So try as we might, we were unsuccessful at stopping the progression of time and suddenly we find ourselves fully within the month of June. How. did. that. happen. All throughout the months of April and May I was fooling myself that I was ready for June. For with the month of June comes another word: MOVE. YUCK!!!! I must start this entry with a disclaimer. Some of my funniest pictures were mysteriously removed from my phone. I say removed because the word "deleted" is too mundane to adequately described what happened. But that comes later and I don't want to ruin the surprise.
So back to the beginning of June we go. So I had been at it for weeks (move-prep, that is). Trying to decide what size U-Haul we would need to get back to Swansboro with most of our stuff. I say most, because some bigger items were destined to be left behind in Jamestown. So I went on line and got the dimensions of several trailers and recreated them in 3D in our basement. Below is the classic 4'x8' trailer. The long piece of green painters tape dangling from the ceiling is the inside height indicator. This is after several days of culling of clothes and it is NO WHERE big enough to fit what isn't shown in this picture. So I made some modifications to the outlines and voila - a 4'x9' trailer. Sadly, it too will not be big enough. So on we move to the behemoth, the 6'x12'. Certainly it would be large enough to hold all our stuff and then some! I can't show you that representation because shortly after this picture was taken the first tropical weather system of 2013 came out of nowhere and FLOODED my basement. All my carefully stacked boxes ended up in a gooey sopping wet pile. SIGH.
I had to start over.
I will admit, It took several days for me to be up for the undertaking.
Oh well, if I have learned nothing else in the almost 10 years of being a military spouse, I did know how to get some new boxes which I was now in desperate need of. Moving on...
I totally blanked on Ben's gymnastics display last month. He did a wonderful job and I have some pretty good pictures of it somewhere on my computer. However, as I type this on my iPad mini with a teeny tiny keyboard, I do not have access to any of them. So you will have to take my word on it. He was IMPRESSIVE!
I do however have several pictures of him on the baseball field. I am not going to subject you to any more of those however. One baseball picture is enough and we covered that in May. So if you missed it, you can back track.
Since I can't go backwards, I will attempt to make up for that gaffe with several mentions of what Ben did this month. First up is his graduation from Pre-school. TWICE! He attended two different programs and so therefore he got to have two different graduations. Although one was called a celebration and it wasn't really anything like I had ever seen before so maybe he really only had one graduation after all. The Celebration required the children to create a hat. The teachers had been requesting parents to volunteer with the creation of these hats so I decided why not. The hats themselves were made out of tie-dyed tissue paper that had been molded to fit the child's head. To me it look A LOT like something you would see on a Mardi Gradi float. He wanted to make it into the shape of a shark complete with feathery gills and a mouth full of teeth. I talked him out of the teeth, and added a fish and a thresher tail. He was pretty excited. Still looks very Mardi Gardi-ish to me! I burned my hand with the hot glue gun several times so he better be happy with it or suffer in silence.
Ok, then we have a couple of weeks of baseball, baseball, baseball; a tiny bit of gymnastics and of course wrapping up school. Then this happens!
OUCH!!! Yes, that is my hand! And YES, it hurt like the devil. That is what happens when you play basketball on the street with your 8 year old and your 5 year old and you are winning. The glass of wine probably didn't help, but let's face it -- the wine is what got me out there in the first place. Lilly swears Ben tripped me, but I can honestly say I have zero recollection of what happened. I was upright, dribbling and BAM! Next thing I know I am picking myself up off the cement with a bloody, gravel-caked palm. This picture is after I had cried like a baby in the shower.
Suck it up Grayson!! You are alone in Rhode Island and the end of school is in sight. You do NOT have time for a pity party.
I never know what to do for the end of school presents for the teachers. I mean it is tooo close to Teacher Appreciation week, and I am NOT that creative to come up with 2 awesome things within that close of a time frame. I'm sorry, I am just not.
Two of the classes decided on a group present so I just had to chip in $$ (got to say I am loving this option). Lilly's class had a unique situation in that her teacher had had a baby in May so currently they had a substitute. I didn't want to leave anyone out so I turned to Pinterest for a solution: a beach bucket!
Hopefully everyone who received one was happy with what they got! If they didn't, well we are moving so I won't know the difference! Hee Hee
Suddenly it is the last day of school!! I had taken a picture of the first day of school, so of course I had to get a picture of the last day of school! I would have to go back and look, but I am pretty sure the girls had on the same coats! That will NOT be the case in Florida!
