the long, hard, but HAPPY move

Wow, it’s been nearly a month since my last post! I didn’t intend for our move to consume my entire life – but so it has. That’s okay; how many times in life does a person move? Oh yeah – this would be #13 for us. If every moving process took one month to do, then we’ve spent more than a year of our lives moving. Yikes!

My parents flew up to help us. Hallelujah! I insisted they stay for 10 days, and I was begging them to stay longer. There’s so much to do!

Did I mention we bought a fixer upper? My poor parents stayed at the new house while we remained at our previous place. We knew the place needed a lot of work, but we weren’t planning on: next to no running water, mouse tracks and nibbled food in the kitchen every morning, the carpets sodden with pee from a non-house-trained dog, no working toilets or baths/showers.

My parents are troopers and super hard workers, and by the time their visit ended, we had working plumbing, we’d torn out the stinky gross carpets, set 10 mouse traps, painted 4 rooms, scrubbed the place top to bottom, and even brought over a load of furniture. Notice our expert packing technique. Yeah, we’re pros.

In return for their extreme love, help, and self-sacrifice, my parents took US out to dinner. It was my big 3-5 bday, and I was very excited to go to a place I’d been wanting to eat at for ages.

It was gorgeous, and the food was amazing. It would have been perfection if not for two extremely over-stimulated and exhausted little troublemakers. Ordinarily, they are perfect angels, you understand. But on this particular night, they behaved like hooligans, refusing to stay in their seats, racing around the place, even running into a couple at another table. So embarrassing!I was very nervous for my parents to fly back to Kansas. We still had so much to do! But we have carried on, painting, cleaning, repairing, and thankfully ridding the house of all rodents! Here’s Sophie “helping” with the unpacking.

Yesterday we had a little visit to Ikea. Here’s Elliot sliding into the children’s section. Sophie particularly liked this mirror.

I indulged them, let them play with all the toys, fed them snacks at the restaurant (kids eat free on Labor Day!), and then – finally! – we got to the floor with the curtains, cushions, all the fun stuff. I was ready to do some serious business and was asking a clerk a question when I heard a splat. I still don’t know exactly what happened, but somehow one or both of my children collided with a woman’s large fountain drink, and it landed upside down on the floor. She managed to scoop most of it up and then huffed off in a boiling fury. I hissed at the kids to sit still and behave, at which point they both began to wail. I looked longingly at the curtains and then began a long and breathless race to the checkout, where I purchased 2 dustpans and a stepping stool. All 3 of us moped the entire drive home.

Anyway, tomorrow is a new day. We are renting a U-Haul for the third time, hopeful that we can empty the other house at last. The 15th is our deadline. Can we do it? Yes we can!