The owners of the house we are renting from were nice enough to let us have the key the evening before the 1st (which is when our lease starts). We got in the evening before the 1st and the boys ran around and were so excited about our new house. I spent the next 2+ hours doing the check-in sheet and documenting anything that was wrong or things I at least wanted to note so that we were not held liable of damaging anything. I'm pretty crazy obsessed with moving in and out of places after doing it so often in college and also watching Judge Judy and knowing I have to "prove" everything. :) Brad and I were up super late this night because we went around the house trying to decide where to put everything. I even wrote everything on sticky notes and put them on the walls so the movers would know where to put stuff.
We knew that the movers would be there early the next day so we set our alarm. Unfortunately, we didn't need it really because the lot next to our house is being leveled so the dump trucks and bulldozers were there promptly at 7am making all kinds of noises. The boys loved it and had a great view from our bedroom and bathroom. We waited, and waited, and waited, and the movers finally showed up at about 10:30am. We were shocked. Lots of the day was wasted and there was some nasty weather forecasted throughout the day. The movers came in and set up shop and started to unload. They unloaded all the garage stuff for the first 2.5 hours so it was very frustrating for me knowing that I could be unpacking boxes and such but no boxes were inside yet so I had to wait. Brad got a tip from someone this year that parking your vehicle in the garage is a great way for them not to just stack everything in the garage to we tried it. It was working fairly well until the weather really threatened and they said it would be best if he could move his truck out so they could just put a ton of stuff in the garage and then move it in to the house after it was all in the garage. It made sense but ... we still wanted room in the garage. Brad inventoried all the boxes coming in (dozens were not even tagged which explains how we only had 300+ items) and I was the sheriff inside. I told them I wanted an almost full unpack. To make a long story short, our garage and attic were FULL of boxes that we haven't unpacked or just opened for a few items over the past 4 years. We have a TON of stuff. Lots of it is all my teaching stuff but alot of it is also random junk. It's catching up with us now and we don't want all this random stuff anymore. We decided to put all that kind of stuff in the office so that room was FULL of boxes. The movers set up the loft beds in the boys room. I was trying to at least open all the boxes to make sure they were actually labeled right and in the correct room. Many were not so I'm glad I did that. They unpacked mostly to our satisfaction and then left at about 4:30pm. The last 3 hrs was pure craziness because I was trying to put away as fast as they were unpacking but it was impossible since they didn't bring in boxes for the first few hours.
Here is Aiden doing some therapy on Tuesday afternoon. He said he missed doing therapy with Mrs. Rusty.
We unpacked all day and found out why the packers were so quick back in Alabama. They did a HORRIBLE JOB. They packed dirty clothes on top of clean clothes. They literally dumped out our dirty clothes hamper into a box and then took out clean clothes from my dresser and put them on top. In a perfect world, I would have had that load of red laundry done but, the least you could do is put paper between the dirty and clean clothes. They also dumped out smaller boxes which were labeled and just dumped them into one giant box. First of all, these boxes are small enough that they can actually fit quite nicely into bigger boxes. Secondly, if you are going to open and dump out boxes of folded clothes, the least you could do is wrap them in paper so I know that they came from different boxes. Needless to say, it took me HOURS to refold and organize all the clothes (3T winter, 3T summer, 4T, 5T, etc).
I took pictures to show that they literally dumped all the clothes into the box. See the picture below, that is their idea of packing wrapping paper. They just fold the roll right in half for you and shove it in a box.
And while I am on the topic of unpacking my bedroom, here is how I found my jewelry. This usually hangs on the wall and it has bracelets, earrings, etc on it. I found it placed? in a giant box and it wasn't even wrapped. They wrapped the hair scruncies underneath it along with other random crap that was on my dresser but decided it wasn't necessary to actually wrap the jewelry or the entire thing in paper. I was fishing out earrings and untangling necklaces for a while.We haven't made any moving claims in the last 4 moves but we will be this time. There were a few broken dishes, various broken/dented/un-useable containers this time. I'm not sure why you would pack magazine holders on their side. They break when that happens. Same thing with rubbermaid and sterilite containers. The frustrating thing is that I have all the same kind of containers for organizing Aiden's room and they broke 2 of them. I went to walmart to get new ones and they don't even sell that kind in Florida. Bah.
On Wednesday, I let the boys have a brief break from all the craziness and took them down to the amenities center. They got to climb in the treehouse which was really fun. They also ran around hard on the putt putt golf course. They have never played putt putt so Eli kept calling is the "green maze." They did a great job of wearing themselves out and getting some exercise.
In the mist of all this moving, Brad had his birthday. I did a lame job of celebrating it so I owe him next year. While we love this house, we definitely are going to miss the amenities from Oakleaf that we are used: giant sidewalks, a fitness that you can bring kids to, and pools with awesome water park features. Sigh. But, we do still have a fitness center (kids can't come upstairs and I have to pay $100 a month if I want the option to leave them in kids corner - like daycare - from 4-6:30pm on weekdays), and a pool. We are definitely not used to living on a "busy" street so we are acclimating to that as well.
Lots of changes. We are still unpacking but the majority of the house is put away. We still have to hang pictures too. It's a work in progress and once I finish the office, there will be a huge feeling of relief from going through and purging 5-10 years of random stuff.
The boys are definitely missing interacting with other kids. It is going to take a while to get them in to the dr to get physical so they can get into daycare or something like that. It was GREAT to see old friends from church this past sunday though. Although this has been the worst unpacking/moving experience for us ever, it is starting to subside and things are getting in order.
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