Hobos

A lot has happened in the last month and a half - a whirlwind of packing, logistical planning, end of school activities, and trying to buy a suitable home in Texas, while living in Virginia. I've had a lot of wine in the last two months, and the fit of my pants (or lack thereof) shows that all too well. No time for exercise, but we made it through and I know this is all just a temporary situation. So what's happened in the past several weeks?

After getting quotes from a few moving companies, we decided $15K was entirely too much to pay someone to move all our crap to Texas, and we liked the idea of using PODS and a U-haul. So before Matt left for Texas on May 10, we loaded two 16' PODS full to the brim and currently have them awaiting transfer in Virginia. The plan was then to get a 17' Uhaul for the rest of the stuff & tow my MINI behind it. Matt's dad was going to fly home & they would ride together, while I drove the kids and cat in the mini van. This, of course was all dependent on us buying the second house we wrote a contract on, as the first one never materialized, even after a verbal acceptance. We were supposed to go to settlement on June 8, and move in on June 10.

Things that don't go smoothly from the beginning aren't meant to be, right? We felt we were compromising a little bit on that house, it was smaller than we were comfortable with, but thought we could make it work. As time went on, though, their agent was just not great to deal with - papers took forever to get signed, she pushed back on absolutely everything, and at the 11th hour we used our option to terminate the contract. Of course she was on the phone with our agent within 30 seconds of receiving that email, hoping to salvage the deal. I'm sure she blamed the whole thing on us to her clients, but we felt nothing but relief to be out of that one.

In the meantime, Matt and our Texas agent went to look at a couple more houses - never mind the severe thunderstorm warnings and potential for tornadoes that afternoon....thankfully, the first one they saw looked like a great fit for us, with everything we could want except for quite the amount of land Matt was hoping to get. Honestly, it's 6 times what we had in Virginia, I'm ok with not having a 10 or 15 acre spread to start with.

The third house - in Celina - seemed to be the charm - we had a verbal acceptance on our offer within 4 hours of submitting a contract, and a signed contract within a day. We were to go to settlement on June 28, and gave them until June 30 to move out. That left me with 23 days of homelessness for me and the cat, as Matt had to go back to work, and I didn't really see all 6 of us - plus the cat - living in a hotel in Dallas for 3 weeks. After considering all the options I could think of, I booked a house for two weeks at the beach for me and the kids. I'm thinking it was meant to be, as I found a townhouse 100 yards from the beach that was available for two weeks, with a Friday check-in - we could move out and go right there.

After all that was settled, I buckled down to packing up the rest of the house and cutting the grass every 3 days. May showers bring lots of grass to cut. Fast forward, and Matt and his dad flew home to move us out on Tuesday June 4th. We had beautiful weather, up until it was time to load the trucks! Then it rained for two days. We soon realized that the 26' truck we'd changed to two weeks before wasn't going to be big enough. Late Thursday afternoon on the 6th Matt's dad and I picked up a 14' truck. We should have gotten a 17'....

 After packing for two days in the rain, Matt was just spent, as was I - but you really have no choice but to power through, right?

 The kids came home from school, we snapped a picture, jumped in the trucks, and away we went. It didn't occur to me until talking to Matt last night that I didn't really process that I'd never be back there - we put so.much. into that house. I didn't really have TIME to think about it though, as I had a 6.5 hour drive ahead of me, heading into Tropical Andrea on my way to the outer banks of NC.

 William kept me company up front most of the way down - he was a great traveling companion :)

 I don't think we could have fit one more ounce of anything in the van, and there were lots of times where I lost it on the drive - my kids could get on the nerves of a saint, and heaven knows I am NOT one of those. But we made it safe and sound, and are nicely settled into our home until June 21. I forget which of the kids said we were hobos, but Jason - after a day playing at the beach - said he had no idea moving could be so much FUN! I love that boy.

Post script: re-reading this, it sounds like it was all so easy! The reality was SO much different. Poor Matt and his dad drove from Virginia to Texas in 2 days and then spent 4 hours with his family unloading everything into 3 storage units. I'm sure it was brutal, and that I've got the easy end of the deal here, as I write my blog post while sipping coffee, listening to chirping birds in the morning breeze at the beach :) Now that I have some time to decompress, maybe I'll actually write about our adventures here...