The morning of September 1, 2015 we went and picked up the rented Uhaul. Then we proceeded to load it, mostly by ourselves. I'd had most of the house packed at this point, but left a few things for David that I knew he'd want to be in charge of. (Computer stuff, music stuff, lots and lots of miscellaneous cords, etc.) And I left the garage to David for the most part, too. You see, he had this strange idea that it's absurd to pack anything BEFORE moving day. Like, he thought, maybe a day or two before you can start, but certainly not the month in advance like I did. Because it doesn't take that long and you just throw things haphazardly in boxes and voila! You're done! Here is where we all agree that David is a little, well, CRAZY! Packing for a family of 7 takes a lot of time and planning. We have so much stuff, and we mostly use it all. Not a lot of extra. And because David was naive to the time it takes to pack boxes, we had to go back for a couple weeks just to clean out the crammed garage. And to do the deep cleaning of the house.
Anyway! We got the moving van, which was exciting for the kids.
We even let them ride their bikes up and down the ramp. Ah, bikes. I remember when the kids could ride them. Now they are all flat because of the one time that they tried to ride them at this house. Stinking goat heads!
Removing the mattresses from the house was another fun moment for children.
We had people help us load some of the truck that day, and several helped unload it at the new house. We even kept the uhaul a second day to go back and pack up most of the garage. We had almost as much stuff, (well, David did) in the garage as was in the entire house. Our food storage was out there too. Now it's in the cellar, which we've gone into one time since we finished moving. It was nice to have my family and some friends and ward members help us move.
After two exhausting days of moving, (packing and unpacking, loading and unloading the uhaul) we were worn out. The second night after getting the kids in bed, (which were just mattresses across the floor) David and I just wanted to shower and go to bed ourselves. We hadn't used the shower in the new house yet and were dismayed to find that the drain was very slow. It meant our shower had a time limit if we didn't want water spilling out onto the bathroom floor. And it was a quick timer. Sad.
So we crawled into bed, finally clean and rested our aching bones and muscles, but only for a brief moment. I thought I heard something strange that sounding like crackling. David and I got up to investigate. We went downstairs into the dark dining room. The sound was coming from the kitchen area, so I headed over there but before I got to the kitchen I stepped in a puddle of water, and it was kinda zappy. We located a light switch (which is harder than you might think in this house!) and saw water all over the kitchen floor, and that it was coming from a light fixture! Ugh!
This is why the shower took so long to drain! So we turned off the breaker to the lights in that part of the house and found the box with the towels and set to mopping up the floor. Luckily we found it before it had a chance to warp the wood of the kitchen floors. We left a bucket under the light switch surrounded by towels and went to bed.
And that was only the start of all the things we'd have to fix on this house. We had to buy a new well pump and a new water heater within the first few months, though we were told they were brand new. The shower drain had so many many problems. We are very lucky David has a strong background in construction and knows how to fix these things. We've put so much money into repairs that it's kind of funny. I can't even remember them all.
But we love the house anyway and don't regret the purchase. We do wish the contractors who remodeled it were more honest, but you can't change other people. They tried to get away with so many short cuts. Many of them they did, but some of them David caught before we signed the papers.
And that's our story of moving.
