moving...

Even though Olivia's only 5 mo. these 2 already love to play together. It's the best part of having 2 kids!

• ... it always takes longer than you think it will. If you have kids, times that by 10.
• I am still trying not to think about how much TV Jackson ended up watching. All I know is that the kid TV sounds in the background totally lowered my stress levels.
• I'm still trying to not think about how much JUNK food Jackson consumed. Example: Jackson: "Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!!!!!"... Me: "Jackson! I am packing. Here have a cookie... oh and here's another movie."
• We found out people were interested in our place on Saturday, they signed on Monday, we moved out on Friday, cleaned on Saturday/Sunday and they moved in on Sunday.Because Mark started school the week we found out we were moving, I packed up the entire place by myself... with 2 kids... and I barely made it out sane. Seriously. It was a complete nightmare.
• On Friday I IM'd my very good friend/old roommate, Allison in a panic because I still had a million things to pack. Everytime I turned around there was more stuff to put into boxes. It just kept multiplying. She, being the amazing friend she is, left work and came to help. She even took all our unwanted stuff to DI. THANK YOU ALLISON!
• In the beginning of packing, I was very organized... labels, categories, boxes neatly packed. At the end, everything was thrown in a box or thrown out. I really didn't care anymore... no labels, no reason, no categories. 
• Love that we are part of a church where people will come help you whether they know you well or not at all. Thanks to all the guys that came over... seriously these guys were insanely strong... lifting entire nightstands by themselves. CRAZY! Also love that we have great friends that are willing to put their lives on hold to come and help (thanks Erik and Maddox :-) )!
• On Saturday night while my mom and I were cleaning I had to call 911 because my mom's heart went into V tech (she has a pacemaker). An ambulence, a couple of hours later, my mom was fine and was on her way to being checked out with Robert, I drove back to our place (with Olivia... Mark was with Jackson and my mom's house) at 12:30/1am to get the blood stain out of our carpet left from when the paramedics were putting an IV in my mom's arm. I considered continuing to clean and decided that would be insane and left. As I'm leaving a MASSIVE thunderstorm starts and it starts to rain... hard.... which leaves me and Olivia (in her carseat), running out to the car... soaked at 2am.
• Mark and I plus our 2 crazy kids return on Sunday morning to hurry and clean our place for the renters that are coming.... we are cleaning up until that last SECOND.... with Jackson screaming in protest at being ignored.
• At one point when we had about 10 minutes left and I'm trying to hurry and clean out the fridge (something we totally forgot about until the last second), I'm "leading" Jackson out of my way while I am frantically cleaning and Jackson turns to me and says, "Mommy, please stop pushing me! It hurts me." Love that he said please. Mark and I allowed ourself to laugh for .00001 second before running around again like chickens with their heads cut off. (I should say just for clarification, Jackson uses the term "hurts me" very loosley... i.e. I don't want to change my diaper, it hurts me. I don't want to go in my carseat, it hurts me, etc. What he really means is, I don't want to do . It's always lovely when he screams this in public.
• WHY is our place SO dirty?! Seriously? I thought I cleaned!? You never really realize how dirty your house actually is until you move. Am I the only one? I silently swear to myself that at our next house I will do more deep cleaning every 6 months....
• We RUN down the 3 flights of stairs (I wont miss those) down to our cars with our cleaning supplies and our screaming kids, only to realize we left food items in the freezer and our cable box we have to return in the laundry room... Mark has to go back up and grab them while our renters are being taken through our place.
• Mark and I are SO happy and thrilled to be DONE (with that part, at least).

Today we went to our new temporary ward (for church...while we figure out where we are going)and we already are missing our old ward! I knew we would miss our ward, our home, the area, etc. but for whatever reason, it really hit us today. I keep thinking of that old country song... one of the lyrics goes, "life's about changes, nothing ever stays the same." Which is a good and bad thing. Even though we'll miss those things/people, we're also really glad to be moving forward and closer to Mark's work... something we've been wanting to do for 2 years now!