"Challenge..."

I have felt the last few days that I am on the other end of John Travolta in the movie "Michael" when he sees the bull in the field and yells "Challenge..." This past week has truly tested my patience, my scheduling ability, my adaptability to change, and my will to persevere.

Sometime ago my husband's brother was offered a place to stay with us when ever he was ready to get his life together and make a fresh start. We have all had our challenges in life and sometimes all we need to get back on our feet is that encouraging voice of a brother or sister to keep us on the right path (no offense parents, but sometimes we have to leave some things to the siblings) to improving our own situation. Many things changed in his world and he decided that now was the time to move out West and take us up on the offer. Like always when you try to make something happen fast, it slows down even more. His scheduled Monday evening departure turned into a rushed Wednesday evening departure. Now this alone was not the source of all the stress in my world, that was the good part. John was on the road!

In the move we had to leave a few things behind because they are very time sensitive when it comes to moving...65 fish and 2 fish tanks! You might say that this is not such a big thing to leave behind, they are just fish. Well some of them are "just fish" (not to my hubby they are dear friends who are always glad to see him come home and who have even started breading which goes to show how good he is at keeping fish) and you should throw them in a cooler and drive. This would be true for small fish however our fish live in a 500 gallon tank that is 6 feet tall and 8 feet wide weighing well over 2000 pounds. Before we moved to Las Vegas, we had scheduled to go back to Globe in the middle of August to get the tanks. Last week was that week and so the trek began.

I called my childhood friend to come watch the kids, but that is not exactly what happened. Somehow she convinced me that bringing all the kids (5 kids with all ours combined and the dog) so that mine could see Nana again and hers could see Arizona would be a better idea than her staying at my house with all the kids. With the stress of my brother in law not having arrived in Las Vegas by the time we were supposed to leave, I gave in. We loaded my Routan with all the kids, the dog, food, and lots of blankets and pillows. We attached a small trailer to the back with all the luggage and the items needed to transport the fish home, and at 4:30pm on Thursday we left Vegas. Now we had to leave in the evening, because my mother was flying in from NYC as her first stint as a Carnival Cruise lines physician was finished and she needed a ride home from the airport. As we were driving she messaged and said that they were delayed due to weather. So that meant (since I was surprising her with grandkids now) that I had to stall. So decided to stop at the Hoover Dam. We walked the kids up to the new bypass bridge so they could look down on the dam, then drove over the dam. For some of the kids you could see the shear boredom in their eyes, but hay they were going to have fun, I was in charge!

We got back in the car and headed for Phoenix. We did manage to get to the airport just in time to get inside, surprise my mom, grab her bags, and get back in the car before Midnight. The 2 hour drive from the airport to the old house was nice as we all caught up and tried to stay awake. We got to the old house, unloaded the stack of sleeping kids from the back of the van. Inflated the air beds and crashed. If I had known at that moment that this would be the last ounce of sleep for a few days, I would have made sure my air bed did not have a LEAK in it!

The sun came up and so did my son. Mom and I headed to the grocery store, grabbed some food for the pack of crazy kids and began running the errands needed to get the tanks moved. We drove back to Phoenix to get the truck, drove back to Globe to get the dollies, had my husband calling desperately calling to get bodies to help lift the tank because he was stuck in Las Vegas with cameras down at work and a brother that was still behind schedule. We began tearing the first tank down at 4:00pm, with the help of my oldest kids and 5 guys who were crazy enough to say they would help, we had the first tank loaded in the truck by 7:30pm.

We headed up to the house to tear down the smaller tank, load the truck with the other items that were left at the house and at Midnight we loaded up the van with kids, the truck was loaded with fish and we set out for Las Vegas. Now because I was driving a 12ft Penske truck filled with 2 very large fish tanks (2000 pounds) 65 fish and water (1000 pounds) all the rock, decorations, and other items from our house (1000 pounds) I could not get that truck to stay above 65mph especially if we were going up hill at all. We pushed through as hard as we could, stopping at each major town to get out and stretch. As the sun came up we were just getting to the AZ state line. We crossed the Hoover Dam at 7:00am and pulled in the drive way at 8:00am to unload. Luckily there were 5 guys here in Las Vegas to help unload. I HATE that unloading is always faster than loading!!! In 35 minutes they had the entire truck unloaded, the tank ready for fish and water, and were gone. That took me over 6 hours to load the day before!!! The kids put their suits back on, climbed back inside and began the process of setting up the tank. By 11:30am we had the tank up and fish in their new home! The great news is that we only lost 3 fish in the move and they were not the expensive ones!!!

At this point in time I could no longer keep my eyes open, I took a shower and climbed into bed for some well deserved rest. The kids and Thom spent the afternoon setting up all the filters, feeding the fish and enjoying the new addition to the front room. Late that afternoon the last new addition to the house arrived, John had finally made it to Las Vegas.

Now that everyone was here, and the move was officially complete, we realized that we had to rearrange furniture :( So now the next step begins, move all the furniture, rearrange some rooms and wait for our next house guest to arrive. I am beginning to realize that no matter how well I plan and calendar things, they are just not going to go according to my plan, so here we go... "CHALLENGE!"