EARLY START

This morning I woke up early and laid in bed for two hours trying to go back to sleep---didn't happen---I just continued to get more and more anxious. So I jumped out of bed and went to work. I have now read all of my mail and completed all of the things that were outstanding and needed completion today so maybe the anxious feeling (night sweats) will go away....or maybe they aren't related to work and the anxious feelings will get worse as the day goes on.

We started packing the kids stuff yesterday to get them ready to go home. I went dumpster diving behind the stores in town to find enough boxes to pack their belongings. After most of the day packing Inklings remarked that we probably won't have enough room in the truck to get all their stuff home. It is amazing how much stuff they have accumulated in the seven months we have had them. It WILL all fit in the truck but it will be piled pretty high. Whenever you have things piled high you have to be careful that you tie them down well to keep them from tipping out of the truck. I am truly not looking forward to the trip tomorrow to take them home.

I checked the weather for tomorrow a few minutes ago and we should have a pretty good day. With all of the snow and ice on the roads we will have to cover the kids stuff with a tarp to keep it dry but other than that it should be an easy trip. We will take the truck and the kids van over and come back in just the truck. It will seem very strange to not have two vehicles at the house. TG hated having the kids at the house but she's going to hate more not having OUR car at school. We let her take it because anywhere we needed a car we had to take the van to have enough seat belts for all the kids. Now it will be just the two of us.

As I have been typing this I have been thinking about all the things we'll have to do after the kids are gone. It will probably take us several days to clean all of the carpets in the house. I have to finish the repair of the wall that one of them pushed through with his foot while trying to push the couch out so he could get toys from under it. I have decided I need to just replace all of the toilet seats because they are getting bad and it is easier to replace them than to fix them. We need to replace the water softener---it has started to leak and we probably have some wall problems caused by the leak---oh joy. We need to replace two bathroom floors with tile. We need to replace the kitchen carpet---it is amazing to me how much damage has been done in the kitchen in the last seven months. This is just a start of what needs to be fixed but as you can see the house took a beating. Maybe this list is what caused the night sweats---