What a Mess!!!

We're getting ready to move. In just a week and a few days we'll be moving out of our house and taking all of our worldly possessions to Champaign, Illinois. Our house is officially ready to go (it passed inspection and radon testing) and we close on the 12th of July. We did spend a substantial bit of time scrambling to tie up loose ends with our new apartment, figuring out what to do with our cats for three weeks while we are in Europe, and trying to find a place for all of our stuff. It's been a bit stressful but things have worked out well for us. In the end we were able to change our lease to start on the 12th of July and Kaia's aunt is going to take the cats for the entire time we are in Europe!

When I got back from San Francisco on Tuesday (by the way I hate red eye flights - if I didn't mention that already) we kind of burned a day because I was so tired from the lack of sleep on the flight. We did manage to get some things accomplished but Wednesday we went into full scale packing mode. We packed the upstairs in one day and then set to work on the basement yesterday. It was quite a feat but we got a lot accomplished. Our goal is to have everything done by next week Wednesday so we can enjoy Carmen's wedding. We will need to have a few things out until the last day but our house will pretty well be in boxes by mid next week.


Look at what Kaia found in one of our cupboards while we were packing up the kitchen:

Ah, Thanksgiving memories....

Earlier this year we planted some beans in the backyard and we were really hoping to be able to eat some before we moved. Today our wish came true. Kaia found six little beans when she went out to look at our "garden". We ate four of them before we could take this picture:


This weekend Kaia and I are making two separate trips to Hudson for the Fourth of July festivities. Saturday we are going to see the Amery marching band under the esteemed direction of Michael Renneke, my former student teacher. It's one of several summer parades in which the Amery band marches throughout the summer. This will be our only chance to catch them in action. I'm really excited to see the "Amery Shuffle" live and in person. Our second trip to Hudson will be on Sunday to visit Nicole, Dan, Eliza, Ann Marie, Jim and a magnitude of others. Ann Marie and Jim host a party on the 4th every year and it's always a great time. It will be a nice break from the stress of packing and preparing to move.

Happy weekend. Happy Fourth of July.