Moving Day

I realized on moving day that the reason I had such a hard time getting started with packing was that I didn’t want to move. I resist change. (Who doesn’t?) But I really didn’t want to leave the house that we thought would be our last house before our kids moved us to the old folks’ home. I didn’t want to leave the amazing friends we have grown to love in our nearly seven years in Whatcom County.

We had a mad scramble to finish packing before the big move. We were lucky enough to have Ernie’s parents come up on Monday to help us pack on Monday and Tuesday. Then they took the girls home with them so that we could have an easier time with the move on Wednesday. When they left we still had plenty to do, and we were up until very late. And even though we still weren’t quite done, Ernie demanded that we go to sleep. We were both very tired and getting stressed and started snapping at each other.

I woke up early and started packing up the last of our things. Ernie woke up with the alarm clock and started helping out. And we worked super-fast to be finished by 9:30am when the movers would arrive. And then we waited….and waited…and waited…until noon when they finally showed up! I guess there was a miscommunication between the gal who helped us set up our move and the dispatch gal. Oh well. Too bad that all of our stuff was packed up and we were a bit bored!

And yes, you read that right, we hired movers. Totally worth every penny! Three guys showed up with a semi trailer (we didn’t fill it – we don’t have THAT much stuff!). It really was wonderful to sit back and relax and watch other people work so hard to move us. We had a little drama with one of the movers. Apparently it was his third day on the job and he decided part-way through the move that he wanted to quit. Mind you, the crew we hired came up from Olympia, so he was three hours from home and wanted to quit. He thought he could just hang out in the truck and wait for the other two guys to finish up. He was told that if he was no longer an employee, he was not allowed to be on the truck. He was basically stranded in Ferndale if he really wanted to quit. After a break and a cigarette, he decided he might as well finish the job. Whew! The crew finished up about 5pm and then we packed up our cars and headed out.

I met up with the movers at our storage unit on Thursday morning to unload the truck. I was there with Ernie’s dad’s SUV to load up some stuff that we wanted to have at their house that didn’t make it in our cars.

Since then we’ve settled in at Ernie’s parents’ house. We are so grateful for their hospitality. It has been a bit of an adjustment – sharing space, figuring out who cooks when, who does laundry when, etc. We enjoy spending time with Ernie’s parents and hope they don’t mind us too much. Sophia loves living at Nana & Papa’s house. Kaitlyn doesn’t notice the difference – except when Sophia wakes her up (they share a room now). We brought Milo with us and he has settled in as well. He has made friends with one cat (Thomas), enemies with another (Tigger) and the third is indifferent (Tucker).