Homeless, Sweet Homeless

We had new family photos taken by a friend in Redding and I thought some of you might get a good laugh out of this pic of Aaron. It's sort of how I felt today heading back to Mammoth, haha! Here we are in the next stage of this moving process. We returned home today from a week in Redding where we enjoyed Thanksgiving with the Cannon side of the family AND an early Christmas. :) Now I am at my in-law's home listening to two different pendulum clocks tick off-beat to each other (hehe) along to the constant soft tunes playing in the background. There is a Christmas tree in every room and holiday decor from stem to stern. The kids love it! Alex is getting very excited for Christmas this year, it's really fun.

It feels so strange to be homeless now. I have to remind myself that we have a new home waiting for us in Hawaii, even if that is still somewhat temporary. Driving away from Redding for the last time in who-knows-how-long was also a strange feeling. I did pretty good, I didn't cry. The hardest thing, for me, was watching my brother and his family saying good-bye to our boys. Hopefully we will be able to come back to visit everyone in Redding next November or so with the new baby, but there are no guarantees. By then Aaron will no longer be the little snugly baby boy sucking his thumb. He will change the most, obviously. I tend to be too empathetic at times, finding myself feeling things as if I were the one experiencing a loss. So watching Cassie & Nathan snuggle with Aaron for the last time made me feel like I was the one saying good-bye to him and his babyhood. That part just sucks, there's no way around it and nothing I can do to change it. The silver lining here is that we will have a NEW baby to snuggle when we come back next time!

Alex has a very keen understanding of the process our family is going through right now and has been excellent with communicating his feelings as we take each step. He knew that living at Grandma & Grandpa Johnston's house was the last major change before actually moving to Hawaii. For a while he said he didn't want to do it, but today he took it all in stride and I think his excitement for Christmas coming soon is overshadowing his sadness over our upcoming move.

I feel like I have a lot of questions about how living with the in-laws is really going to work practically, but I'm sure things will work out. The boys go back to school in the morning and we will be back into that routine for a few weeks. I'm sure the time is going to fly by from here on out!