This morning we headed over to the Monroe Street house ready to work. At least, I was ready to work. The children seemed to be thinking that we’d only stay a short time before heading back home to the Bobwhite house. It took some repeating, but they finally seemed to understand that we weren’t going to leave soon, and there was lots to do.

I decided to start with the kitchen. First we had to clean the areas that had previously been covered by the stove and big freezer. Yuck. What a mess. But we worked and swept and mopped and made it look much better. Then it was time to tackle the stuff covering the island, mostly things I had dragged out of the freezer, like grains and other non-frozen items.

After we had a surface cleared and were able to start packing, I started putting my kitchen into boxes. Seems like I just finished UNpacking my kitchen, and before that, packing it up and getting ready to remodel. While it’s a little discouraging to pack up my kitchen again, it’s ok. It sure doesn’t hurt to sort through things again, re-evaluate what actually gets used and what should be given away, and just get it all put away until we move. I also had to make a collection of things that I wanted to take back “home” to the Bobwhite house to use in the interim.

By lunchtime, I was ready to think about letting the kids take a break while I went upstairs to take a nap. But everyone just wanted to go home. I realized that I had pushed the children pretty hard all morning, and if I wanted to have anything left of them by evening when Michael would be available to work, I needed to give them a real break. So we piled back into the van and headed home. We were all relieved to get back to the Bobwhite house that feels so much like home now. Everyone got something to eat, and Judah and I laid down for our naps. I slept so soundly! What a refreshing break. And the children seemed to really relax, too.

When I got up, I gave everyone a snack, and we prepared to head back to Monroe Street to meet up with Michael. I warned everyone that we were going to stay for a while and work some more.

We worked really hard for several hours. Around 6:30 Todd came home from work and stopped over to help carry some heavy things over to storage. After overdoing it Saturday by carrying too many heavy things, I was very grateful for Todd’s help.

Around 7:30 we loaded up and headed home, tired and a bit grumpy, but feeling like we had accomplished some good work.  Todd had given out popsicles to everyone right before we drove away, so that helped a great deal in making us feel refreshed.  When we got home, I fed supper to those who were still hungry, and worked on organizing some of the things I had brought to this house. I don’t want to create a backlog here of things that need to be sorted and put away.

I’m looking forward to tomorrow. The kitchen has to be the hardest room to conquer. Every other room will seem easy compared to the kitchen.