Oh, moving! I try to do my best to keep my blog posts upbeat and positive, so I will avoid some of the words that come to mind when I think about moving a family of our size from one house to another. Instead, I will say that the process of moving is a major, anxiety-provoking, messy challenge--one which we bravely faced over the last month with reasonable success. And, although we still have a ways to go before we are really "settled," I am very grateful that the hardest part is now over.
So, this blog post is all about the adventures of moving, as told in this series of photos. Try not to be too jealous that we did this while you were all enjoying your summer vacation!
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| First order of business: selling the treadmill. It was 11 years old and we never used it anymore, so we didn't want to haul that heavy thing around anymore, especially when we were losing space in the new house. Now, if I want to run I will just hit the trails. Bye, bye, treadmill (oh, and thanks for buying it for me for Christmas all those years ago, honey...that was very nice of you!)! |
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| I don't know why I added this second picture of the treadmill; this isn't Craigslist! Incidentally, Nate posted it to Craigslist and it sold within 12 hours, and was gone within 24 hours. ONE easy thing about this move! |
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| Packing! They look so happy; this must have been early in the month before the packing job became nothing but a big drag. Boo! |
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| The garage in the Parker house was ridiculously large, so we cleared out a space in it for staging all of the boxes after they were packed and labeled. That made it easy to empty out each room except for the large furniture items and electronics. This was great for my mental health because it made me feel more "done" with each room after packing. This picture shows my first major accomplishment: the school room after it was packed and emptied of boxes. Monumental! |
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| The study after it was emptied, except for the furniture and computer (and the packing tape). |
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| The storage room. Ugh. That room was a beast. But I got it done! |
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| Okay. This was a few weeks into the madness. I was losing it a little bit! But, as I was packing the Master closet, I came across my wedding dress and decided that I just HAD to try it on. And, look! It fits! Fourteen years and four babies later! It made me want to get married to my honey all over again! Instead, I got back to work. :) |
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| Do you think these guys could use a little break? |
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| We did take a little break one evening to go to the pool. Yay! |
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| Trey consented to going into the water this time. Ahhhhh, so refreshing! |
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| More pool fun! |
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| Pool fun! |
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| Avery enjoying the water. |
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| So, this is a story all by itself. Maybe we don't know enough about birds, but we observed some strange behavior from this particular bird for about 3 weeks before we moved out of the Parker house. It spent day after day after day flying into the window of the study, as if it were trying to get in the house. It started every day at about 5am and continued until dark. Go figure! We were all baffled by this strange bird behavior. Trey would laugh and point and call it the "Cwazy Boody!" |
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| Moving Day finally arrived! Feel free to be amazed at that enormous stack of boxes in the garage. And that's just one side of it! I was so proud and amazed by our big boys that day. They did an amazing job helping out with the move. We had a lot of help from ward members on both ends of the move for loading and unloading boxes and large furniture. But, Nathan and the boys really did the majority of the heavy lifting of these boxes on and off of the truck. Wow! We worked from 6am until 11pm that day, nearly nonstop. There were two loads of the truck and trailer. The first load was mainly boxes and bicycles and beds and things of that nature. We took that one up in the morning and unloaded it all. Then we went back to Parker for the second load, which was mostly large furniture items and everything else. My visiting teachers and the RS provided meals for dinner on moving day and the day before, for which we were most grateful. And, the next morning was July 4th, so after we returned the truck to U-Haul, we went to the Westminster Ward Independence Day breakfast, mostly so that we could actually find something to eat. What a crazy couple of days! We were just hammered! |
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| Moving day lunch break from Chipotle! |
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| These next few pictures show some of the things that made me happiest when we moved in. First, our sweet Coco finally got her dreamy pink bedroom back. Oh, how we love that room! |
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| Second, Nathan got his (small) garden back, and the FIRST thing he did was to buy me some new hanging plants for the front porch and the yard. A little bit of TLC from him over the weekend made a big difference in how it looked. It's small, but it was created with love and we are happy to have our little garden back! And Trey hardly noticed that his play area had shrunk so much. It's so much easier to watch him play out there in a fenced yard than it was for him to play in the wide open half acre on the golf course. There's an upside to everything! |
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| And the third thing that made me smile was not this crazy mess in the kitchen, but in this funny little comment that Nate made when I declared that I had already unpacked six boxes in the kitchen: "But, it looks like you haven't done a thing!" Haha! He was right! How on earth did we get so much stuff? Believe it or not, I had all of these boxes emptied and put away by Friday afternoon (Moving Day was Wednesday). It's lucky we had lived here before because I knew exactly where to put everything! :) |
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| And another happy thing: the storage room in this house is FAR superior to the one in the Parker house. Nate did the flooring and built (and painted) these beautiful shelves many years ago. I'm pretty sure this is exactly why I love this house so much; it is full of our hearts and hard work and happy, happy memories. Who cares that we are more crowded here? It's all good! |
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