All about this one time when we moved to Texas

About a month and a half ago, Kevin started a new job in Texas.

As part of his relocation package, he was provided with a nice furnished apartment to stay in while he looked for a new house for us.  I stayed in Ohio with the boys in order to take care of our existing house, and all the moving stuff that needed to be done before we left Ohio.  (You know, like returning the 200+ items we had checked out from the local library.)

After a few weeks, the movers came to pack us up.

That's Connor in front of the REALLY BIG TRUCK

They brought a really big truck, and it took them two days to box everything up and load it onto that really big truck.

It was great.  I was discouraged from packing anything myself because the moving company would only insure the items packed by the movers themselves.  So I cleaned while they packed for a while, and then I ended up reading magazines.

Sidebar:  Okay, I did a little more than that.  While the movers were moving everything out, I installed four new window panes in various windows around our house.  We had double-paned windows, and some of them were getting cloudy because the seals between the panes had broken.  This isn't the first time I had done this, but this was the time that I learned that a rubber glazing hammer WILL break a window the same as a regular hammer if you hit the glass directly.  You see, I had attempted to replace a 5th window pane, but just before I was finished, I had a wide swing (maybe I had a seizure? I still don't know what happened) and smashed the new window that I had just installed.  It was awful!  So, I ordered another one and it arrived just in time for me to replace before leaving Ohio.  End Sidebar. 

I had always told Kevin that I never wanted to move again unless someone else did it for us, and I was right.  Movers are the way to go!

Sidebar:  I watched the moving truck pull away and my neighbor across the street came out to talk to me.  He said to me, "You must be so emotional right now.  You just watched the last 8 years of your life drive away in that truck."  And that wasn't true at all.  Kevin was already in Texas and the kids were with my parents.  What I thought, and what I said (and he was so shocked!) was, "No, that was just a bunch of junk we accumulated over the past 8 years."  Honestly, if we had moved or packed ourselves, some of that stuff in the truck would have ended up on the curb.  To be really honest, a lot of it probably would have.

Once the house was empty, the boys and I stayed with my parents at their house.  They have things like beds and sofas and dishes that we were now without.


I had bought the boys each a new backpack and suitcase, and they were allowed to pack their clothes in the suitcase and their favorite toys in their backpacks.  The only rule was that it had to fit inside and zip close.  This way they were able to keep some of their favorite things with us while we were in transition.


Anyways, after we had our stuff out of the house, we had the whole house repainted so that it would be more neutral. 

I actually painted one room myself, and tried to touch up another, but I am not a painter.  I mean, apparently.  Look what I did to my poor dining room!



It's okay now, I promise that I fixed it.

In the end, the whole house looked great, even if we had to pay someone else to paint it for us.

Before:


Actually, the decision to hire painters was easy.  It wasn't working out for me to leave the boys alone with Nana for multiple days on end because there was so much change going on.  They needed their mommy to be there with them.  Plus, the painters worked faster and better than I could have.

After:


When it was all done, we went back to check it out.  Lex wanted me to take a last photo of him in his bedroom:

Johnny Lemur got picked to be one of the 

toys that Lex kept with him during our move.

His room used to be yellow with an orange stripe, and now it is painted cream.  Although you can't tell because the lighting in this photo is all wrong.


All the painting and carpet cleaning and window installations were done just in time for a new family to move into our house.  Instead of selling the house, we decided to keep it and rent it out.  And when I say just in time, I really mean it.  The last of the work was done on Thursday evening, and the new family moved in on Friday.

After that, we still spent a few weeks more at Nana's house before we all moved down to Texas with Kevin.  You see, Kevin flew up for the 4th of July and that camping wedding in Ohio, and after that we all flew to Texas together.

Hanging around in the airport

The entire time between when the movers took all our stuff and when we left on the airplane, we had to be really careful about accumulating new stuff.  This was more difficult than expected, because Connor had a birthday during that time.  However, I still managed to get everything packed into our suitcases and carry on bags.  I am so thankful that I had thought ahead to pack an extra tote bag (empty) to use as a carry on in case we needed it.  Because we did.

In the end, we took 6 pieces of checked luggage and checked one car booster seat.  Then we carried on six bags and a golf umbrella.  (Six bags?  Well, there was my purse and the aforementioned extra tote bag, plus the kids each had their new backpacks full of toys.  The last two items were Connor's tiny suitcase full of Strickster's clothes, and Lex had a box from Build-a-Bear with all of his stuffed animals and their clothes.  Oh, Strickster is Connor's bear, and he was shoved in Connor's backpack.)



Even though it took two cars to get us and all this stuff to the airport in Columbus when we left, we were so pleased to be able to fit it all into Kevin's car once we got to Texas!  We had planned to get a taxi as a second car if it didn't all fit, but I'm glad that we didn't have to do that.

Now we are staying in the corporate apartment that Kevin has been in since he arrived in Texas.  We are planning to close on our new house later this month, and then after that we can call the moving company to schedule a time for them to move all our stuff out of their Texas warehouse and into our new home.  So our relocation is still something of a work in progress, but at least now our family is together in one place again.

And if you stuck with me through all that, I'm impressed.