You're About to be Redirected to the New Home of Ground Control to Major Mom: Almost Homeless....

So here I am, sitting in an empty house. It took about 3 1/2 days, and it filled 2/3 of a 53' trailer! But it's done, and we now are living with a minimum of stuff in our house.

Folks have been asking "Why aren't you in the Transient Lodging (on base hotel, more or less)?" or "Why aren't you staying with friends?"

Several reasons. First of all, we enjoy our space. We held on to sleeping bags, cots, air mattresses and camping chairs and are doing pretty well. We kept our small TV, our Wii system, and laptop computers. We still have our WiFi going (and will until 6 hours before we leave!), so I can still come to you from our empty house.

Secondly, we know Howie does much much better when the family is with him. We could have kenneled him, but he doesn't sleep well at the kennel, and he tends to not eat. Better for Howie, for sure.

Finally, unless it was filled up, we'd have had to use Offutt AFB's lodging, which we used on our way into this assignment in July 2008. They're gracious enough to have a pet-friendly lodging room that we were able to get, but it was very small and very old. The 4 of us, plus Howie, weren't too comfortable, so we decided to save the government some money and stay in the house until we vacate it on Tuesday.

So here we are in the house. I'm down to just odds and ends...we have all utilities set to turn off later this week in our current house, and our Florida house will have utilities coming on early next week.

Enjoy some pictures from our packing up...and our life in an empty house:

I ran an errand to Kohl's to use some Kohl's cash that would expire while we were on the road. I came home and saw this ENORMOUS truck parked in front of the house. I was tickled by the map of Florida painted on!

From 2010 11 11 PCS2010

Those who were packing our boxes did a nice job stacking them neatly so we could still maneuver around.

From 2010 11 11 PCS2010

The dining room.

From 2010 11 11 PCS2010

The furniture pads helped protect the larger items while crammed into the truck.

From 2010 11 11 PCS2010

This is the fridge getting loaded up onto the truck.

From 2010 11 11 PCS2010

The packers were kind enough to leave two chairs for us until the very end. That computer table wasn't coming with us, we're leaving it for the next tenants.

From 2010 11 11 PCS2010

The fridge coming down the stairs out of the kitchen.

From 2010 11 11 PCS2010

As one of Dave's Facebook friends pointed it, seeing our stuff get loaded was like watching a game of "Tetris". That's our fridge, washer and dryer across the bottom there.

From 2010 11 11 PCS2010