Tough Road - 6/9/11

Its been a long tough road these past few weeks. Moving from Nevada to South Carolina has been a lot more challenging than I ever imagined. From the stress of having two small dogs to worry about along with having three children to run after made the journey from Nevada a pretty difficult one. The last time I moved was when we just had one child. Clayton was just a year old and so there wasn't the baby issues that come with traveling with an infant. Now, I have 3 children one of which is an infant. So there was a lot of screaming moments while driving the three days from Nebraska to South Carolina. Thank goodness for my ear phones and loud music on my ipod. :) When we got here we were very discouraged about the rental market here. There are tons of houses for sale here just like any place in the United States right now with the economy the way it is there are a lot of foreclosures, short sales, or just people trying to move or get out of a high mortgage payment. I had been doing a lot of research in this area before we moved here and all the realtors that I talked to had mentioned that a large group of Army families were moving here which made it difficult to rent. They were coming here months before we got here so many of the houses that I wanted were gone by the time we got here. Some families were so desperate for the right house here that they rented it for months before arriving. Which was expensive but worth it in the long run. We had very little to choose from and after much prayer and petition we finally found a house that would work. Its not perfect but its a good fit for now. We know this is a temporary home so all our complaints or "non-ideals" we are trying to overlook because we know that someday we won't have to deal with these frustrating details. Once we found our house we set up the delivery of our household goods. They decided to move us in on Memorial Day which turned out to be super duper hot and the people who came to move us in had terrible attitudes. Which I think is not only unprofessional but irritating because I know if I were to have complained to any of my customers (no matter my job) that I would have gotten reprimanded for it. We endured the long day of our kids trying to run in the street, knock on the neighbors front doors and climb the fences of our neighbors who have a pool. Clayton at one point came running inside to tell me that he had to go "talk to his ladies". (The neighbors with the pool had two girls ages 10 and 13.) After an exhausting day starting at 8:00am (for which I woke up at 6am to be here by 7am just in case they got here early I didn't want them to wait for us because the Air Force base we were living at temporarily is about 30/40 minutes to where we live.) and ending around 7pm. When they got done unloading the truck there was some important stuff missing. Like our kitchen table, they brought pieces of our table in but no top and no sides. They brought 3/4 of our bed but were missing the top mattress? There was a lot of other stuff missing from our kitchen, garage and other places of the house but nothing as necessary as a mattress for our bed. Thank God that we had a table we could use temporarily and chairs we had brought just in case. Also, we had a guest bed set that did make the delivery that Sean and I could use. They did bring the boys' beds so we weren't completely down and out. However, it was seriously discouraging having waited weeks to sleep in my own bed that was missing when we finally got moved into our house. Its been almost two weeks since they moved us in here and we still have no idea when they are going to deliver our missing stuff. The worst part is that they said they found the actually missing stuff but don't know when they can get it here. That was last week and here we are almost the end of this week and still no idea when its going to get here. Can you say frustrating??

Anyway, now we are living in a house full of boxes and complete chaos. When the movers came to deliver our stuff Sean mentioned it is their job to unpack everything. So, when they got done unloading the truck Sean told them that we wanted them to unpack it all. Well, with the "professionals" they were they decided to unpack everything and dump it everywhere. No rhyme no reason, just chaos. I was extremely upset after seeing how they were handling everything and immediately asked them to stop. They of course happy that their apathetic attempt at unpacking us was over they left immediately and then started to be nice to us as they made there way out saying how 'sorry' they were that our stuff wasn't here. I knew they were trying to cover there back ends as to prevent a bad report from us. There still going to get it. The worst part of this whole thing is that these companies are contracted to help military families. These companies make tons of money from the government contracting them to help us and they failed miserably. The company who packed us up did a horrible job. Things were broken, beat up, misplaced and poorly packed. Then the company who unloaded us did a bad job as well. There was no notion of patriotism knowing that there jobs their livelihood was literally mostly possible because of what Sean and others serving in the military are doing. Ridiculous!

Since living here we have felt misplaced as well. There is no backyard fence that we came to know and love in Vegas. So, every time we let our dogs out we have to have at least one of them (the puppy) on a leash or she will run off no matter how loudly you call her back. Our doors before this morning had dead bolts that were at my two year olds eye level that he was able to conveniently let himself out each of the three doors. This morning I had a locksmith install three deadbolts high on each of the doors so that I don't wake up listening to my two year old son playing outside by himself while my dogs bark and are running in the street. The level of stress it was giving me the past week has been worthy of a million gray hairs. Thankfully, I don't have those million but I definitely have a lot of years taken off my life by the amount of stress I underwent dealing with the boys letting themselves and the dogs out whenever they wanted.

Very little unpacking has been getting done but today I made a promise to myself. That each day I'm going to give myself attainable goals so it doesn't seem so hopeless that I just freeze and do nothing. Making it seem more reasonable allows me to feel less anxious and more hopeful. So today I said, the laundry needs to get folded put away in the respectful areas. Which is done and its only 3:30 in the afternoon! Yeah! I got a lot more done than that but the good news is that I feel accomplished and positive because I got one thing off my list that I planned on wanting to do. I also told myself from today on out my goal is to unpack one box a day. Doing this makes less mess and more optimum organizational planning. So, I'm back on the horse again after my breakdown yesterday. I had a very meaningful prayer time this morning. Something, I unfortunately haven't done enough in the past few months. Having 3 children has made my personal time alone with God scarce. This is a very bad and unhealthy thing and I plan on rectifying that soon. I know I need Him more in my life and so do my kids. My kids deserve a better Mom and a better Mom they are going to get. My poor husband is going to be also deserving a better wife and I couldn't be more thankful to God for him. He loves me so well and unconditionally that I am humbled to know no matter how ugly I get he still thinks me worthy of his love. No one is perfect in a marriage but Sean definitely is the right man for me. God did a good job of picking him out for me. :)

In the meantime, if any of you out there are moving soon especially with the military please send me a note or consider contacting me so I can give you some of the pointers I wish someone would have given me. These moving companies will take advantage of you if you don't know how they like to cut corners and cut corners they definitely will do. :)

Thank you everyone who sent me an encouraging note or a prayerful message. I love you all for thinking of me during this crazy time in my life and soon, I hope to return the favor. :)

Have a wonderful rest of your week and I hope that your weekend is spent soaking up these sunny summer days!

Lots of love and hugs,

Natasha