Packing up and Heading Out

The perk of moving with the military is that they do all the work! We had four guys show up at 8 am on a Friday and pack up all of our stuff. Everything. We didn't lift a finger. It actually felt a little weird. We had to be there to oversee them, but we weren't allowed to do anything. I felt guilty because they were working so hard. They were awesome though. They were all done by 3 pm. We never would have been able to do it that fast! The next day, three guys showed up at 8 am again and loaded up the truck. I think they were done before noon. We had heard all along, "make sure you empty your garbage, because the military packs EVERYTHING, even your trash!", so we were surprised at some of the stuff that was left when we did a final walk through. My ironing board, clothes drying rack, and three garbage cans. So we had those added to the truck, and our stuff was out of there. A couple hours after they left, we had someone come to look at our house. We had decided at the last minute that since our house wasn't selling, we would try to rent it out. I am super nervous about doing this, since I've heard horror stories of people trashing rental properties, but we didn't really have a choice. We listed it on Craigslist and on the Med School Web Board, and received several calls about it. So as I said, a couple hours after the moving truck pulled out, someone from out of town wanted to come see it right then. So we did a speed cleaning (luckily there wasn't too much to clean, just lots of dust bunnies where the beds were!) and she showed up and loved it. So we're renting it out to four first year Med students (girls) and we're really relieved about the whole thing. They seem very nice and responsible. Plus, if they stay there all four years, it will really be a huge plus for us. We hired our neighbors to be the property managers, so we feel even better about it. It seems like it really worked out for the best for us. It's funny how prayers get answered in unexpected ways!

We camped out in our empty house for a couple more days. We went to church one last time to say our goodbyes. It was very bittersweet. Exciting to be moving on, but sad to leave so many great people behind. That night we went to dinner at Melanie and Garrett's, and Steph joined us. I'm not gonna lie, there were lots of tears shed! I have the best friends ever! Monday morning, we tied up a few loose ends and left in the afternoon. It was sad to say goodbye to our awesome neighbors. Truly, they have been some of the nicest, most helpful, genuine people we've ever met. We totally lucked out on both sides of our house in the neighbor department. It's going to be hard not to have them around! I'm getting a little teary just remembering all of this.

Here are the girls with Hank and Sis.

Our truck full of stuff wouldn't be to our new house for a week, so we decided to take our time getting down there. Amy and Sam live near New Haven, CT now, so we drove out that way and stayed with them for a few days. We saw Sam for about 5 minutes while we were there, since he happened to have a million tests that week, so he was gone studying the whole time. We missed you Sam! But we had a blast with Amy and Landon! Seriously, I can't get enough of Lando! He is the cutest kid ever! The girls had fun playing with him and he was very good to share all of his toys with them.

We had to try Ted's famous STEAMED cheeseburgers while we were in town. (Thank you Man vs. Food!) They were delicious! And just for Richard's future reference, they are not the size of sliders, so you don't need to order two.

We spent one day at IKEA and stocked up while we could. We bought a bunch of stuff, then realized that our cars were already packed full of stuff from our house! Oops! Don't worry, we made it fit. There's no way we were leaving without our Ung Drill Frame and wok!!!

One of the days, we went to Six Flags New England. It was so fun! They had tons of rides for kids and they all had a blast!

We found these Supergirl capes for really cheap in the giftshop, so they girls had fun flying all around.


Richard was forced to fold himself onto several tiny rides and it was quite the site!

Ruby provided lots of entertainment for Annie.

We ended the day with some fried Oreos. On another night, Amy was kind enough to watch our kids so that Richard and I could go on a date (the last one for a really long time...no more babysitters.) We went to a Brazilian Rodizio restaurant and ate ourselves sick with meat. I can't even think about it!

We left on Thursday and drove the rest of the way down to North Carolina. I have to say, I'm pretty proud of myself for driving one of the cars by myself. Well, not totally by myself. I did have all three kids in my car. It's actually really scary to think that I passed out snacks, changed movies, prepared bottles, and broke up fights while driving. It really wasn't that bad.
So we arrived in our new house and camped out on our air mattresses for the weekend until our stuff arrived on Monday. We had the owner of the moving company and his wife drive the truck down, and two other guys that helped move everything in. They were so nice and again, very fast. Once they were gone, it was us and a gazillion boxes. Let the unpacking begin...