Packing boxes, grocery bags, baskets and arms stretched like rubber bands we march one after the other like ants out one door, across the driveway and down the hill to the new door at the remodel.  Books, toys, clothes still on their hangers, canned food, pots not needed for the final week here at the cottage, linens and cleaning products.  We don’t know what to call it now.  The term “work site” lasted for months, “the remodel”, is so verb-like,”the new house” is inaccurate, as is “old house”. You correct me when I tell you to get shoes on for a trip to “the site”-It’s our house Grandma! You’re right. And this is the last week at the rental cottage and next week we will sleep at our real house; remodeled. And Aubrey, Sierra and Sequoia move here.

You will have friend kid neighbors.  This is so great for all of you!  I am building a play area outside the big deck with a fort and trampoline.  How town-like of me.  How mommy of me, but the move from lawn, garden and sandbox with a chicken house to a big concrete deck will leave you and Liza adventure-less adjacent to the house and within the view of the kitchen sink.  (I’ve become a 50s housewife in my retirement-picturing my image glued to a kitchen window!)  My planning process went something like this…No sand, no dirt, no garden or grass, bugs gone, worms, just bees at pots on a concrete deck.  What the heck are you and Sissy going to do out there?  Ride bikes? Carpet with some toys under the shade roof?  Paint easel?  What about physical and free play so I don’;t set it up for you, lose toys down the cliff?  Okay a tree house.  But its about 60 feet down the hill if something (or you) fell.  A wooden platform off the big one with a playhouse for imaginative play.  Big dirt pots, sand table, ladder to climb.  But then we saw a trampoline in a book and we all though about your gym this summer and the fun you and Ellie had and friends and that I could see it from the sink. Then at night in a couple of sleepless hours used to fret and make lists, I reconsidered.  Sierra said our place is so tame.  And I am making it tamer.  Should I return the trampoline, stop the deck?  Just let you poke around off deck?  Re-fence and get the poison oak out for a nature play area off the deck?  I ran out to the site (I mean house) and it was too late…. holes, concrete supports and wood ordered for it all on pallets out front.  Oh well.  We still have to build a chicken house.

Oops I forgot to ask Aubrey if she’ll take care of our hens until we are ready to move them. Kid nanny and Chicken nanny, too.

We’ll march like ants all week, settle into our place and help a sweet new family move in here.  Are you going to sleep okay over there, will your sister?  That is key for all of us.  Essential.  Love to you, marching ant gma