etc. - and left anything above that to matt. packing had been difficult because there was so much i needed access to for the kids and we were planning to leave the house staged until it sold. well, now that we had a signed offer we decided that we could take a few more things but would still leave it staged in case the deal falls through. so i packed, and packed on tuesday while derek was the best uncle ever and watched movies or played with madelyn and mason.

once matt got home i took off to take the last of our christmas mail/shipping to the post office, drop cards off with the neighbors, and return a few meal dishes to friends. it took me longer to complete my errands than i would have liked but it was nice to have the quiet driving time to collect my thoughts about what i still had left to do. when i got back home matt and i went through our game plan. with one car we had to decide the sequence of events that would get all of us fed (takeout vs. dine in), matt and derek at the house, and the kids and i into a hotel. the reason that this was tricky was that i needed matt (and derek) to help me carry everything into the hotel and we needed to get everything done in as little time as possible so that matt and derek would have a shot at getting a few hours of sleep.

due to the needs of the kids, i thought that it would be best that the kids and i stayed at a hotel on tuesday night. we were planning to start driving at 5am on wednesday and with the kids and i at a hotel that meant less beds to deal with staging in the morning and the kids would be out of the way for matt while loading the truck. to my surprise, matt agreed.

before leaving for the hotel, i did a quick lap through the house with matt to explain where i had left off and what still needed to be done. well, at least the best i could do when we were both racing around because the clock was ticking...

and maddux slept
through it all.

in the end we ate a quick dinner at culvers (had to cash in our kids meal points), checked into the hotel and dropped off the overnight bag and pack-n-play, went to home depot for more boxes, dropped matt and derek off at the house, and then back to the hotel with the kids. unfortunately, parking at the hotel was ridiculous and i had to park pretty far away. madelyn and mason (and maddux, too, i think) were crying by the time we made it into the hotel. madelyn had already been crying after we dropped off daddy about wanting to "go home" and "stay in wisconsin" but now was crying about the cold. the good news was that this hotel had fresh cookies at the front desk and the kids thought that this was fantastic.

 another plus for me was that there was a charlie brown christmas special on (meaning cartoons in primetime) to kill time before we could go to sleep. i managed to bathe all three kids and get them ready for bed without too much trouble. madelyn slept in one bed, maddux slept in the pack-n-play, and mason slept with me - or on me. love.