The slow boat to China has arrived!

Sorry I've slacked on my posting.  Our slow boat from China arrived-- 3 weeks ahead of schedule!  For those of you who don't know, our stuff was shipped in a sea-faring container and was supposed to take a direct route from Long Beach to Tokyo; it was supposed to arrive in Japan at the same time we did.  Then we found out that for some reason it was diverted through Singapore and we were going to have to wait another 4-6 weeks to get it.  Frustrating.  Anyway, our stuff arrived on Saturday and it is wonderful to have it here and to not be living in such an empty space anymore.  

Watching the mover was pretty incredible.  The Japanese have a amazing system to get everything in without damaging anything.  They line the halls and the doorways with cardboard and put padding everywhere on the floors.  They also had to unload the everything from the large moving crate into smaller trucks so they could fit in our parking space.  It was extremely efficient, I was impressed.  With all of that, we only had a broken plastic spoon and a broken plastic bowl.  Not too shabby considering everything spent a month on the open sea.

One thing that I would recommend to anyone who has movers willing to unpack you-- don't let them.  I didn't know quite where everything should go, so they unpacked everything into huge piles on the floor.  There were piles of dishes in the kitchen, piles of towels, linens, and blankets, books, DVDs, . . . and they were on the floors everywhere.  It was quite overwhelming.  It is Thursday now, and basically the house is mostly organized-- everything but Ella's room which has become the dumping ground for anything I wasn't sure where it went.  Luckily I have 3 months to get that figured out.

Our first matter of business was to get Anthon's bunk beds and room set up.  We have been getting him excited about his bunk beds with fire engine blankets for 2 months.  I have to admit, they look pretty cute, and he looks even cuter in them.  He's so tiny for such a big bed, but he loves it.  He has managed to sleep there every night and has taken all of his naps in his bed, so my fear about him not sleeping now that he's not stuck in a crib have been put to rest.  He initially wanted to sleep on the top bunk, but I told him that was where the cousins sleep when they come to visit or for him to sleep in once he's 6 years old.  Now he points to the upper bunk and says, "Cousins' bed."  So a word out to all the cousins-- Anthon's ready for a visitor!!