Our last days in Sumter, SC

my sleepy boys

At the moment, I'm taking a much needed break from packing.  You'd think it would be easy since we are all shoved into a hotel room, but noooo!  Of course not!  I'm so tired and I know that I still have like 3-4 hrs before I'm ready or as ready as I can be.  Chris is doing his best to help, but packing is not his thing.  So we've been talking and planning and watching whatever is on the TV.  I'm so nervous about all these changes.

Chris said goodbye to work with a great farewell lunch at Logan's Roadhouse (my favorite).  It's one of those things that everyone gets to do and the whole flight or unit or group or whatever get to go out to eat and have a good bye to the guys leaving.  It's also one of the few times that the whole gang gets on just one person's case to make fun, laugh, and wish well.  There were lots of funny jokes and embarrassing moments to be relived.  I got to hear a lot about Chris, nothing I didn't know, but it's always fun to hear what goes on at work and how others perceive my husband.  He's a great guy and the camaraderie that was shown really said that the guys he worked with agreed.  His Commanding Officer even flew in special to be there for the farewell. He was such a great mentor for Chris and a good person for me to trust with my husband.  Chris got a beautiful display with an American Eagle and a glass plate that had his service and his well earned nickname Lt. Christopher "Bow Down" Fosburg.  If you want to know about that though, you'll have to ask him yourself.  It makes me wonder what his next nickname will be!

As far as our house was concerned we still had a ton of work to do.  We hired the fantastic handyman from our realtor's company (he came out several times while we lived here) to fix the holes in our walls and repaint the house.  Earl did an amazing job.  I wish we could take him with us.  When he found out where we were moving to he wished the same thing.  He is also the guy who is raising his granddaughter.  She came to play several times over the course of the last two years.

Anyway, so after Earl did his thing, we did ours.  We cleaned that house until it looked like we'd never been there.  Chris and I both have a thing about cleaning: do it right the first time.  I know my Grandpa Nix is reading this where he is and thinking "FINALLY, she got it!"  So we spent three days scrubbing that house; the cupboards, the floors, the appliances, everything!  I hate this part of the moving process. It's back breaking work, but we did get our full deposit back which went right into our car fund for Hawaii.  By the time we had Carol from Svetlik check us out the kids had gone through their bubbles, chalk, outside toys, snacks, drinks and anything else we were able to come up with to occupy them.

Our kids loved to draw with chalk outside on the patio.  I didn't have the heart to clean it off before we checked out.  I just took pictures of all the creativity.  You can tell we enjoyed our time here!

Lizzy had just started getting into the drawing thing.  Most of her drawings looked like the chalk got stuck in a tornado!

Eve was very proud of her girl

See?  We were responsible and filled the hole our children made.  Every time someone came to visit for the first time they would ask if we had a dog.  We would just smile and say no, we have four little puppies who like to dig.

This is also the same week we finally said good bye to our Sumter home on Peppercorn Lane.  It was a great yard - I mean, REALLY great yard.  We are sooooo going to miss our swing set and all the freedom.  I'm not going to miss the lack of fencing or the icky wall paper.  But it was a great home for us and our first house in general.  Hope we get to do more of that at some point.

Little Lizzy Swings

ally kisses!

So of course we got to spend Father's Day in the hotel and it was kind of cool.  There wasn't any big favorite dinner or anything, but we still sang to daddy and got him some fun gifts.  We also went to church for the last time and I got a cute picture with some of my girl friends.  When I first moved to Sumter I couldn't imagine having such a hard time leaving, but now I know I'll miss it a lot.  It's become home.  So many good friends and growing experiences.

I also had my last dr appt after the baby.  No more pre or post natal anything!!!  Super happy about that, though I'm sure a Hawaiian baby would've been fun.

So the rest of this post is just going to pictures.  Pictures of our home, our friends and our last FHE with the Perkins family.  We had so much fun with them.  We love you Michael, Diantha, Lexi, Colleen, Savannah, Michael Jr, and Faith.  Hope we see you again sometime!

With our kids we had fun even before we got to the pool!  Ally was bouncing on the bed and made these silly faces.  Guess it's time for some barrettes!

there she is - so adorable

hangin' out in the hotel before FHE

I love taking videos.  In this one you get to see Chris teaching the kids to swim.  I love how involved Chris is with the kids.  Not every dad is like that.  So lucky!

