moving.

{Just an fyi... this post will probably be long. And very random. But I had lots of pictures and thoughts that I want to remember.}

My mom and dad were such amazing help to us before and during our move. My dad spent at least 4 full days down at our house helping load boxes and miscellaneous stuff. He and Corey are tied for the title of "Hardest Working Guy I Know." 

My dad made 3 trips back and forth with this trailer. Then unloaded all the contents into a storage unit for us. So much work and oh-so-helpful. (Although I'm still finding myself saying, "Where is _____? Oh... probably in storage." Luckily the storage unit is only a few blocks away from our house. We've made severals trips.)

The kids lived in such a state of chaos for awhile. (And they kind of still are.) They've been troopers.

This was Thursday night before our going away party.  We still had the dining room table, but all the chairs had been packed up and driven away. A friend from church had brought us supper and we had a little floor picnic. (Thank you, Becky W. for all that you did for us! Even though you weren't technically our relator, you did so much to help us out. You were amazing and we appreciate you so much.)

We got the UHaul Friday morning and Corey's brother and mom came down to help us finish packing/loading. (See all those trash bags? They are full of Corey's clothes. Most of the clothing he owns was stuffed into a trash bag. There were probably 20. We went to a VBS swim party the night after we moved here and he couldn't find his swim trunks. So all 20 trash bags were dumped all over our bedroom. It was awesome.)

My dad is the master packer. (And Corey commented later that I inherited some of his skills.) Every single inch of this UHaul was packed top to bottom. It was really amazing to me how much stuff we had. (Plus, there were at least 3 trailers that had already left and we had filled a storage unit in town when we were de-cluttering the house to get it ready to show.) Insane. We really need to downsize.

Someone commented to me on Facebook to just think about all the junk and clutter we got rid of in the move. But really... there wasn't time. From the time we signed the contract, we were out in 2 weeks. We packed up all the junk and clutter and brought it with us. I have been so incredibly grateful so. many. times. for my decrapifying spree that I went on last summer. I remember the hallway upstairs FULL of stuff that we were getting rid of.  I cannot imagine what this would have been like if we hadn't done that last summer. It's like God had this all planned or something. =)

The guys all started with this piece of furniture. Corey assured them that it would be the worst thing they would move all day. And I think it was. One of those things that they backed in and out a couple times and said several times "How did you get this in here?!"

This cabinet is what we used as a dresser in Lawson and Gretchen's room. We first moved it in here when I was pregnant with Sophie. It was a cabinet that was in my dad's vet clinic when he first went out on his own. For years and years it had been the cabinet in his exam/surgery room. When he built a brand new clinic, he hung on to this cabinet. We painted it and took the doors off the top, I decoupaged the counter top, we changed the knobs and Corey and 3 neighbors managed to get it upstairs 10 years ago.

10 years later, these 4 guys managed to get it out. Whew.

We decided against trying to get it up the stairs in our new house. The stairway is just as steep and the turns are just as narrow (if not more so.) So it's sitting in storage until we build our farmhouse. Then it will become a perfect cabinet/organizer for all my craft/scrapbook stuff.

Our neighbor, Russ, was an amazing help to us that day. We're so lucky he doesn't have a real job. =)

Our front yard looked a little white-trashy off and on during the day...

Casey got the fun job of driving both of Corey's trucks back to the farm. (Gretchen still looks out the window here and asks where Daddy's Jeep truck is.)

This was the UHaul after my dad and Corey's mom and brother left. Corey and I spent the rest of the afternoon/evening filling up the rest of this free space. We were a hot, sweaty mess. And we looked lovely when we went out for Chinese later that night.

Corey and I spent the night on two twin mattresses in the middle of the living room floor. We worked late into the night and I borrowed our neighbor's internet to check out Facebook when I couldn't sleep at 1:30 am.

A little something for the new owners...

Our goal was to leave around 9:00 Saturday morning. It ended up being after 11:00. But it was good in a way. I compared it to the last day of school. I was just so tired of being there and packing and cleaning and I just wanted to get on the road. By 11:00, I was just done. No emotion, no tears, just relief when we finally got left.

We pulled up in front of our new house at 12:15 pm. Right in the heat of the day. Dallas met us outside and quickly earned his own place on my list of "Hardest Working Guys I Know." I think my mom put it best... he worked crazy hard all day, but he never lost his laugh. He even grilled supper for us all that evening. (amazing pork chops!) 

I found this link on Pinterest awhile back and used her system for organizing all the boxes. Not only was it helpful, but it was colorful. Things are always better when they are colorful.

I had my little moving legend taped to the house right outside the front door and then again inside the house. The rooms that needed identifying all had pieces of colored paper taped to the outside of them. It made it easy for everyone to figure out where to put boxes and easy for me to say a color for things that didn't end up with a sticker tag on them.

This was pretty much our moving crew. Plus my dad once he got done at work. Meagan kept all 3 kids across street at their house, which was such a big help. They invited my parents and us over to their house for supper, too. Mom, Dad, Corey and I all went back to my parents house to shower first, though. We all said that a shower had never felt so good! Someone asked about running out of hot water, but we realized that none of us really used hot water. Cool showers are what we wanted!

I loved this little bucket. It was full of anything and everything that I thought might come in handy... scissors, tape, screw drivers, hammer, tape measure, etc. I think we used nearly everything in here at some point.

This was my other little lifesaver basket. It started out as my labeling basket (sticky labels and all my colored dots). It ended up holding little zip-loc bags full of all the screws needed to put our furniture back together. Anything important that I didn't want to lose in the move went here.

I'm *almost* done with the upstairs. The downstairs is coming together.
I wouldn't say it was a super organized move... but I tried hard.
The whole water main breaking and lots of repairs that needed done slowed us down a bit. (and are still slowing us down...)
So ready for this to be a clean and organized house.