Moving day finally arrived. It was actually more of a moving weekend. The entire week leading up to moving day was spent madly packing and cleaning. The kids were shipped off more than once so I could get some work done. On Friday, Barry and Sooner were delivered to Oz Ranch, where they would stay until Sunday morning. On Saturday morning an unknown number of people from our ward came to help us load our 24 foot truck from Budget. We rented the biggest truck available and it was pretty much filled to the brim. Luckily, between the quantity of people and organization efforts the truck was packed in just under an hour. Shelli also came up from Phoenix that morning to take the boys to Phoenix until Tuesday. That was a blessing. It simplified so much having them gone. Once our truck was loaded, Chad and I spent a few more hours cleaning and packing up the last dregs of our junk. Melissa and Ava hung around to help us out. Finally, at 3 PM the time had come for us to begin the trek to Flagstaff, as people from our new ward were meeting us to unload the truck. The drive was relatively painless. Chad drove the moving truck and I followed behind in the Tahoe, containing the ever precious television and other random items. The truck went significantly faster than we anticipated and we actually made it to Flagstaff in just over 1-1/2 hours. We arrived ahead of our unloading help to find the cleaning lady and an intact bed frame that should have been disassembled prior to our arrival. She didn't have the necessary tool she said. After a quick trip to Home Depot and $6 later I did and Chad and I did exactly what we had made every effort not to have to do...we took some of our time to take apart the furniture that should have already been removed from the house. Why couldn't she have gone to Home Depot and purchased the tool, you ask? We asked the same thing to each other. Luckily, the hiccup was resolved before our help arrived. As on the Prescott end, the truck was emptied and then actually reloaded with the owner's house contents in less than an hour. Our help left and Chad and I were on to step 3 of the move...move owner belongings to property manager's grandmother's carriage house for storage. It was very dark by this time and we had no idea where we were going so we were at the mercy of the cleaning lady in our 24 foot moving truck. She led us straight down one of the most narrow pine tree lined "driveways" I have ever seen. Due to the exact perfect placement of the house, carriage house and surrouding pine trees our gigantic truck got stuck. We managed to position it sufficiently to unload the contents but then we were left not knowing what to do to get our truck out. It took us over an hour to get it maneuvered. It was a nightmare. Chad couldn't see or feel the placement of the wheels. He couldn't see much of anything given how dark it was so I was left to shout commands over the loud, Diesel engine and the obnoxious "beep, beep, beep" when it was in reverse, including how much to turn his wheels. Chad was driving blind and I was his navigator. Not a fun situation. Add to that an idiot cleaning lady who was trying to help but only kept giving wrong directions. It was hard for Chad to trust my instructions and I was so nervous that one of my instructions was lead him crashing straight into a tree. We did take out some rather larger branches. Finally, we got the truck aligned properly on the path so that he could back straight out into a large open area and turn around. Until this event, our move had gone off without a hitch. Silly us for thinking a hitch wouldn't happen. By the time we got back to our new place we were beyond exhausted. Sadly, before we could go to bed we had to put our bed together. Of course, we could find all but one piece of the bed frame. To find the missing piece we had to go diving through everything stacked up in the garage and after probably 30 minutes we found it. Despite how tired we both were, neither of us slept hardly at all. In the morning though we did wake up to this view:
Sunday morning we hopped right back in our car to drive to Chino to get the dogs then to Prescott to finish cleaning, repairing and cleaning out the house. When I thought Saturday was exhausting it was only because I didn't know what Sunday had in store for us. We managed to finish up our work in enough time to catch the last half of the Super Bowl at the Henries. They fed us dinner to, which was so nice of them. Sunday night we drove back to Flagstaff to drop into bed and begin unpacking Monday. All of Monday I spent unpacking as much as I could. I wanted the kitchen and the boys' room set up before I brought them back.
Tuesday morning I headed to Phoenix to pick up the kids from Shelli, take Tyler to a Band adjustment appointment then drive to Tucson to work on our house down there. While all of our moving events were taking place, we were also in the process of getting new tenants in Tucson. They moved in early so the house wasn't really ready yet. We got to Tucson Tuesday night and stayed with Papa. Wednesday I spent a couple of hours with Papa at the house doing work while the boys were at Amy's house. Thursday or Friday we finally headed back to Flagstaff. This week had to have been one of the most exhausting weeks of my life.
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