We had such a great time playing in the water.  Sometimes I forget how many kids I have so young.  They feel old to me.  Then we go to an activity like swimming and I realize that only Eve can swim by herself.  Joe wears the wings, Lizzy and Ally are both in floats and V can't even go in chlorinated water yet!  It's so funny.  They seem older than they are when we're doing other things!

no sweetie, we wear the goggles we don't eat them

 pretty little girl

 peek-a-boo

 surveying the pool 

 floatie twins

 my water babies

My kids so love the water.  When we had to move hotels I was pleasantly surprised by the use of a pool.  Living in South Carolina we didn't do a lot of pools, but there were a few.  This was a nice way to get out the wigglies and have some close to "home" family time.

I have so many pictures of the pool.  Everything my kids did at the pool seemed cute to me.  Guess I'm biased!  I just had fun doing this.  We were so busy this last two weeks that a chance to just relax and have fun was a nice break and a great way to say goodbye to Sumter.

 more swimming fun

 my little V - he loved the pool - see?

 Michael and little Faith

 everyone at the pool

 there's my boy

 smiling for the camera! (just not mine)

 Jr and Ally

 Lizzy and D

 Every time we had FHE it felt like we had a whole primary with us.  Each family had five by the time we left and boy were we busy.  Needless to say, we all became very adept at FHE's for little ones.  The Perkins family has kids more spread out, but they are all as crazy and silly and fun as our kids.

 Top down: Michael Sr., Miss D and Lexi, Colleen and Evie and Savannah, Joseph and Jr., Lizzy, Faith and V in the car seats, Chris and Ally.

 Chris was very sweet and made sure we even took a picture with the resident photographer.  See I was there too!

 my South Carolina best friend - Miss Diantha or D as I call her

AAAAHHHHHH!

Okay so I know that moving is stressful and with five kids under 7 yrs old even more so, but for heaven's sakes!

had to put something great at the beginning!

So we move out of TLF on time with all our clean laundry and our van full of kids and stuff and it's hot and lunch time, but no problem right?  Totally wrong!  We get to our booked hotel and find that our room is not what we were promised.  It's totally too small for a family of seven!  I was a bit frustrated, but you know, what can you do?  So Chris goes down to the front desk to discuss the issue and they're booked due to a conference or something.  So we move all our stuff back to the van and sit the kids back in their car seats.  Then Chris goes out to try to find us a workable hotel room.  I'm praying hard for something, anything that could work for us.  We have several more days in town still and I need a place for us to come down from the craziness.  So Chris does his thing and wow, he's amazing!  He looked at several hotels and was able to find us a good one.  The room was big enough for all 7 of us including a place for the pac n' play for V and Ally.  The place had two queens and a tv with a pull out couch, table and at least a little fridge.  No more cooking for me, I guess.  At least it does have a great continental breakfast!

  my sleepy little ones - Evie, Lizzy, and V

Well they are now moving all our stuff into the crates now.  I'm a little sad to see the house so empty again.  It's been a while.  Anyway, the babysitting is done now so my kids are with me all the time.  And guess what?  We got lucky!  Our next door neighbor bought Chris' car!  We are so happy that we got a decent deal on it.  Everything goes into our next car in Hawaii.  The kids hung out on the floor and ran around the empty house.  They enjoyed the openness and freedom.  I enjoyed not having to put kids in time out because there was nothing to jump on, break, or clean up!

 V loves to move, all he does is sleep!  I would love moving too.

 love my dvd player and my cute kids

moving tip: let them catch a nap where they can and however they can!

When we PCS (permanent change of station), we have two kinds of moves at the same time.  The previous pix showed the big moving with several packers and lots of stuff.  The second move is the Unaccompanied moving.  This is the stuff that usually arrives first and can make life a lot easier for the few weeks to months it can take to get your stuff depending on your new location.  This kind man moved our video games, pillows, kids toys (a necessity), and a few other things in a smaller truck.  He was very nice.

And now my house of three years is empty.  The rooms aren't personalized anymore and the kitchen has lost its warmth.  Seeing the house this way has made it easier to be excited about moving somewhere new.  Now is the hard part.  We have to clean to get our deposit back.  I hope Hawaii is better.  We are planning on living on base.  No Realtors, no deposits, no lots of stuff.  I'll let you know how it goes.

 can't decide if this makes him look smaller or the room look bigger

 Ally's checking out her new little brother

my handsome honey!

Wish us luck!  Now to the cleaning phase!  We're almost there.