Extreem Nesting

My mom has this story she likes to tell about me and my sister Lindsey.  When we were little we would play "store."  We each would set up a little store front with things to buy and our mom would come be our customer.  She would go to Lindsey's store first.  Lindsey would be sitting like a little lady at the check out counter. She would help my mom pick out things to buy, tell her the prices, ring her up, and take her money and make change.  Then my mom would come to my store.  No one would be there.  Instead I was always working on something to try to expand the size of the store.

I have very few memories of playing "house."  I never had the patience for it.  Instead I built houses.  I was, and still am, an expert house builder.  I perfected the blanket house during winter months.  During the summer I built houses outside using random boards and old chairs.  As soon as I was done with one house I'd start fiddling around with it to try to make it bigger and better.  Every few days I'd tear the whole thing down and move it to a new location and try again.  Once there was a huge windstorm.  Several real houses in the neighborhood lost shingles.  But my little house, put together without any nails, didn't fall over.  A few side boards fell down, but the roof stayed on.  My mom said that if there ever was a natural disaster I was in charge of providing shelter.

I never lost the itch to make where I live better.  My second year of college I rearranged my dorm room every other month or so.  The year I met Brandon I moved 5 times.  In the almost 9 years since moving out of my parents house I've never lived anywhere longer than 2 years.  I don't have any desire to settle down and buy a house yet, but when I do it will have to be a project house.

With that preface it should make perfect sense that even though I'm almost 35 weeks pregnant I've decided to move . . . .downstairs.

Why are we going through all the hassle of  moving just to go one level down and two apts over?  Well I'll show you.  Take a look at these stairs that I have to navigate every time I want to leave my apartment.  Now remember I have twins.  Twins that are walking.  Twins that can't navigate stairs very well. Twins that like to walk out the door with me, and then run around on the landing until I catch them both, and carry them BOTH down the stairs.  And if that isn't a fun enough mental picture you should remember that I'm having another baby really soon.

So that is why we are moving. When we first rented this apartment we didn't know I was pregnant.  Otherwise we would have picked a ground level apartment from the start.   I figure a week and a half of hassle is worth it for at least a year of stair free life.  Plus it's giving us a chance to go through some of our stuff. And we get to rearrange the bedrooms again.

Last Saturday we started packing.  The girls loved playing with the empty boxes.

 Here is Charlotte helping my friend Steffani pack.  We packed mostly non-essential stuff like DVD's and books.

 This week I'll gradually get everything else packed up.  Here is my rough plan for the week.

 The girls are loving all the boxes that they can play with.

And here is a sneak peak of our new apartment.  It's the lower one on the right.  I'm so excited for the trees that will be right out side out back door.  I'm also really excited about the back door.  I can hardly imagine opening up the door and letting the girls run out without worrying about them falling down the stairs.

Of course I am almost 35 weeks pregnant so I'm relying on other people to help me out.  You are welcome to join in.  Friday at 10:00 we will be getting the new apartment ready to move into (light cleaning, putting contact paper on the shelves, installing child-locks, etc.) and cleaning the old apartment.  Saturday at 10:00 we'll do the big move.  And next week we'll be unpacking.  Contact me if you need my address.