Countdown to...

There are many countdowns in life.  Countdown to when school starts, countdown to when school ends, countdown to when baby is born, countdown to first day on the job, etc.

There are a few countdowns I haven't looked forward to in the last few months. Countdown to the day my store would close. Countdown to having to have everything packed.  Countdown of the amount of people I had to say goodbye to before leaving.  Countdown to leaving my home, town, state, and country for a new place - even if I have always wanted to go to Australia.

There are some countdowns in the last few months I was happy to see. The countdown to our first anniversary of the bookstore.  Countdown to Harry Potter 7. Countdown to a very long and enjoyable Christmas break. Countdown to Fiji.  Countdown to birthdays.  Countdown to the last day we'd have to search for houses. Countdown to the day we got to stop walking a long way to the bus and back home(only about 10 minutes but I was always pushing a stroller with two kids in it and at least one bag!). Countdown to no more broken elevators and NO MORE TEMPORARY HOUSING!!!

 There are a few more countdowns going on. One for the last day of the old school. One for the first day of the new school. One for us to finally get settled. And for me, one for the day I go home to my home, city, state and country. Because while I'm in love with being here, and while I've enjoyed getting to know the people, I miss home.  My kids agree. 1379 days, in case you were wondering. It was easy to look up because apparently that's Great Lent that year... Hmmm... maybe I'll go by months. 45 months. Or 3 years and 9 months. :)  I would do minutes but that would just be sad.

Where was I again?  Oh yes, countdowns.  My favorite one is the fact that in less than 12 hours I will check out of this apartment and move into a good sized house.  There are a few issues with it that will hopefully get ironed out as we go (like only one burner working on the stove) but my kids are thrilled, Steve is thrilled and I think I'm thrilled. I'm not sure yet. I'm happy to be out of this apartment. And I'm happy to be able to move on with life.  But I still feel stuck.  It could possibly that countdown I mentioned in the paragraph above.

Life has continuously been crazy.  Crazy weather, trees falling down in my grandma's yard (luckily it went away from the house), children getting hit by cars.  Yep, Ethan decided to throw that one into the mix.   And if I didn't believe in angels before, I certainly do now.  I KNOW someone protected my little boy because, by how fast the car was going (rather slow), and the time it took for my boy to get to the road, he should have been hit head on. But somehow he only got clipped by the back of the car and he was fine.  My little boy was fine.  It was hard to figure out how I was going to text Steve to tell him as I was sitting in the police car of the officer that actually hit him.   We went to the hospital where we waited in the ER (Or the ED here) for 4 hours before being told he was fine. I was still a little concerned until we got home and he ran all over the house.  And was jumping on couches by the next day.  One TINY bruise and there is no other evidence that anything happened.

Steve wanted me to put what I actually texted him in here. He didn't think it was very uh, sensitive or well-put. :)  "Change of plans. Ethan just got hit. He clipped his knee on the back of a cop car."  How is that not sensitive?!?!?

Anyway,  it has made our kids more cautious when we go outside.  That night I finally broke down in the middle of family prayer.   You can only 'stay strong' for so long as a mommy.  And seeing what I'd just seen was not fun.   When I told my kids how I could have lost Ethan today and that it would break my heart if I lost any of them, I had 3 others burst into tears. I was sad about that but it did help.  They each have a buddy as we walk and some of the time it works. We're still working on that part.

We have fully enjoyed getting ready for our house.  We've gotten a lot of the stuff we need to furnish the house. Well, except actual furnishings.  We have to get a few of those. But at least we have towels, pots and pans and dishes. Those count, right?  We also toured the kids' new school.  They are sooooo excited for the next school.  They're sad to leave the old one but after seeing the new one they have something to look forward to. What do I look forward to? The fact that the bus stop is right by my house and there's another one right outside the school. Yippee!!

And right now? Its a countdown to bedtime. Luckily that's only minutes away.