Container arrival

Yesterday was an exciting day. Our container arrived!!! Sander is away a couple of days for work, so I was on my own… The moving company arrived shortly before dropping Eline off at Kindergarten. She wanted to stay home and see what would happen. I had some problems dropping her off, but finally I walked back home with Laurens. I asked him if he knew what was happening today. He replied with a happy face: the container is coming! He threw his hands in the air and was cheering :-).

When we got back, the movers were already taping off the walls, the floors and the elevator. The furniture lease company was a little late, but worked hard to get all their things out, so the movers could bring our things in. Men were running around carrying things here and there. I gave Laurens the iPad and let him sit in a corner of the living room on the floor. He was happy looking at YouTube Kids all morning. After a while he looked up from the iPad and looked around. He saw our own couch standing in the living room. He looked very surprised and asked me what OUR couch was doing there! It was very funny. We’ve been talking about our container for two months and that all the furniture and toys are in there, he also referred to it a couple of times, but still it seems he did not put two and two together. The ‘seating-arrangement’ for Laurens was upgraded as more things were unpacked and put down. First he could move to the carpet, safely under the table; then after the couch was ready, he could sit there.

The movers had unloaded the container the day before into three smaller moving trucks and were able to unload all three trucks before 2 PM, when I had to pick up Eline again. All crates, furniture and boxes were numbered and were inventoried on a long list. My job was to check the numbers on the list as the movers brought them into the house. By 2PM all numbers were checked! Everything was there and only two damaged goods amongst them. The movers had been able to assemble the beds and left the boxes with “bedding” written on them in front of the others. I was able to find everything fairly easy, so we could sleep at home in our own beds!!! We did go out to dinner though, since all the kitchen- and tableware had not been unpacked.

Today three of the movers came back and unpacked all of the boxes. I helped mostly with putting away the plates, glasses and pans, so the unpacking could keep going. Laurens watched the iPad again all day. Probably not very good from a parenting or health view, but he did start speaking a bit of English at the end of the day! The movers left again around 2 PM, leaving me in chaos…

I was able to find everything to do some cooking and preparing our first meal in Japan with our own stuff! I didn’t do much tidying tonight, because tomorrow Camiel is turning 8 years old and I had to decorate. We’ll give him his presents tomorrow night, when Sander gets home. I told Eline I would wake her and Laurens in the morning and we’d go sing for Camiel and give him his birthday cards which had arrived in the last couple of days. Now it’s time for a bath!!!