Moving Out for Keeps

You might remember, as we told you the story of God opening the door for us to move, everything happened so fast that we could hardly hold onto our hats as we ran. And that was true all the way up to the move itself. And then it was pretty much the slowest move ever.

Here's what happened, in case the story I've told in pieces and parts is still confusing to you. 

Rob and his wife (the ones we are replacing at WillowBridge) bought a house, but they weren't going to close on it until mid-July. Also in mid-July, Gateway Woods had a week of training scheduled for two house parent couples joining the main campus. Rob thought it would be helpful to us to join that training week, even though it wasn't exactly geared for what we were doing. He also thought it would be easier to train us in the day-to-day happenings of life at WillowBridge if he was still living here.

And so it was that he offered us an empty apartment upstairs in the WillowBridge building. It's an apartment that will one day be occupied by a couple of guys, but for now it's available, so we came up with a carload of stuff prior to our week of classroom training and moved into the apartment. (It was full of furniture and kitchen supplies, so we just needed our clothing whatever we wanted for daily life.) 

Rob and his family moved out a couple of weeks after we arrived, and then we spent a few days cleaning and touching up the paint in the apartment before going back to Kokomo to pick up all our stuff. It had been packed and waiting on us that whole time. We had also chosen to not bring Braeya to Grabill until our final move, because we knew during our training, we wouldn't be around much, and we didn't want to put her in a strange place, without any of her familiar belongings, and then be gone for hours on end.

SO! That's how it came to be that we left for Grabill on July 12th and then returned to Kokomo on July 28th to load up our truck! 

We arrived in Kokomo shortly before lunch time and spent the afternoon wrapping up final details. Ryan picked up our U-Haul around 5 p.m. and expertly backed it into our driveway, leaving all trees AND the mailbox in pristine condition. 

My parents came to say goodbye, so we got a picture with them...

Let the loading begin!!!

Here is the first box going on the truck! It was not a particularly heavy box, but it was huge, so it took two people to move it. This is Ryan and our friend Sean, who was part of our small group this past year!

Phoebe's people were also on our loading crew, and I actually just handed my phone over to Sheila so she could document while I marked off boxes that went onto the truck. She did a great job with pictures!

 I had numbers being shouted at me from all sides, but we didn't miss marking off any boxes as they went on the truck!

 This is David - Ryan's boss at the hospital and also Phoebe's dad.

 He's even cute when he's all sweaty from moving! I love him!

 Another of our moving helpers was Brad, who was also in our small group for a while, and is also married to Abagail - my work buddy from the church!

 Sheila put the camera down, so I captured HER in action! ;)

 Who said moving isn't a workout??

 To try to preserve things and minimize breaking anything, Ryan didn't stack the moving truck to the tippy top. We had a trailer on the side that hauled most of the furniture, so he didn't have such a game of Tetris going in the main truck.

Ryan's step-dad, Allen, loaned us his enclosed trailer, and Ryan's friend Shawn (of ski trip fame) brought his truck to haul it. 

 It held all the furniture so nicely!

 I missed that couch so much while we were in training.

 We loaded all our porch furniture in the back of Shawn's truck.

 And inside of three hours, loading was a wrap! This was our stellar crew - minus Sheila, who had gone home to feed Phoebe.

I could write a thank you note to these guys every day for the next month and still never fully convey my gratitude for all their hard work in getting us loaded so quickly and efficiently. It was a hot night, and all this delayed their dinner significantly (though we did feed them!) and we so so so appreciated their generosity of time. 

A full two hours after they left and we worked on cleaning up the house, I found this still sitting in the kitchen.

WE FORGOT TO LOAD THE COFFEE BAR!! 

(If you're wondering how this happened...we sold our little farmhouse table to the new homeowners, and they had stacked a bunch of their own boxes on and around it, so the coffee bar sort of blended into the background and we didn't see it sitting there.) 

Ryan said we would find a place for it...in the morning. For the moment, we were tired and done!

We slept on the floor - one last night in our Kokomo house - and then got up super early on Wednesday to prepare to leave!

 One last note on the chalkboard...

 And one last picture with Shafferland 2.0.

And then...it was time to caravan north!