SURPRISE! Howsabout We Move NOW????

Life has been nothing but a surprise this past week. We offer you our thoughts on the matter....

Click here to listen.

The same day we received an excellent inspection report on our new house {back in February} I started packing.

People teased me. People made flat-out-fun of me. Who starts packing in February when the anticipated move date is April 23rd?

People like me who have learned that nothing ever goes according to plan, and have the gut feeling that, in fact, this would go much FASTER.

I packed and packed. Every day. Organizing, purging, throwing away, setting aside for rummage, chronicling the journey in a scrapbook, sorting, wrapping, documenting in a binder, packing. The piles in our dining room reached almost to the ceiling {and we had tall ceilings} thanks to Ryan's superb Tetris-esque stacking skills.

I'm not kidding.

When we initially made the offer on the house, we asked if we could close on March 24th, which was the last possible day the previous owners could wait to close {we wanted to buy time for our own house to sell}, and they had asked for 30 days to leave the property. So we arranged a mental move date for the weekend of April 23rd.

In the counter-offering process, they threw in a concession to move out in 15 days instead of 30. And in our eagerness to move, we decided to leap forward and close as early as we could, which ended up being March 14th instead of March 24th. And on closing day, the sellers told us they'd be out within a week.

That's how we came to have our keys to the house on March 21, THREE DAYS before we ever thought we would even CLOSE.

This is why I started packing early.

And because our friends rock and helped us out so much in demo and painting and cleaning and {as you're about to read} MOVING, we were actually nearly fully moved to our new place by March 31.

WHAT!?!?

Here's how it started. {Part of this story is told in the podcast, too, but I wanted you to see pictures!}

Our friend Shawn had an unexpected vacation day last Tuesday. The weather was nice {for apparently the LAST time for a while} on that day, and he essentially donated his vacation day to help us move. Ryan was at work, and I was at the new house, cleaning with the {heavy} assistance of my friend Sandee. Shawn borrowed an enclosed trailer, drove to our old  house {probably an hour and a half drive for him}, loaded up every one of those Tetris-stacked boxes BY HIMSELF, drove back to our new house, I helped him unload, and then he and Sandee and I drove back to the old house, half-filled the trailer again, and unloaded a second time.

This was SO not in the plan. And yet it was SO amazing. We never dreamed we would get such a blessing!! {Of course when the three of us went back for load #2, Sandee and I just started dumping the remaining kitchen items in boxes that we didn't even bother to seal. I held the Kitchen Aid mixer in my lap on the way back to the new house. It wasn't organized. But it got done.

Because of Shawn's EXTREME generosity, we were able to go back two nights later to move the rest of the furniture and other things that we hadn't had time to grab on Tuesday. We had planned to load it all up into pickup trucks and flatbed trailers {again...friends who offered to help!} but the weather made that a questionable move, so my parents helped us out with a box truck - a blessing and a half! Ryan's brother came over to help carry the heavy stuff and my Mom stepped in to document a bit along the way. {Moving in fast forward meant FAR fewer pictures of the event than this scrapbooker is comfortable with. In fact, can someone pass me a brown paper bag? I need to breathe.}

It was dark and late when we got back to our new house, but Ryan and I unloaded everything off the truck except the heavy furniture.

And the next morning, his co-worker, Nick, came to help with the rest.

And that's how it happened that we moved almost a month early, and with a healthy mix of organization and extreme CHAOS!!!!!