Sea Freight!

It came on Monday.  First the truck pulled up.

Then they took off the snazzy yellow Asian Tigers wrap and underneath were the exact same crates I waved good by to in Arlington three and a half months ago.

We were ready for them.  We had labeled the bedrooms with numbers, per our friends' advice.  Jeff and I were positioned in the doorway.  Jeff had a copy of the inventory list and a pen.  His job was to check off boxes as they came in to make sure everything arrived.  My job was to tell the movers where the boxes should go.  Elena was hanging out in her playpen in the laundry area (yet another perk of enclosing it!), so that Young could keep an eye on her and the kitchen arrivals.  

The movers worked fast to get all the boxes in, since the sky looked like rain.  The result was a box pile up.

They unpacked a little, but then it was time for their one hour lunch break.  It was torture, since all my stuff was right there, but it wasn't getting unpacked.  Luckily, my kitchen knives were out, so I grabbed one, and started hacking away at the brown paper wrapping.  One of my main goals was to find all of my green and red Christmas boxes and stash them all the way under the stairs, so that I could put other things in front of them.  I worked on that while the Asian Tigers hid from the rain under our covered driveway and ate lunch.

After lunch, they made quick work of getting everything unwrapped and out of boxes.  They were also very efficient about clearing out all the wrappings and empty boxes.  In fact, they were too efficient.  I was trying to save a couple big boxes for my friend's haunted house, but they were gone the second I turned my back.

Jeff took off from work on Tuesday as well, which was a huge help.  His tallness came in very handy when we were unpacking things in our kitchen made for giants.  We had to order dinner on Monday, because the kitchen was not functional, but by the end of the day Tuesday, the house looked pretty good, and we could use the kitchen and dining room for their intended purposes.

It's the end of the week now, and there are still some boxes to be tackled, but it feels MUCH more like home.  I really want to hang all the pictures, but that will have to wait for next week.  For now, I'm happy that the play area is set up, and most of the books are unpacked.  The girls are enjoying it.