The Big Move*

We made it.

We are finally here in our new apartment in –blank–. (I’ve yet to come up with a wondrously clever “blog name” for our new city. It’s coming.) After a week of non-stop packing, we were set to move bright and early Friday morning.

And then we had a couple of… hiccups.

The Hubster and his dad left to get the truck just before 9am, expecting to be back by 9:30 when everyone who had volunteered to come help was set to arrive.

Perfect, right?

Ha. At around, ohh, 9:20am the phone rang. It was the Hubster. A very frustrated Hubster informing me that the company’s computers were having issues and he might be a while. (There is a back story to this… we had problems with this company the day before the move as well so he was less than impressed)

After he hung up I hoped that his friends would show up together to they could at least entertain themselves whilst I continued to be elbow deep in oven cleaner. WOO!

This was not to be.

Right at 9:30 there was a knock at my door. One of Mark’s friends (a very nice person but I don’t know him well at all but will appreciate forever his moving our crap) shows up. Alone. While I am COVERED in black oven guck. (yummy) So I started the small talk and after approximately 45 seconds we ran out of things to talk about. I began to tell him to grab a seat and relax while we waited for the other guys, but as the words were coming out of my mouth I realized that the chairs were covered, the futon was not even visible and the only “sitable” surface was our bed, which by this point consisted only of the frame, mattress and box spring.

Right.

So I frantically began clearing off my desk (he’s a computer guy, he can play on my computer, right?) while he watched me in an awkward silence until we were saved by his phone. I ran to the kitchen (to avoid the awkwardness to give him privacy) to call the Hubs to find out where he was. He informed me that things were moving along, but it could be after 10am by the time he got back.

…

As I hung up the phone another of Mark’s friends (whom I actually know) arrived to save the day. The two strapping young men began hauling our boxes to the lobby to wait for the Hubster to arrive. Then two of the missionaries from our church showed up (bless those boys) and contributed to the tote-hauling effort. Finally, at some point after 10am the Hubster was able to get the truck and the loading began.

It was not long after that we realized that there was no way we’d be able to fit everything into the truck.

When the Hubster booked the truck he specifically asked what size we should get. The guy on the phone (who we later learned was a complete and total moron) assured us that the size we booked was used to move 2-bedroom apartments. We were moving from a 1-bedroom into a two, so we took his judgement and booked the truck.

Ha.

The men packed the truck like a jigsaw puzzle but there was still no way it was going to fit it all. (Apparently we have a lot of stuff. Who knew?) It quickly became obvious that we were going to have to make two trips. My family was not coming until the next day to help with unloading the truck into our new apartment, so we scrambled and managed to get three strapping young missionaries on the other end to donate a half hour to make some room in our truck. So, thinking that we’d be back to Senior’s City later that day for round 2 of the move, I left alllll the cleaning supplies in our old apartment as it still needed to be cleaned a bit.

This was not smart.

We left Senior’s City at 2pm and drove to our new city and quickly unloaded the heaviest things off the truck (I didn’t want to leave it all for Big Dad, Spart and T-rex), expecting that we’d turn right back around and reload. I somehow missed the memo that companies like this one only give you so many kilometres to use and we only had like…. 2 km left. So my vacuum, broom and massive box of every kind of cleaning tool you can think off spent one last night in our old apartment, and luckily we now live close enough to things that the Hubster and I trudged out to get some essentials.

I was ready for bed by 7pm. I cannot remember a time in my life when I have been that tired. I forced myself to organize a bit to make room for the rest of the stuff on the truck, then the Hubster and I collapsed into bed around 10pm.

As Day Two of the move dawned, I was excited to get things underway and start setting up our new place. Big Dad, Spart and T-rex arrived to help us out and as they brought the boxes off the truck I attempted to organize and unpack.

The key word there being “attempted”.

Again I was wholly overwhelmed by how much stuff we had. By the time everything was off the truck (of load #1, we still had a bit of crap in our old place too) you could barely walk in any room. The bedroom was entirely inaccessible, the office was stacked to ceiling, and the living room looked like a bomb had exploded and left boxes everywhere. Big Dad had to leave as soon as the truck was empty, but Spart and T-rex (being the FABULOUS people that they are) stayed for hours to help us out. They helped us make our living room look somewhat livable, then went with us to IKEA (♥) so we could get some things we needed. Then, because they are awesome, they even dropped the Hubs off at another rental place so he could pick up a van to go and get the rest of our stuff. Words cannot express how much I appreciate what they did for us on Saturday. I heart you with GREAT hearting!

So, the Hubs and his dad made one last trip to Senior’s City to load up the van and clean the apartment. They left shortly after 4 and I hoped that they could be back by 8pm at the latest as I knew how tired the Hubster was. I spent my first few “alone” hours in the apartment digging a path into the bedroom so we could have a place to sleep.

At nearly 11pm the Hubster rolled in. (Apparently there was more left in the apartment than we thought… *sigh*)

We quickly unloaded the van and thankfully his Dad was there through it all to help us out. He went above and beyond what I’d consider “Dad Duties” and helped us so much. The Hubster still had to go return the van that night, so it was nearly midnight by the time we hit the sack.

Remember how tired I thought I was the day before?

Ha. Kiddie stuff. This was pure and utter exhaustion. But it was done. Somewhere underneath all the totes and boxes lay our fabulous new apartment… we just had to dig it out. haha!

And that, dear readers, is what we have been doing non-stop for the past 2 days (We spent half of the Hubster’s birthday up to our elbows in boxes… WOO! Happy Birthday Hubs! haha). I’m quite pleased with the result thus far–it’s actually beginning to look like more of an apartment and less of a war-zone. I LOVE the layout and we have windows everywhere which I love love love. As soon as we are finished unpacking I’ll take some pictures to show you our lovely new place.

Shop Girl*
xo