The Calm After the Storm

I've been contemplating doing a bit of writing more consistently than I've done in quite a while.  So, here I am breathing new life into my Blogger account.  Today I'm going to keep it relatively simple, dip my toe into the water, so to speak.  Last night and this morning I've been reflecting on the craziness of the past two weeks.  It's been one of those phases of life when a task is placed before you and you just go to work and get 'er done.

Less than a month ago we received confirmation that we would be moving to San Antonio in mid-May, despite the stop movement order currently in place for military families.  I can't remember which day we actually found out that we would be flying out of the UK on May 16, it must have been around April 25, but I can tell you that within a few days our car was shipped, movers were scheduled and flights were booked.

Movers began packing up our household goods on May 11, which, at this writing, is just 12 days ago.  When I think back over the past 12 days, I can hardly believe what our family has accomplished and experienced in such a short time.

• We've decluttered, organized, purged unwanted items from and cleaned every inch of our house in the UK.
• We've had our household goods packed up and shipped.
• We had one of our sheds burgled and lost $600 worth of tools - ironically, in spite of frequent reports of burglary in our village, in the 2 3/4 years that we lived there, we never had any problems until the night before our movers came.  
• We took a quick trip to the ER.
• Our kids completed all of their schoolwork 3 weeks early so that they could get credit for the semester even though they were leaving early.
• The kids completed a total of 5 AP exams, 1 of which was taken in a hotel room on RAF Lakenheath, 1 taken in a hotel room in London, and 3 taken in an Airbnb in San Antonio.
• We spent a very long day - approximately 24 hours from the time we woke up until the time we went to bed - traveling from London to San Antonio.
• We've bought a new truck and started the process of putting down roots in San Antonio.
• And I have to add, we've done all of this in the midst of a global pandemic.

Life has come at us so fast recently that I look back and feel like we've had a year's worth of experiences in just a couple of weeks - or at least a few month's worth of experiences!  Although our 14 days of quarantine hasn't been as strict as we thought it might be, we are laying low for the most part.  And let me say, after the last few weeks, I'm very much enjoying the calm after the storm.