Stress

Since we found out that we are moving in April vs. 'the summer' I  feel constantly overwhelmed. I thought Jack would be able to finish the full year of preschool before we moved, but now he may not return after Spring Break since we will want to take a couple of weeks to spend time with our family before we leave the country. It isn't a big deal, but it still makes me sad. Another thing that has been on my mind lately is what to do with our stuff. We weren't going to ship anything, but then I wondered how we would tote 3 kids and lots of suitcases through a new town where we don't know the language, so I decided we would suck it up and ship clothes, books, toys, and a few other things we may need. Then I decided I wanted to get a Kindle Fire for Christmas so it was decided we shouldn't ship books because we could put them on the Kindle plus they have books in English on Amazon.de that we could buy cheaper than what it would cost to ship books. Sigh.... now we are back to not shipping anything since we can pack a few toys and clothes then buy whatever else we need once we get there. We are being paid Euros so that makes things a bit easier. We don't really want to have to deal with a storage unit so I think we will get rid of most of our stuff before we move. We really have no idea how long we will be overseas so it doesn't seem worth it-- especially since we don't own really nice things as we are a graduate school family. The next concern is what to do with our van. I keep going back and forth and probably will for a long time. If I only knew how long we would be there that would help, if it is just a year we would definitely keep it but if we are going for 5 years then we would do better to sell it.

Oh well, I did check out German language cds that I have been listening to in the car. One big thing we have actually accomplished is mailing off the stuff for passports. Yay!! That is a huge relief. Once we get them it will be time to work on getting visas. Wouldn't it be nice if moving to a new country wasn't so stressful?

Well besides being stressed about moving we have done a few fun things. We went to the library for Family Fun Day. They had free books to give away, a balloon artist, cupcake walk, snacks, science experiment demonstrations, storytelling, rides on the Boilermaker Special, and a few other things. It was a lot of fun. The next day Jack's school had an Open House, and we got to eat some of the pumpkin bread/pie the kids made earlier that day. Jack apparently helped a lot in making the pumpkin bread-he does like to help bake things. They also had a book fair going on. I had signed up to help, but Thomas doesn't really like to take a bottle so Pete went instead. He got to 'gossip' with the secretaries.

The boys have been going through a test the boundaries stage. Luke is screaming, throwing, ignoring, and acting as if he decided to turn 2 a few months early. Jack is going through a being mad at everyone stage and if he can't be mad at us then obviously we hate him-it has to be one or the other. It is frustrating and makes going places with the two of them pretty difficult. Thomas doesn't like to take a bottle so for Pete that is hard, but when he is with me he is pretty cute. The past few days he has been more interactive-smiling and cooing.