Moving week is over...

Whew! The past couple of weeks have been packed with packing, loading, driving, driving, driving, flying, visiting, flying again, and then unpacking and starting to settle in. Some thoughts...

All worth it! The new backyard...

Packing

To pack up properly, you have to handle everything you own. Every. Single. Thing. There's nothing like putting a 4-bedroom house into boxes to make you say "what the @$% is wrong with me that I own this much junk???"

Loading

The first 1/2 to 2/3 of loading the truck is enjoyable; like playing Tetris in fact. Lots of work, but with the right folks around (and we had amazing folks helping us!) it goes pretty smoothly. Then at some point things start to deteriorate... you end up with Seussian piles of items that don't quite stack properly; propped up with the odd rake or barstool... you know that it won't really survive the that way, but at some point you stop caring.

The last 1/10 of your stuff takes FOREVER... there's always one more bucket, one more pile of miscellanea, one more drawer taunting you as you try to finish up. Things go in plastic trash bags by now, and more than one item may have accidentally (cough) been thrown away at this point.

We attached the bulkhead (big plywood "door") in the trailer, and threw a few more things over top of it, to make sure that when we unload there is a significant avalanche of debris. By now it is 10pm on the night before pickup, and there is constant lightning and thunder around us (did I forget to mention we finished up in a thunderstorm? Fitting).

Flying With Kids

If you're traveling with a lap-child, bring a copy of the birth certificate. We didn't, and the agent decided to pretend that Sydney might be 2+ years old and might need to buy a ticket. "FAA rules" they say, but I know many others that have flown recently without such child ID, so either:

a) This agent was completely lying about it being a FAA rule, or
b) It's a rule, but nobody enforces it except for this douchebag at Southwest.

Trekking through the airport with 4 large bags, a kid, and a stroller turns out to be not so bad, actually. (If you are laughing at the 4 large bags comment you have never seen how much gear babies require.)

Eventually we got on the plane Sydney's first flight! She was amazing. She got antsy, but managed to hang on for the whole 3.5 hours without screaming like most kids seem to do on the plane. Even got a nap in my arms... and when we landed and taxied around for what seemed like an hour, she squealed with delight at seeing other planes on the tarmac.

You keep calling this "home" but I know better.

New Place

Sydney's face says it all.

She was such a trooper about the whole thing. We spent the first night out here in a hotel, and she gamely explored the room all day and night. When we got to this place, it was just another much bigger hotel room to explore...

Of course once we started unloading things from the truck, especially all her toys and her crib, she warmed up to the place and I think feels at home here already.

There are still a few things missing from the place... but at this point I'm declaring it completely "functional". At right is my current desk, for example... nothing wrong with that, right???

At least we have internet back.

A whole house without furniture? No biggie. No internet except for on our phones? AAUGGH!!!

Weird how much of a difference that makes. First world problem, I know, but that's the way I feel.



More to come; but I wanted to say that we made it, safe and sound, and are looking forward to exploring our new town, mountains, and indeed Colorado.