Ok, so it is the last day of school and for Ben that means he is BUSY! First up is his "celebration." It was rather bizarre. Which pretty much sums up our experience with that particular pre-school experience. Please don't take that the wrong way. He TOTALLY loved his time in that program it just was not your typical experience. Here he is with some of his Besties. They are a wonderful group of children and hopefully Ben will have made friends for LIFE!
After a quick trip to pick Daddy up from the airport we head to where else - the BASEBALL FIELD! Lilly had her final game. Unfortunately, it was running long and we needed to get to Ben's second graduation ceremony so we rushed up the street. Thankfully everything in Jamestown is pretty much just down the street so we weren't late. Ben was super super excited to be graduating from pre-school and heading to real school in August. His teacher said he was beyond ready for Kindergarten so hopefully she is right!
So we finished up school, baseball, gymnastics and Girl Scouts. The only thing left to do was to pack up the U-Haul and go have Spinnaker's ice cream one last time.
One of our neighbors, who we didn't have the pleasure of getting to know until we moved to the small house across the street (I mean literally ACROSS THE STREET! I really missed out) had a dog that we had "rescued" multiple times throughout the year when she would get out and make a bee-line to our house. They repaid the kindness with a gift certificate to a local ice cream place. I told you they were AWESOME! So there was NO WAY we weren't going to cash that in!!
Ok, so here is when we start panicking about how much stuff we have and Jim calls me a Hoarder and I tell him to look in a mirror and that goes on for several tense minutes. We start shedding miscellaneous big things that we "no longer need." Some things are truly in that category and some things will only be replaced once we arrive in Miami. In true Wellons style, things CAN NOT go according to plan. The trap door to get into the basement was stuck. So the only way to get all the boxes out of the basement was going to be to unload them all, break down the boxes, bring everything back up the narrow stairs and reload the boxes. I am not kidding!! Awesome neighbor to the rescue! He helped us "modify" the trap door (with some serious power tools) enough so we could get it open. Guess who will be sending someone a HUGE thank you note with a gift card in it?
We make it to Delaware in pretty good time to spend the night with Jim's brother John and his family, then we are off again. Destination: Swansboro. We make a lunch pit stop in Richmond to off-load the children with Jim's sister Lindley who will take them to his Mom & Dad's for a few days. So the last few hours it is just me, Jim and Oscar (the best cat EVER). Oscar is much happier without the children in the car. Sometimes I think I secretly share his opinion. SHHHHHH.
We finally get to Swansboro and we unload the trailer into a different trailer that my Daddy was able to procure for us.
Yes, it isn't much to look at. But I really really really want to keep it. My little red neck pod. I was thinking of a way I could get it to Miami and refurbish it into either a camper or perhaps a mobile guest suite quarters. Hmmm, the possibilities are endless. Wonder what the HOA in our new neighborhood would have to say about my plan.
I have been due for an upgrade on my phone since February but haven't had the time or the willingness to put myself through that torture while I was in RI. Now that I am childless for a few days it is at the top of my list of stuff to do. In retrospect, I should have waited until we got to Miami.
I go in the store and it is deserted. Right off I should have been worried. I picked out my new phone and cover and after ALL my data had been transferred to the new phone I skipped gaily out the door!! That was on Tuesday. When I woke up on Thursday, I noticed several things were wrong - horribly wrong. All my notes were gone, over 3/4 of my music was gone, pictures I had taken in the days just prior to exchanging my phone were gone. Even text messages during that same time frame were gone from my phone AND the recipient's phone. What?!? The Apple representative assured me that what I was describing was "impossible" (cue the eerie music). Whatever dude. I know what happened and you the blog reader are suffering for this loss. Sorry.
So I pick up the children a few days later and we hit the ground running with our Swansboro friends. First up is a week long visit with cousins!
Poppa Dub gave the children free reign to play on an abandoned boat, and boy did they ever!! I was considering looking into how much it would cost us to have the boat transported to Pembroke Pines. It could double as a play structure AND a guest room. Again, the threat of a HOA stopped me. I am really banking on having lots of visitors. Actually I am just dropping hints, Jim will be traveling tons and I would like to have some adult interactions.
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