What a busy month! We've been in Utah for a week now and things are starting to settle down a little. Since we decided we were moving at the beginning of January we've been going non-stop to get ready for our move. Every night Robert and I would send the kids to bed and stay up until midnight packing and sorting what to sell, trash, or pack. It felt pretty nice to get rid of a whole bunch of stuff, including a lot of things that we have just been hanging onto and never use.
So we had a yard sale one weekend. A friend took Julia and Micah. Camden hung out with us. We were happy with how it went and everything left over got donated to the Salvation Army the next week.
We also tried to get all our dentist and eye exams done before we switch insurance and move to a new area. Micah had his first dentist visit. Julia sat next to him in the chair, but he still cried. The dental hygienist said that was probably a good thing though because it means he has to open his mouth :).
Micah has not been slowed down any and managed to find a marker one day while we were preoccupied for a few minutes. Luckily he only wanted to color on the toy bins, so not too big a deal.
We had some last playdates with friends. We are going to miss all our friends and family in Southern California!
Julia had her last day of preschool. I came a little early on her last day to take a picture of her with her teacher, Mrs. Duron. She gave Julia a stuffed animal as a going away gift and told her to always remember not to say "I can't" and to always try. Hmm, I guess Julia was having trouble with that? Does sound like her.
I had to throw this in. I cleaned my burners in preparation of selling the house with a technique I saw on Pinterest. They turned out A-mazing, much better than when we moved in, they looked brand new. They used to be completely covered in gunk, so much that I didn't even know they were suppose to be shiny.
The day before we loaded up the truck they brought the trailer out and left it on the street for us. Here the kids watch as it gets dropped off. The next day we hired proffesional movers to come load the truck for us, and the next evening the trucking company came back and took the trailer away. Now all our things are in storage with the trucking company and we won't see it again until we have a house to move into!
The kids watch as the movers load up the trailer. They did pretty good while the movers were there. I did have to remind Julia every five minutes to make sure to stay out of their way. I was so busy keeping Micah and Camden busy that Julia pretty much just did her own thing. Mostly she stood out by the truck and watched them load, but she did stay out of the way.
We got In N' Out for lunch and ate it on the lawn while the movers finished up.
The last of the stuff gets packed in and Julia and Micah were allowed one time up the ramp to check it out. The trucking company will fill up the rest of the trailer with their freight so we only get charged for the space we used in the truck.
It was pretty challenging to clean with all the kids around. I did get lots of offers to help watch the kids while we cleaned, but unfortunately a few days earlier Julia and Micah were sick with what I think was Hand, Foot, and Mouth disease (what an awful name for a sickness) so I didn't want to expose anyone else to them since it's pretty contagious, especially within the first week. So we spent the rest of the day cleaning with the kids around and although it was slow going I felt like we had a good start on it for the next day. We stayed at a hotel nearby and got back to the house by 8:30 am the next day. But we didn't hardly get any cleaning done before noon because of packing up all the stuff in our car we were going to be taking with us and doing last minute errands around town, not to mention taking care of kids.
Micah loooves to vacuum. It was pretty challenging doing anything because he just wanted to vacuum, and I needed to be there to make sure he didn't vacuum anything up!
Video of the vacuuming. Careful, the sound is loud.
The boys in front of the house. It was a good first home for us, we will miss it. I thought it was super cute and had a lot of character. Also, all my kids were babies there, so it's got a lot of memories. So sad to see it go, but hoping to get rid of it soon after it goes on the market in a couple weeks! (Remember the infamous bathroom remodel? Yeah, that's still going on, so the house doesn't go on the market until the contractor who is working on the bathroom now finishes it. So sad I never got my brand new bathroom!)
We were planning on leaving for St. George after we had dinner, around 5:30 or 6:00, to get a head start on the driving and break it up into two days. But we still had lots of stuff left to do by our departure time, so we fed the kids some snack food we had around and kept going. There were a couple things we didn't get done by 8:00 pm that we were thinking of doing, but by then we just decided it was probably good enough.
So we packed up and said our last goodbye's to our house and headed to Mcdonalds drive in before starting off. We only made it to Las Vegas, but the kids all fell asleep ten minutes after we got on the freeway and slept the ENTIRE drive to Vegas, so we were happy with the head start. And the next day they all did great on the rest of the drive to Utah! It was an exhausting week!
