Moving 101...

One thing I can say about the move is that I am glad it's over! I will never underestimate the work that goes into a move again. If any of my friends or family ever move, I will be there, to help pack up, throw things out, watch kids, and pick up where they get overwhelmed and exhausted! (Luckily for me, I did have friends who did just that, and a lot of just that, I am so blessed!) One truckload, five trailer loads and six van loads of crap later, we are all moved in! :)
I tell you what, I don't know how I managed to do it 11 times as a college student; between Rexburg, Provo, Hawaii and Spokane! And we've done it 6 times since we've been married, and they all have been a breeze compared to this one. Oh wait...yes I do know, I didn't have kids then! It's amazing how much stuff you accumulate with children!

I had prepared for weeks in advance for this move, hauling things up from the basement, organizing, throwing things out, just to be prepared for when the weekend finally came, and let me tell you, even with all the prep, it was still A LOT of work!

I was very proud of my work up to this point of our move:

The day of the move itself went pretty smoothly, thanks to all the work ahead of time. Some friends from our ward came and loaded up Ben's flat bed truck Beverly Hillbilly style:

I'm just glad everything made it in one piece, I was a little worried! :)

The kids watching (and praying) that all of our stuff made it the .5 miles to our new home on the back of that truck! :)

We did run into a few snags along the way with some of the big things (like our bookshelf getting stuck in the hallway like this, pictured below) But the process of moving OUT was fairly easy and ran like clockwork! (Again, thanks to the help of our awesome friends and family who live close!)

And luckily for me our neighbor, and friend (and bishops wife) also came over the day of the move to help entertain the kids while I helped with the loading, it was such a life saver not having to entertain T&T on top of everything else that was going on!

Our last meal in our old home, PB&J and chicken nuggets on the living room floor!

A bit of what the chaos looked like that day:

Although it looks like complete chaos, I had three big piles of 'throw away', 'garage sale' and 'keep' that eventually started flowing together. But we worked it out and miraculously everything ended up where it belonged!

Luckily, that night we stayed at Papa's house. The kids were so excited to be there. They are usually the ones who have to go home and sleep in their own beds, so they were excited to sleep at Papa's house. I checked on them before I went to bed and found them like this:

The next day we skipped out on church (shhhh...don't tell anyone) I had no desire to search for church clothes and was pretty exhausted from the day before, plus we still had a ton to do at the house, so we headed over in our pj's and got to work on the last of the stuff.

Tucker and Ben went to the new house to organize while Taylor and I went to the old house to clean and finish up. We did take a little milk and Oreo break:

I swear I let her out for 5 seconds and she looks like this, I don't know how she does it:

Taylor and I were going through a bag of clothes in the basement and I ran upstairs for just a few minutes to do something, and she konked out in those few minutes. Her schedule was kind of messed up throughout this moving process.

Monday night my awesome friends came and helped me clean our EMPTY house! It was a little bittersweet. I should have had them come clean while I still lived there, it looked awesome! :)

(This is what I look like after a week of very few showers, hardly any clothes that I can find and very little sleep! Not good!) :)

The plan was to only stay one night at Papa's, so I only got out one change of clothes for the kids and us. We ended up staying there 4 nights, so it was quite the adventure trying to find clean clothes for the kids. I would grab anything I could find out of a box or suitcase. In this case, I thought these were shorts Taylor could wear to bed, turns out it was a little diaper cover thing that goes with a dress, oops! :)

I love boxes from Target! :) Luckily that day I received a box with some new summer pj's I had ordered for them, so the next night they were set.

Getting a little game of 'go fish' in with Papa before bed...

This was by far the hardest part of the move for me. We were so discombobulated. I had been working so hard to get out of our house, that I just hit a wall with the new one. Plus, we were living one day at a time, wearing clothes that were random and dirty most of the time. Luckily for me, Kathryn had done a load of our whites for us and had given them back to me in a big Pottery Barn bag. If it weren't for that Pottery Barn bag in my car that week, we wouldn't have had clean underwear. I would seriously go fishing in that bag everyday and just pull out any clean thing I could find for myself or the kids. Plus, I was exhausted, didn't know how we were going to ever feel organized or comfortable in our new home. I had reached my breaking point! I completely shut myself off from the world and got to work on the new house. I literally was a hermit for a good 2 weeks! And to top it all off, Ben (meaning well) bought us a big beautiful sectional couch off craigslist. We had been looking for one for a while and he found a great deal, bought it and surprised me, and I was SO excited, but it just meant one more thing to clean, (our house was covered in down feathers for the week) organize and figure out what to do with! :) Cleaning a couch is not an easy task, luckily Ben took that one on for me and now it's perfect! 

Anyway, this is what it looked like:

{living room}

{office}

{Tucker's room}

And the rest of the house looked the same.

And our back deck started to look like this; and I didn't want to be 'those' neighbors with trash and old boxes everywhere! :) But that is in fact who we were that week!

Luckily the kids did some of this:

And a lot of this:

I am so glad I got this shot of Taylor because this is what she does all the time! She takes the corner of her blanket and puts it in between her nose and her binky and just tickles her nose with it. It is her comfort thing.

And finally, after a week of hard work, it was finally starting to come together. And I absolutely love it now! It was actually really fun organizing and putting things away. I really enjoyed figuring out where and how to put everything! I guess it's a grown ups version of playing house! :)

The kitchen:

On a side note, about the kitchen table. Ben came home from work one day sometime throughout the course of the week and I was still in my pj's scrubbing the table. He asked me what I was doing and I told him that there was some sort of nasty film on our table that I was scraping off. I had gotten side tracked ALL day scraping this film off our table. It took me forever, and I became obsessed. :) I thought it was from so much spilled milk or something that had just built up. Ben took a closer look at it and was like, I think you are scraping the finish off the table. You can imagine what my crazy mad woman reaction was. I didn't want to believe it, but now every little scratch and scrape shows up! Ooops! :)

Anyway, back to the house, our new sectional couch in the living room. The house is so light and airy. I love that the windows let so much light in and I love the layout!

The office:

And then the following week, I was finally able to get some personal touches back up that really make it finally feel like home:

{can you spot the Ben doll? Taylor's new favorite toy!} :)

And this is my view from the kitchen sink. We love the back yard. It is big and fenced, and I can watch the kids from the kitchen, which I couldn't do before, it's great!

So, the house is now home, and we are loving it! I mean, it has is's quirks and a few negatives, but for the most part, we love it and can't wait to settle here for a while!

The neighborhood is amazing! It is quiet and we can go outside and ride bikes and play without having to worry about crazy cars zooming by!

We have some friends from our old ward that live just a few houses down with a little girl Tuckers age, so that should be fun. In fact, they will be in the same school next year, for Kindergarten together. Another bonus is the school Tucker will be going to, we've heard nothing but great things about it, so I am so excited!

We have already been scoping out the neighborhood on a few walks. AND, the best part is, is that there is a great park just a 5 minute walk away, with a pool! We are going to be set this summer! We've already gone for lunch a few times at the park. 

And life is back to normal, finally! Tucker had a little friend over just a last week and I realized, when his mom came to get him, that talking to her was the first time I had spoken to any of my friends for like 2 weeks! It felt good to get back to reality! :) I feel like I can finally breathe! Life is good! :)

{Even our 'Nacho Sunday' tradition has returned, which is a big one in our home!} :)