Update

I had really big plans to document our move from Brooklyn to the burbs. Up until the actual move, I thought I’d have all kinds of time to write about the goings-on in our new house. Little did I know I wouldn’t even have time to shower, let alone write humorous entries about how badly my life sucked. Here is the Cliff’s Notes version, for your reading enjoyment.

The two weeks before our move were insane. I had to go up to Westchester just about every five minutes for various reasons, the biggest of which was clearing the house of all the previous owners’ junk we had agreed to remove. I can’t even begin to describe how much crap was crammed into every square inch of the house. I had hired a company called 1-800-GOT-JUNK to haul it all away, at the tune of 500 bucks per truck load. The first day alone we filled three trucks, and the house was still completely over-run with stuff. In the hall closet I took out approximately 73 boxes of sanitary napkins. This was a complete mystery to me, as the woman who had lived there was well in her nineties and probably had gone through menopause forty years earlier. I really don’t think these folks EVER threw anything away.

Our official moving day was the first Saturday in April. We couldn’t have picked a rainier day to do it. The missionaries were rock stars, moving all our stuff out of 29 Tiffany and into the moving truck. The new owners of 6L had bought all our furniture from us, so it was mostly just boxes and mattresses. I must admit though, Trav and I were astounded at how many boxes we had. How did two minimalists acquire so much stuff? Then Travis drove up to the new house with Enoch, Jeff, Joe and Russ and they unloaded everything into the one room the GOT-JUNK guys and I had managed to clear out. It was a pretty miserable evening.

After returning the moving truck, we ate dinner at our new neighbor’s house (the Dowdles) and then Travis and Calder hung out in the car while Scout and I scrubbed and cleaned the walls and floors of the dining room. We went to bed that night with our mattresses tossed on the cold floor, still partially wet from being moved in the rain.

The next couple weeks were not much better than our first night. After many quotes on how much it would be to fix the popcorn ceilings, scrape off the safari-inspired wall paper, and paint the upstairs bedrooms, we decided to do it ourselves. I spent the next month being covered in paint and all manner of debris. We made many trips to Ikea to buy dressers and beds, and I became a pro at putting them together. About a week before we left for a family reunion in California, we finally moved upstairs to the bedrooms. There’s a lot I’m leaving out here, like the day I was sure I was killing my family with aesbestos poisoning, the roof/dumpster debacle, the washer-dryer drama, the tick calder got behind his ear... all will make excellent posts later on. I think if enough time passes I’ll be able to write about this stuff from a humorous perspective... right now it’s still too depressing.

The kids and I spent the summer in Colorado and Utah, staying with family and playing with all our cousins and friends. Travis was mostly at work, where he lived while the house got torn apart and put back together. The separation was hard on everyone, but it was all worth it in the end. The house is FINALLY almost done; there are just a few things left to do. Now that we’re done, we’re talking about finishing the attic before the baby comes. S & C love their new house, and having their own bedrooms. They love the new ward, which is bursting with kids their ages. Their favorite thing about suburban life BY FAR is no more downstairs neighbors. One of our favorite jokes is when the kids are being loud and running around, we yell, “You guys be quiet! The neighbors!” and they yell with glee, “WE DON’T HAVE ANY NEIGHBORS!” Life is pretty good.