Kate's Wish: Witches, turkeys, and transition

Since my last post, we've celebrated two holidays and moved mountains...or at least mountains of furniture, boxes, and all the stuff you can think of that a family of seven could possibly accumulate under one roof. It's been an exhausting and challenging month but we all survived. Here's an update on our family adventures.

Due to renovation delays, we didn't get moved in time for Halloween but we celebrated in our new house anyway. Craig and I moved our big TV and some living room furniture and the kids and I decorated our mostly vacant new house so that it looked truly spooky. Craig and I greeted trick or treaters in our new location while our 5 kids went door to door with friends. When the kids were done hauling in their candy, we ate Chinese takeout and watched a Halloween movie together. It was a nice evening, the calm before the storm of moving in earnest the following week.

Our lovely new living room

Craig took the week after Halloween off and we worked like dogs to pack up and move everything. Several of our good friends pitched in to help with both moving things from the old house and helping us set up furniture in the new place. Their assistance was invaluable...moving 7 people and 12 years worth of accumulated possessions turned out to be a daunting task! We called in a local mover to truck our piano and the biggest pieces of our furniture to the new house; I also asked them to pack up and move most of the things in the basement, a worthwhile investment since Craig had to return to work and I was on my own at that point. It took the movers 2 days to get it all done but it went well...until we found out that our queen adjustable bed wouldn't fit up the narrow stairs to our new bedroom. The only way to get our bed (and its electronic innards) upstairs would be to take out a window on the second floor and hoist it through the opening...so that's just what we did. Craig and I have been sleeping on a mattress on the floor until today when the movers returned with a crane which lifted our very heavy bed to the window. It took 2 crane operators and 3 moving guys to maneuver the bed up and through the window safely. It was quite a show!

Thanksgiving was lovely, actually pretty relaxing in spite of the piles of boxes that still need to be unpacked and the renovation projects we're still working on. We watched the Macy's parade as we munched on homemade cinnamon rolls and pumpkin donuts. I roasted our turkey in my new convection oven and was shocked at how fast it cooked...love the new kitchen and had a lot of fun puttering in it at a leisurely pace all day. The kids loved the results; I made borscht and plov, two favorite comfort foods for my kids from Kazakhstan, which provided a nice lunch while the main meal (turkey and all the trimmings) was cooking. As we sat down to eat, we asked each of the kids to tell what they were thankful for. The answers ranged from silly to serious and we had fun sharing; when it came to my turn, I said that I was most thankful for our family and our new home...especially in light of the fact that two years ago this Thanksgiving, we were feverishly compiling a new dossier in 2 weeks time as a part of our fight to adopt Aniyar and Madiyar, unsure of our chances for success. Now here we all are, having weathered the many bumps and bruises of our adoption process and our transition as a family, not to mention the drama related to getting this house. We really do
have so much to be thankful for!