Boxes are like rabbits.  They multiply & multiply & multiply.  For every box I unpack, I swear five move reappear in that same location in the time it takes me to walk to my doorway, break the box down and stack it.  Each room is *mostly* unpacked.  But several of the remaining boxes are full of random things that are going to really force me to think about where to put it, do I really want it, etc.  Ugh.  I love unpacking the boxes that are easy to do like clothes & dishes.  Plus, I’m feeling a bit annoyed that we didn’t look harder for a 3-bedroom.  I’d really like to have that third bedroom for an office, someplace to do crafts & for a little extra in-house storage (v. our storage closet off the patio).  If I had a 3rd bedroom, I think I could get the rest of the boxes out of the living room.  Most of the downstairs is put back together but since I still have many boxes sitting around, it doesn’t *look* settled.  And I can’t really relax b/c the boxes are always in my sight.

On the up side, I’m doing REALLY well getting rid of stuff!  After eight months of living with very little, I’m able to look at things with a more objective eye.  I have gotten rid of more than 160 pounds of stuff already!!  I need to find my notes from our April non-move so I can see how much stuff we got rid of then.  And that wouldn’t include the massive amount of stuff we purged in the last moments before the packers came.  I’m really proud of us for being able to let go since that isn’t in our nature.

And in the midst of unpacking, Elizabeth has come down with yet another cold.  And my body is having a tug-of-war trying to decide if it’ll get sick or not.  How many more days until Saturday??!  Jim has been in the field for two weeks, so I haven’t had him to help me destress on the phone each  night.  But Saturday he is home for more than TWO WEEKS!!  Yahooo!

To: Tricia, Jim & E

Merry Christmas!!

From: the U.S. Army

What news! Jim called last Friday to let me know that he had been over to the shipping office. Our goods have LEFT Germany and are on their way to Georgia!!! The shipment is expected by December 13 and could possibly be there even earlier. (Guess what we’ll be doing over Jim’s Christmas break??!) 6-8 weeks is the expected time frame and the 13th would be eight weeks. Maybe I’ll get a birthday present from the army! Mom’s coming down that weekend, so she would get the pleasure of helping me unpack! Eight months and many, many miles later, I finally believe we might actually see our goods again. Crawling into bed that night will be amazing!!

I forgot to post that we were leaving for Georgia! (I’ll post more about the trip another time.) We’re here! We are moved into our new apartment. Its nice but smaller (2-bedroom) than what we wanted. Availability for a 2-bedroom was immediate while the 3-bedrooms had a wait of 1-3 weeks. We didn’t want to live out of a hotel for that long in addition to the two weeks we already had, so we took the smaller unit.

If you want my new e-mail/address/phone information, e-mail me.  For obvious reasons, I don’t want to post that here!

We’re down to our final days here!  Two weeks from today, I’ll be flying to Indiana to drive down to Georgia (DH’s parents are helping him drive our cars to Georgia).  I’ll meet them there that Sunday or Monday.  I’m driving their car down so they have a way to get home.  I am SO grateful that they can do this.  Traveling with Elizabeth in a car for nine hours sounds SO much better than 42 hours!

I am ready to leave her.  I know I will be sad about it since it is where we started our military life together and where Elizabeth was born.  That part will for sure make me sad.  But I’ve emotionally separated from here already.  And I’m excited to explore someplace new. (I gotta’ keep telling myself that so I’ll stay focused on the positives of this!!)

As the rest of our goods are, appeantly, just sitting in Germany.  Yeah, just sitting there.  The shipping office over there hasn't "gotten around" to sending it back to us.  Easy for them, I bet they go home to a house with furniture, a kitchen full of dishes and more than three shirts in their closet (okay, that is an exaggeration but not by much!!).  LOL  Jim's going up his chain of command next week to get our stuff.  Still, we're looking at twoish months before our stuff comes back (we've been without it for two months already).  

So we' rethankful that our car has been returned to us…its something! LOL