Christmas (yes, I know it's March)

Almost as soon as the hub came home with the news of our impending, speedy move to Australia, Christmas became a worry. I didn't want to have Christmas in a house that was for sale and really no longer our home. I had already decided that I wouldn't put up any Christmas decorations. I knew that I did not want to be in our new rental house in Brisbane with our suitcases and sad rental furniture. We toyed with the idea of Sydney and I had thoughts of Christmas music and the famous opera house, but that also seemed like a big gamble. What is the hotel wasn't nice and navigating a new city during a holiday can be stressful. So we ended up deciding to spend an extra week in Los Angeles (we already had to fly through there) and going to Disneyland. It seemed like a really good idea to spend a week at the "happiest place on earth."

The week leading up to our departure flew by. The girls were still in school. I was still teaching, grading papers, and giving finals. The hub was doing the work for 2 jobs. The house was for sale. And the amount of arrangements seemed overwhelming at best. The movers came. A crew of 8 packed our house. And even though everything was labeled and separated into: air, ocean, and storage. I knew then that there would be problems. They loaded the truck the next day. I remember walking through my empty house feeling sad. We bought that house to raise our kids in. We planted a garden, painted walls, remodeled, built a pool, and put down roots. It was tough to leave. Friday night our friends hosted a goodbye open house. It was a great night. We all felt so loved, but it was also so sad. We drove back to the hotel in the rain and I remember thinking how lucky we were to be so loved in Texas and to have so many people love and care about our children. I prayed then and continue to do so that those friends will still love us and ours when we come back to Cypress.

We turned in rental cars, ate one more time at our favorite restaurant and flew to LA. We made quite a scene walking through the airport and catching the shuttle to the hotel with our 11 suitcases and 5 carry-ons. I found myself apologising to random strangers. "So sorry, we have so much stuff. We are moving to Australia." We arrived in the middle of a record rain storm. It rained and rained and rained some more. But we just bought plastic Disney ponchos and baseball hats and tried to make the best of it. My dad met us on Christmas Eve as a big surprise for the girls. We ate a fun dinner in the park with him and dried our clothes in the hotel laundry that night. It was a silly Christmas Eve. In spite of the disruption though we continued to do our Christmas advent. The girls opened pajamas and we read our traditional stories. The next morning we opened presents. (A big thank you to T for getting me organized and helping me create the Christmas suitcase. My dear friend helped me think of small flat gifts I could pack and activities we could do to make Christmas in a hotel between homes feel like Christmas.) We had Christmas breakfast at the Carnation Cafe on Main Street in Disney. It was a great day. It was a Christmas that we will all remember.

The next day was spent in the Qantas lounge in LAX waiting for our flight to Brisbane.