An epiphany...

Santa is coming tonight but I gotta share this...(so I don't forget about it)  Last night when Clint woke me up when he came to bed long after I was asleep, I had an epiphany...at home we are woken up (sometimes) in the night and have to stop conversations for a few seconds so we can be heard when...an AIRPLANE flies over (and I mean DIRECTLY OVER) our house.  When we left home, every single plane that flew overhead would prompt Colt to tell us that it was "Daddy's airpane".  By the time we move back again, we'll have to teach him what an airplane is...we haven't seen or heard an airplane since we flew in on one!! 

So you're thinking, get to it!  Right?  Well, here's my epiphany--in Cyprus, SCREAMING MOTORCYCLES, all night long, are our airplanes!!  Speak of the devil, one blew by just now!  They will scare the crap out of you and they are amazingly LOUD!  Oh and how could I forget about the constant (did I say constant & all night long?) CAT FIGHTS!! (Wait there goes another motorcycle!...oh, and there's another one!) 

On that note, I'll hope to get some sleep tonight while we wait for Santa's arrival!!  :)

Sooo much to say--I don't know WHERE to begin!!

My good friend, Tambur is prodding me to "get to it" and finally put something (anything) on here to update my peeps...so, here goes--

MuuuCH has happened (obviously) since the last time I actually wrote anything on my blog (I don't know if I even have the right to call it that anymore)!!  I will update (someday) the particulars that are most definitely going to be missing at this point, of our many "firsts" here in Cyprus.  But what I can tell you is that although we had many, many things going on all at the same time, they somehow all came together perfectly and the whole move turned out smoothly...well, as smoothly as a move half-way around the world can go!

When we arrived here, we were greeted by our new (& fast) friends, the McDonald's (Greg & Tambur & their clan of 4 kiddos) who so perfectly had filled our fridge, prepared dinner for us, made our beds, & arranged our furniture in a way that worked for us...THANK YOU!!!  Theennn, Tambur (the SAINT)

chauffeured Colt & I around for the first month until we finally found a car...THANK YOU MORE!!  :)  We have been truly blessed with the new friends we have made and are still making here, and the feeling of family.  I have gotten to meet some incredible women at coffees each month and Colt has made some sweet friends at his new preschool and at playgroup.  We've also gotten to go sight-seeing to some beautiful places that we hope to go back to soon...like Kyrenia and the Troodos mountains.

Thankfully we also finally found a car that fit Clint--this was a task in itself since he literally "tried on" every car at one dealership and didn't fit in ONE of them!!  We just waited patiently and I prayed that we would find one that was in our budget and voila...the next day, Clint told me he had found the perfect car for us--a 2002 Isuzu Trooper!!  Not only does it fit Clint, it (kinda) fit our budget, and it seats 7 people (which we had given up on finding).

I'll go back to the updates later (I hope) but right now, we're in Christmas mode and are sooo looking forward to Santa's arrival in a few days.  We've had a few conversations about whether Santa will know where to find us and how he will get in the house.  But I think after receiving emails from "The Big Guy in the Red Suit" himself, the confidence returned!  ;)  Tonight we got to attend the kids' school Christmas concert and we were pleasantly treated to songs that talked about the Savior's birth...in school (there were also songs about Hanukah, and Mexico, and other traditions)!  CJ & Ashlee are fitting in well at school and were so proud of their artwork that was displayed and of their concert...it was PERFECT (like Aunt Bean would say :))!! 

I promise to write more often in shorter spurts from this point on and I will try to go back and touch on the cool things we've already seen and done (just to document them).

Big shout out (& THANK YOU) to my "soul sista", Tambur for the prodding--I definitely needed that (& I'm not surprised that you "just knew")!!

Here are a few pics of the new wheels, visiting Santa, The Gibsons in front of the advent wreath at our new church, and the gorgeous decorations we get to see on almost every corner and roundabout...its lovely!  Merry Christmas!!

IN CHAOS NOW...

I'm not sure why we came up with "One Shy of Chaos" to describe our lives and family...we are definitely IN CHAOS right now!!  My house is feeling like it's turned upside down to me right now.  Although, if you didn't know we were moving in 3 weeks (yes, 3 weeks people!), you would think we were just slightly messy people if you came into our house.  It's so frustrating for me to not be able to see any progress since we're not actually doing the packing. 

Everything in the house has to be sorted into the appropriate pile...1) Take it with me on the plane, 2) AIR ship it to us in 10 days, 3) I can live without it for 2-3 months while it sails across the ocean, or 4) Crate it and get it outta here for 2 years while we're gone--I'm sure we'll be fine without it! 

Thankfully Danielle (my baby sissy) and my mom came over and spent 2 days helping me separate and sort ALL of the kitchen cabinets.  It's now quite comical to watch me attempt to cook dinner and find the "thingamajig" that I need to cook with.  It's all hodge-podged around in a different spot and I'm trying to keep all of us limited to using only the things we're going to AIR ship.  I was sooo mentally drained by the time we were done that night--and just from making decisions about what stays and what goes.  Yeesh!

I have to credit Denise (my other sissy) too for being such an awesome distraction and babysitter to CJ, Ashlee, & Colt while we've been purging, sorting, and carting things away!  She has taken them for the night, to airplane pulls, birthdays, movies, and just to play with Oreo outside~~what a lifesaver that has been to have an extra set of hands!  Thank you!  :)

Oh, and did I mention the original kids clothes sorting/selling undertaking that I started the whole purging process with (16 bins of clothes in the storage room!!)??!  Well, poor Denise was there for the entire evolution that started out very gung-ho on my part and ended with me saying "Screw it! I'm taking the rest of it to a consignment shop to sell it FOR ME!!"  Thank you for being patient while I came to that most-logical conclusion.  xx 

(In case you're lost, I haven't EVER gotten rid of kids clothes until now!!  I don't recommend this approach to being nostalgic and thinking one of your future kids will wear it.  Big mistake...HUGE!!)

On that note, I will sign off and hope that I have some news on a sale of our "Big Red Bus" *sniff* and that our house has been rented with my next post! 

Thank you, Lord, for making it all SLOWLY come together for us!! 
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This is Ashlee on a Tuesday night (in her magician costume)..."Welcome to our Circus!" :)

Getting Ready For the Big Move...

The big day is coming up on us FAST! There are so many things to do and coordinate and I'm just praying for patience and sanity while I sort through each piece of the list.  We are so excited to move to our new home and each day seems to bring us a new little tidbit of information about our new adventure...school, home, movers, history.  As of today (and I guess this could still possibly change), the movers are coming to pack the house on October 19-21, 2010 and our last day in our home here will be October 22!  I can't believe how soon that is and how MUCH I have left to do to prepare for it!  Hopefully the excitement of it all will outweigh the stress of coordinating...