Moving and Christmas
As you may have noticed, I’m doing some catch-up posts. The month of December was so crazy and hectic, that it was hard to justify taking the time to sit down and write. Here is an overview of our packing/Christmas holiday.
Zach’s new job offered to pay moving expenses in the form of a bonus on his first paycheck which basically means whatever we didn’t spend we get to keep. While we were initially excited about this, we soon discovered that doing things the less expensive way means basically doing them all on our own. From the day Zach accepted the offer until our last moments in Tennessee, I spent every spare moment working on packing and preparing to move. It was a very stressful time.
We started trying to sell or give away things we didn’t want to pay to move. We sold our entertainment center and gave away our TV. We sold our kitchen table and chairs and a variety of other small things. Selling the kitchen table and chairs meant that we no longer had a place for all of us to eat together. We improvised with a folding table and moved the kid’s table and stools into the kitchen.
We gradually packed things as I found a moment here or there and occasionally with some help. On Christmas Eve, we had the Elders come over and help us pack. We packed all of the kid’s toys and much of our kitchen. I left out one pan to cook with.
After they left, I made my first meal with a limited kitchen. It was a strange thing to have your Christmas eve dinner on paper plates in a makeshift kitchen composed of leftovers cooked one at a time in my only pan.
After cleaning the kitchen we had the kids put on their PJs and then dressed them in costumes for a Nativity. We let them have a movie night instead of stories and they watched The Polar Express.
I stayed up until 1:30 AM working on my talk for Sunday as I hadn’t had much time to work on it before then.
On Christmas morning the kids were excited to see what Santa had brought. Unfortunately, he had filled their stockings with all the kinds of things that they usually only get in small supervised quantities. The kids enjoyed a festival of candy, chips, and beef sticks in the living room! When I could take the gourging on candy no more, I made them a breakfast of eggs and sausage. They didn’t eat much breakfast, but at least I tried right? 
After breakfast we were able to distract them from their stockings full of treats long enough to open some presents. We took the morning slowly, allowing them to open the present all the way and play with it for a little while without rushing on to the next gift.
Each of the kids received a can of SPAM in his or her stocking so lunch was SPAM fried in the only pan I hadn’t packed. Luckily I had made several meals ahead of time so we were able to just warm them and use my only pan for cooking vegetables to go with each meal for our remaining days at home.
Sunday morning the weather was bad, but we left extra early for church since we were both speaking. When we got there, only a few people were there. It ended up that the rest of the stake cancelled their meetings, but since we were there we decided to proceed with those who showed up. We started off with about 20 people, but by the end of the meeting we had about 50. We didn’t sing an opening, sacrament, or intermediate hymn because our numbers were so low. Zach and I both spoke and the meeting seemed to turn into a farewell for us. I felt gratitude for our experience in Tennessee and was glad that we were able to have this farewell meeting. The Bishop decided that it felt appropriate to sing a closing hymn and choose “God be with you till we meet again.â€
That meeting was the last great experience in Tennessee. The next few days were filled with worry, fear, stress, and packing. We set up a movie room in the back bedroom for the kids and tried to keep them back there as much as possible while friends from the ward helped us move all of our belongings into our moving truck. Our last night was spent sleeping on the floors in our rooms.
By the time we were ready to leave, we were worn out emotionally and physically. Luckily the three older kids were able to spend their last time in Tennessee at my cousin’s house instead of locked in a room while we cleaned. Ila, was not so lucky and she cried miserably when I couldn’t hold her while I cleaned toilets and other such things.
We picked up the kids and headed for Ohio at the end of a really long day of packing and drove through the night. We arrived safely at my parent’s house at 4:30 AM.