Boxes lined the halls in our house like guards keeping us from entering certain rooms. Closets and drawers lay barren stripped of the clothes that kept them warm for many years. Packing our house to move was exciting and even exhilarating when we started, but feelings have changed.

The packing was timed to end right as the moving truck pulled up to our house to gather our belongings and deposit us at our new location, but true to life… the plans got changed…

Wood was back-ordered by a week. Cabinets took longer to build than anticipated. Little (and big) house details slowed the process at the new location and moved the anticipated moving date, making our packed house feel like a warehouse we are hanging out in.

Needless to say, we had been digging through boxes for…

…cooking utensils, swimming pool gear, panties…living in a temporary, unsettled, unnerving sort of way, in my opinion.

The younger kids saw the whole ordeal as a grand adventure, though. They’ve heroically climbed Mt.Box. They’ve hidden behind rows of brown cardboard storage containers in games of hide and seek. And let’s not forget the tunnels they’ve built with the empty ones. Or the really cute games of pushing the boxes around the tile like a choo-choo train, so it’s always a mystery which box holds the essentials.

During this time of waiting, one of our dogs has given birth to six puppies IN A BOX, and our other dog has taken up napping residence in his own brown cardboard casa. We are truly a picture of Family Circus right now and the kids are LOVING IT!

What’s the big moving and unpacking hurry? They wonder.

One day, (hopefully soon) we’ll be settled and unpacked in our new home where I can get us back in the rhythm of the routine that hums normal to this mama…the routine of KNOWING where to find each person’s underwear, and where the bowls are kept, and where to find those elusive Band-Aids.

I’m ready for this new beginning to take place. But isn’t it true to life that when a new beginning is around the corner, the last home stretch lengthens days into weeks and weeks into months? Do you remember the home stretch before your own move, graduation, wedding, or birth?

L. O. N. G.

But such is life in our family. Never a dull moment…only one big adventurous journey of new beginnings, however slow they may be in coming.

So how’s your summer fairing?