Friday, July 4, 2008

Oh the joys of moving. . .

After a month long wait, we finally moved into our home the night of June 27. We felt so blessed to have had the TLF on base to stay in, but were glad to have more than a one bedroom hotel room to co-exist. A few things I miss about being in the TLF is the proximity of Fernando's work (5 min walk)and 3 FREE large capacity washers/dryers at my disposal. Still, it was nice to sign all those wordy documents stating that we no longer owned money or technically a house, but would be paying for a place to call our own. Closing is what I am referring to and it came in the nick of time. Our stay came to a mandatory end the morning of the closing. This made for a stressful emergency evacuation of all our goods in too short of time we had before we had to be at the title company. We were so short on time that I couldn't drop the kids off at a willing friend's house and the kids had another chance to add a boring experience tied to moving into a house. Besides having to trash the good food we had in the fridge, we had no place to nap the kids and no connection to the internet which also was our connection to our phone. (only down fall to vonage) I had to use our convenient but very expensive pay per minute cell phones to call all the companies who would be delivering our fridge, washer, dryer, bedroom furniture, and internet. Funny, after telling all the companies numerous times that number they originally were given was unaccessible, they all called and left messages on that wrong number. With that said, we miraculously got all the things we ordered. Part of the miracle occurred because of a kind friend who sat at our house waiting for the washer, dryer, and fridge while we were at Six Flags for mandatory fun. (more about that on another post)

Also, by shear luck, they delivered our household goods the day after we called. We were worried since the company said they would not set up a delivery until we had keys in hand. Along with prompt delivery, we some how managed to have little damage to our stuff. We are missing a box of clothes and whatever else they probably shoved in that box *** and a floor lamp is totally bent but Texas builders believe in overhead lighting so it isn't that big of a deal.



Moving day was insane. Once again, I had my kids and not because I didn't have about ten people offer to watch them or medically speaking I didn't feel comfortable taking them to a friend's house, but because the movers called my unusable phone instead of my cell phone so I had no idea when they would arrive. In fact, I was just about to call my neighbor to take the kids when a knock came at the door. Reeking of BO and lacking a bra, I had to let them in (your charge quite a hefty fine if they 'attempt' a delivery and no one is home). Stuck at a table with pages of itinerary in front of me and 3 kids needing me to be anywhere else but there, I was afraid of going postal. 5 hours later I was surrounded in boxes and full of guilt for ignoring my kids. Before they left, I asked them to unpack. Prepared by several previous military moved families, I knew that they would resist, but I didn't want to have to do it solo. In the end, they unpacked some of my kitchen stuff until their whining pushed me over the edge and I said they could go. The rest of the day is a blur. I should say the rest of this week has been a blur. Lots of anger and frustration and sorrow on mine and the kids part have been counter balanced by near completion of this moving craziness. I secretly feel like the boxes are reproducing behind the closed doors. Thank heavens for the playground that came with the house and imaginative kids.


***POST POST: I originally wanted to pack our own house and move it. Not because I love packing, but I had a sneaking suspicion that mess would meet me on the other end. Sure enough. It seems as though they would just sweep and throw whatever they found into a box and tape it up. They even packed a plastic part of the window from our Maryland home and a full garbage. They wouldn't disassemble our computer desk or a perfect storage shelf, but willingly demolished my elliptical. I plead with them not to do it especially since the "experts" who originally installed it couldn't put humpty together again. We are still waiting for it not to be a pile of metal. When we are finished unpacking and we post clean house pictures, I'll show you the end result of the elliptical.)

8 comments:

Claudia said...

Congrats on surviving closing - sorry for the nightmares. Before you know it, it will all be a funny memory as you enjoy your fabulous new home.

AMy said...

What? You no longer have a giant paper-weight??? It is a sad day in Texas.
On the plus side, when you finish unpacking your stuff, it will already be the second coming and no more garbage to deal with, appearantly, literally.

Emily said...

Oh the nightmares!

In our marriage of 7 years we have lived in 7 different apartments. Of those moves, only 2 happened with Ethan (and only one of those we had to unpack stuff.)

Anyway, I can only imagine what you are going through right now. I can't believe the bit about your eliptical. If it is truly un-put-togetherable will they replace it? THEY SHOULD!

Or at least give you a hunk of money to put into your depleated wallets :0)

Tami said...

That makes me feel a little better about packing ourselved up. It's too bad all that crap happened to you. Fernando must have already started. How's that all going?

student said...

You are amazing. What a ton of work. I am anxious to see the house put together. It looks like it is going to be a beautiful home.

Kathleen Ainsworth said...

Oh, the joys of moving! I hope you are starting to feel semi-settled now. Good luck!

Lynn said...

are we living parallel lives...

now you can see why we chose to move ourselves this time. i'm much more excited about how our unpacking will go having done it myself. no surprises!!

and they are supposed to reassemble anything they disassemble - although then you run the risk of them only putting in the minimum nuts and bolts and tossing the rest. sounds like a safety hazard to me.

Anjuli Fry said...

It must be nice to have your own home. I am sorry about the move stuff. Things never turn out like you want. We are really looking into moving down there for third year.