These Boops Are Made for...Cheering Up My Mom

When we were packing up our house, we had the daunting and fairly exhausting task of trying to decide what we may or may not need in our new place, despite the fact that we had no idea when we would be leaving, no idea where we'd be living, and therefore no idea of what we would need to take with us.  We handled all of these unknowns by packing, comparatively, practically nothing to bring with us/ship over.  I mean, seriously, we had a big house full of stuff, we brought 1 suitcase each, and shipped 7 boxes.  That's it.

When I was packing all of our clothes, I trimmed it down to the very basics, our favorites, for the kids just things that fit/had a bit of room to grow, and pretty much just removed all of our options.  I kept the summer stuff out to wear over the next little bit and then leave behind, and packed all cool weather things in boxes to be shipped.  I did this in July.

What does that have to do with this story right now?  Well, the things that we shipped ended up taking a lot longer to arrive than we had ever anticipated.  We just got our boxes last week, with our warm things, boots, winter coats, toys, etc-it's been like Christmas for us all!  But as you might imagine, we really could have used a lot of that stuff weeks ago, particularly with cool and wet England weather that we need to walk through every single day.

These pictures of Hannah were on the afternoon of a TERRIBLE morning.  I was headed to a mall that I had never been to, on a bus route I had never before attempted, trying to get some cold weather gear for my girl in her stroller.  It wasn't raining when we left, but on the bus ride it started pouring!!  Then I had to get out, with no rain gear for either of us, and attempt to navigate a heavy stroller through the downpour and puddles, while wearing old navy flips flops that had no tread at all.  I was slipping all over the place, with no leverage to move her forward in her stroller, was freezing cold and soaking wet.  And I stayed that way for the next few hours, in the store, on the bus back home, until I could get home to change.  But I couldn't even change into my sweat pants because those were also with the things that were being shipped!  Sigh.

However, while we were out, I bought the kids some rain boots.  When we got home Hannah refused to take hers off, even when I changed her diaper, which was when I pulled out my camera.    She kept bringing them to me, saying "pease!!" then holding up her foot for me to put them on.  And she called them "boops."  And this little monkey cheered me right up.  

Other things that cheered me up that afternoon: a short nap under a warm blanket, a hot cup of tea, and the rain boots that I promptly ordered for myself once we got home.