Moving and meanness

I can never get myself to go to bed at a reasonable hour when James is out of town. I don't know what's up with that, but since I'm up, I thought I'd post about what's going on around here. We have a closing date of August 7 for both houses, so we'll be moving in the next few weeks. I'm slowly coming to grips with this fact. I've been so caught up in the contract negotiations/repair negotiations/repair scheduling - you get the picture - that I think I've been in denial about the actual physical process of moving and what that will entail. As of right now, we have two boxes packed. Luckily, we're moving literally two miles away, so it shouldn't require great effort in packing, but we still have to get everything out of here. I see a garage sale in our future... My mom and sister-in-law will be coming next week to help, so we'll hopefully get a good bit done then. I'm going on a mission trip with the middle school youth from our church the last week of July, so that's going to put a crunch on the moving schedule. But, at least we have made all of the repairs to our house, so we can just focus on the moving part now.

Today I completed my jury duty commitment. I had to call in every day for the past two weeks to see if I would have to report the following day. I know, good timing on the part of Knox County. I was sweating it a few days while having to schedule repairmen to come to the house. Today was the last day of my commitment and I almost forgot to call in. I actually did have to report today and, of course, the appraisal of our house had been scheduled for this morning. James stayed home in the morning to get the kids and dogs out of the house during the appraisal and I found a sitter for the afternoon, but I ended up getting home before the appraiser was even finished. They chose the jury members alphabetically from the list and didn't make it to H. It wasn't an interesting case anyway.

James decided today to go to Louisiana to help his parents go through some of the things in his grandparents' house. I mean he decided today and left - today! It was very uncharacteristic of him, but I think he'll be glad he went. I'm sure going to miss him. Tomorrow is his day off, so he was going to spend time with Kate while I took Owen to speech and I was looking forward to not having to take her with me. Ok, I was looking forward to some interference! She's been pretty tough to handle lately. She has a bit of a bad attitude and can be pretty rude and disrespectful toward me (I haven't seen her do this to James). But, she and I tend to go through spells like this once in a while, so I just have to TRY to keep my cool while letting her know what's what! Yesterday, I took the kids to open play time and gym bugs, out for dinner to Chik-fil-A with ice cream afterward, and then to the play area at the mall. After all that, she had the nerve to tell me I am a "mean, mean woman" when we had to leave to go home. I don't even know where she learned that phrase! She has been having us play the parts of Cinderella and the wicked step-mother a lot lately... hmmm...

Well, I had better head to bed if I don't want to be a mean, mean woman tomorrow! Maybe one of these days I'll get some more pictures on here.