forgot to mention...

I guess it's time for an official 'we are moving!' post. Except there's no exclamation point in real live. More like, 'ugh, we have to pack up and move before December 18 and hopefully AFTER we find a new place to live'. Our plans (more like wishful thinking) to move sometime in January prompted our landlord to list the house for sale right away, which then turned into 'the house is sold and you have to vacate within 30 days' notice.

the not-so-lovely result of dry Utah air, endless cleaning and not enough time to run to the store for coconut oil

Between getting the house ready for sale, then having people come look at it for days in a row, inspections and packing, all in the last 10 days or so, we haven't even had much time to look for a new place for us. So here we are, with our home half packed away and three-ish weeks left to find a suitable home for our family. The fact that not everyone is crazy enough to move right before Christmas means that we don't have to spend that much time looking at online rental listings. I guess you could call it an 'upside'. Right? Right?..

she insisted on helping me pack

But life goes on, and Thanksgiving is tomorrow, so today, more than ever, I count my blessings and try to be more conscious of things I can be grateful for. Going through our belongings, trying to minimize the amount of boxes we have to pack, load and unload, made me realize how many things we've accumulated in our 8 years of marriage and 6.5 years of parenthood. And it's not boxes of stuff, it's those 8 years of marriage and 6.5 years of parenthood that I'm overwhelmingly grateful for right now.

I know somehow we'll get through this. Somehow we'll find just the right place for us. Maybe we'll be cramped for a while, maybe we will have to live out of the boxes for a few months, or won't have a shiny Christmas tree with home-sewn gifts for children neatly wrapped under it. But in the end, we're still together, as a family, taking our home with us wherever we go.

I know one day our memories will bring us back to this time and all of today's troubles will seem small and distant, the intensity of these days will fade away, and my memory might even trick me into thinking that our children were very cooperative and helpful when we were trying to pack and clean. But right now, it's all real, as it is, and we'll just keep pushing through it, one day at a time. Thinking about this time in our lives reminds me of last weeks of pregnancy, when you are uncomfortable, with all kinds of aches and pains invading your body, barely getting any rest and wishing for it all to be over. Then the big day comes, weeks and months go by after the birth of your new baby, and the intensity, the reality of that discomfort and pain fade away. You remember thinking about how miserable you were, but at the same time it doesn't seem so bad any more. That day will come...

Speaking of babies. This is the home where Anya and Ivy were born. The two ties I will never be able to break with this house...

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And to end this post on a more cheerful note, I'm sharing my rainbow today. I was barely able to do any knitting lately, but between doing a couple of rows in the car and a few rows late at night after a long day of cleaning, my rainbow keeps growing. The colors make me smile every time I see them, blending into one another, transforming the project with every new color change. I don't know when it will be done, and I'll most likely have to give priority to other things in this coming month, but doing even a couple of rows a day is such a treat. Not to mention my kind of therapy...