Forgotten Keys & Chinese Cheese Tag

Forgotten Keys & Chinese Cheese Tag
Oct. 2nd 2008

What a title uh? Are you a bit intrigued? Yeah, me too, so here’s the story…

Today, I take the kids to school, David goes to Finance & the Bank (2 different places) to take care of some business, I return, swap laundry, go to the community center, check email, post blog and return. David has returned as well and we go to town, to see about paying a thing called “TV TAX”, yep – that’s right if you have a TV or even a computer, you have to pay a TV tax. Interesting uh? And this darn thing is 138 pounds! So $276 or so, crazy I know. Thankfully that is one of the reimbursable things for us Military families, Amen!

However, we have a slight “hiccup” we can not pay it with a check, and our debit cards have not arrived yet – so we have to get some more “Pounds cash”. So okay, that can wait a little bit. We wonder into a little store – looking for some anchors for screws – so when we put our home together this weekend we have them. No luck on finding them, but we did find plastic spoons for the kid’s lunchboxes, as well as little containers for their fruit. Then we go to the “grocery store” and buy more fruit – we have eaten & the kids have eaten so much fruit! We’re going to spend a lot of money on fruit – but you know there are worse things to spend it on and at least this taste good!

After that, we go to see about renting David a car – there are no cars there – their all rented. Luckily, though some were being returned and there would be one available later. So we go back to our room and start packing some things up and haul them down to the car. We had to buy a large trash can so that we had something to put our trash in – there isn’t one at the house, apparently you just put it in garbage bags, tie them shut, and set it out front the night before your pick up date. Interesting uh?

Due to the large trash can, we could not haul it or the kids at the same time. So we load as much as we can in the car, even put Brier’s suitcase inside the trash can to utilize that room as well. After that we walked over to the post office to get the mail – nobody has sent me any fuzzy socks yet…Mom? haha

Then we walked over to the BX to get the kids something special for being good and doing such a great job with all this moving stuff. Know what we got? Paddington Bear! We got two little Paddington Bears, a larger story book for Ashlynn (like a collection of stories), and 2 small story books for Brier. We are going to put them in their window seals tomorrow – so they’ll be there when they get home from school. It will be a nice surprise as they have wanted them since we arrived.

They really have done a wonderful job with this big move. They’ve gotten on each other’s nerves these last 2 weeks, but for the most part they’ve done amazing for being shuffled from place to place, then stuck on a plane for 9 hours, and stuck in a hotel suite for 3 weeks! These two have really been well behaved and tolerant of it all. I’m very impressed – it could have been much worse.

Next, I talked to Mom on the phone for a while…I’m praying for you Mom, all of you, and I love you.

Then we left to get to the house and drop off everything we’d loaded up, before we go get the kids. Just one little “hiccup”, about half way there, David realizes he left the house keys in the hotel room! Great!! We didn’t have time to go back and get them, or a way to unload the car really. So we get to the house and unload the trash can – in a secluded area, with Brier’s suitcase inside it. We are praying that nobody decides to steal little boy’s clothes! What else could we do?

Now, we go pick up the kids…they’ve had a good day and they’re telling us all about it. One part however was not so good…they both had outdoor gym class today, and apparently nearly froze! They have to change into gym clothes and those are shorts/t-shirts…it was too cold outside for that…but that’s what everybody wore. So it looks like we also have to send them “jogging pants and sweat shirts” for outdoor gym days.

Brier was telling us how he tied his shoes all by himself, but they kept coming untied, and he was “timed out” to tie his shoe, but the other kid tagged him, and he got froze. I said froze why did you get froze? “Cause we was playing Chinese Cheese Tag” aka Chinese Freeze Tag! It was so funny – we were all laughing and Brier has decided he’d rather call it “Chinese Cheese Tag”, I guess it sounds better to him.

…now off to the car rental place we go yet again, and as we’re driving down the road in which it is located you hear Brier say, “ah man, I know where were going. I’m tired of going here.” And Ashlynn, says “Where we going?” Brier replies, “To the car place again” and Ashlynn said, “Why do we always go here after school!!!” Needless to say they’re sick of seeing Doug too.

Thankfully, we were able to just leave David there and come back to the room, where we sat and sat and sat and waited for him to return. About 20 minutes before his return though – Amanda showed up to see if we wanted to go down to the park and play with her son Avery. Of course both kids did, but Ashlynn’s pants were in the dryer and I wouldn’t let her wear her uniform outside – cause she needs to wear it tomorrow.

So we visit for awhile, David goes and gets us some pizza, Amanda & Avery leave, we eat, do Brier’s homework, and then go out to the Park to play with Avery. We were probably out there for I don’t know 45 minutes or so – it’s cold, but they enjoyed their time a lot, plus they got to come in and take nice warm baths.

After that Ashlynn chatted with me for a while about tomorrow, our things being delivered, having our stuff again, being able to run in the back yard, and on and on and on. We’re all more than ready to be “home”. Tomorrow starts the beginning of a busy weekend and so I end this blog tonight with these words from my daughter as she put it best…

“Tomorrow, I can finally say…HOME, SWEET HOME” (now sigh really loud!!!)

~T~