I Am Officially a Gold Medalist!

We made it!! We are safely and happily moved in to our new place in New City!

 

This was our 9th move in 11 1/2 years. Here are a few things that I learned from this move:

1. Have a giant garage sale and get rid of everything that you don't absolutely love or need. We did this. We actually had two garage sales. One to empty out the garage so we could actually move around in there and another one to get rid of everything else! We made over $500 dollars plus we sold Geoff's car for $300 (more about this later). So we got a chunk of change that was really needed. Whatever was left I gave to a lady who does resale at a flea market. I would have given it to Good Will but they made me mad when we first moved there and I swore I would never donate to them again. Plus, this lady came and picked up everything that was left. I didn't have to haul it off. She also told us that things had been kind of rough and she had only been bring in around $100 a week lately at the flea market! How can anyone live on $400 a month?! She deserved the charity more than anyone I knew at the time. So... she got it!
2. Make friends with a kid named Vincent in the Wal-Mart meat department. The best boxes are from the liquor store and the Wal-Mart meat department. And you always need way more than you think. I started collecting boxes weeks ago. After Geoff's car died (more about this later) I started taking him to work every morning. On my home I would stop at Wal-Mart and load up on boxes because that is when the stocking crew was finishing their shift. A couple of days before we moved I ran out of boxes and it was in the middle of the day. I looked everywhere for boxes and when I finally got to Wal-Mart the only boxes to be found were from the meat dept. I made friends with Vincent and he put back every box that he emptied... just for little ole' me! They're heavy duty, perfect size and have handles.
3. Don't tick off the people in your ward... because then they won't help you. Honestly, I'm just assuming that I've done something terrible to these people because this is the second time in one year that I have asked the Relief Society President to petition the ladies in the ward for some help. Each time more than 50 ladies were emailed and/or asked personally to do a small act of service and not one person responded. Whatever. I won't beat that old horse.
4. Renting a moving truck is cheaper on Sunday through Thursday. I saved a chunk of change by renting it on Thursday. We had a friend from the neighborhood come and help Geoff load the big stuff and most of the boxes on Thursday night. We 'camped out' with no beds and while Geoff was at work on Friday I kept the kids corralled in the living room with a blow up mattress and a little TV while I emptied and cleaned every other room in the house. This worked out pretty good until about 2 PM when I hit my wall of exhaustion and the kids were feeling some cabin fever because it was raining. This leads me to the last thing that I learned from this move.
5. It is ALMOST impossible to move a big family all by yourself. Because of the afore mentioned issue with the ward Geoff and I had discussed that that we would have to be really organized and we could probably do this move by ourselves. Uh. Wrong. Even after getting rid of a ton of stuff and being severely organized we had so much to do! We had to leave the house spotless and vacant because the realtor still needs to show it. We moved into a two bedroom townhouse so we had to put everything that we weren't taking into the garage and clean everything. The brunt of this load landed on my shoulders because Geoff was still working. With regards to this lesson learned here is a public shout out and thank you to my Olympic team mates: Jen Wagoner, Dawna Bowen, and Terra Rogers! Jen and Dawna spent several hours helping me pack and Terra really went the distance driving 6 hours round-trip for just one day to clean and help me pack an entire house!! And a major acknowledgement to Laura Albrecht for watching my kiddos all day on Monday so that I could get Asher's birthday cake made and some packing done!! The phrase "I couldn't have done it without you" seems so overused but somehow appropriate here. I really had my hands full and each of you made the dream possible!!

We won the gold!!

 

P.S. Subsequent posts will be less wordy and contain more photos!!

Stay tuned...

Shelley here! Yes, I still have Steph's username and password. I'm posting for her as they are currently driving to their "new city" with most of their worldly belongings. She managed to pack up the entire house in record time and off they went! Geoff's last day of work was Friday and they are moving into their temporary townhouse on Saturday. Ta Da! I'm making it all sound so quick, easy, and painless!(???)I know Terra came one day and helped pack much of it and it sounds like without her help they never would have made it so THANK YOU TERRA! They will be without internet until next Tuesday, at least, so stay tuned until then. The kids start school in "new city" on Monday and I think Geoff starts his new job then, too! To be continued... p.s. Steph's username and password are up for auction. Serious bidders only. I accept Paypal.

Man, What a Ride!

Whew!! That was a little bit of a crazy ride!!! I just got back today from an impromptu trip to my sister's home town where I drove an additional 30 minutes after dropping off the kids to the Nearby City that we will be living in. I did this because.... well, let me just start from the beginning.

Many of you will remember my post: Blog Slacker where I described my stress levels and how we had found the perfect house... yadda, yadda, yadda. Well, that didn't turn out so good. In our offer on that house we had it contingent on the sale of our current house. I guess that means that the sellers have the option of accepting another offer if they want... which is exactly what they did. Gggrrrr. So we had to start over. We found another one and this time found a way to go ahead and buy it even though our current house hadn't sold. It was a foreclosure that had a 10 day bidding period that they would take the best offer within in that period. We decided to offer just above asking so that we could guarantee getting it. Um. No. Someone was actually dumber than us and paid even more. We found out that we didn't get that house on Monday. New kid enrollment for the new city was on Wednesday. My absolutely wonderful realtor frantically tried to get us signed on to a different house so that I could go ahead and enroll the kids but to no avail. So I threw the kids in the car on Tuesday drove straight to my sister's and then went to the Nearby City to find an apartment or rent house that I could get a rental agreement on so that we would have an address for enrollment day! We called about 6 or 7 apartment complexes before I left but nobody had any vacant!! So I got in the car and left. I got to Nearby City at 4:45 - 15 minutes before all offices would be closing!!! I drove straight to a complex that my realtor told me about but couldn't find a phone number for and just crossed my fingers that I would find the right person to help me out. Wouldn't you know it! There were a couple of men in the parking lot next to a truck and I asked them who I would need to talk to about renting a place and one of those gentlemen happened to be the property manager!!! AND he said that he had a place vacant and we could take a look!! It was a two bedroom townhouse that they were cleaning up and working on! It was perfect! Plus, he said that we could go to his office across town and fill out the paper work and get the rental agreement right then. Wow. Was I ever grateful. He even let us sign a 6 month lease instead of a year because of our situation. Two bedrooms for a family of 6 is going to be tight but we'll manage. This will give us time to sell our current home and find the perfect home in Nearby City. {sigh of relief} The kids are enrolled and I even signed up for their public library cards. Kind of exciting. We're moving in 9 days. Just in time for school to start and for Geoff to start work.

Man, what a ride.