the hard part is over... now onto the difficult part!

The big shipment of our main household goods went out today. Not a lot to report here. The men arrived on time, worked quickly, and stayed for lunch but were still out of here in about 5 hours. The weather was perfect so we had the windows and doors open. The kids were at a friends' house and the dog went to daycare for the day.
Thursday night I kept saying the worst that could happen is that they would pack something they were not supposed to (we still have another load of stuff to go to storage yet) or that they would not pack something they were supposed to. And, well, both of those things happened, of course, so we are stuck buying sheets for the kids bed and a blanket for our bed, and I´ll need to replace my entire makeup bag including travel sizes of various toiletries. (update: I found my cosmetics case where I had apparently stashed it in a suitcase, but not after I had already bought a few replacements, of course.) But at least the stuff they did not pack that they were supposed to, we caught in time to load at the last minute, to include one each of three different pairs of shoes from the front hall closet.

??

And sadly, despite their extreme courtesy, advanced English skills, and love of music (the crew foreman plays bass and guitar by ear), all redeeming qualities for sure, they are human - someone accidentally marked on the couch with a permanent marker. Someone from the company is coming out Monday to see if they can get the mark out. This I gotta see.


In other news...
The storage shipment contractor decided that they only need one day, so they aren´t coming till Tuesday. That´s the difficult part I refer to in the title line - four days and four nights in this semi empty house (as far as the kids are concerned it´s empty, all their toys and books are gone) hanging out with the kids.
This weekend is the cherry blossom festival in DC, bound to be too crowded for my taste, plus we are expecting rain. If we can survive this, maybe we have a shot at making it in a temporary lodge in Okinawa suffering from jet lag.