It finally happened. After three and a half months and I don't know how many houses and 4 offers and three contracts, Mom finally bought a house! She's been packing and moving things in slowly over the past two weeks. I've been over there twice helping unpack and get things set up. My nephews have been helping pack and move the boxes and a couple of pieces of furniture.
It's definitely a downsize for her. She's going from 5400 square feet to about 3000. I have a skewed vision of what a big house is, so I don't think this house is huge, but a lot of my friends do. The main part of the house is three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a large living room, huge dining room, huge kitchen and a small dining area. It's got a huge room with a full bath over the two car garage they'll use as a guest room. The main house is 2500 square feet and trying to figure out where Mom is going to put everything is like a puzzle. We've been measuring and remeasuring and triple measuring furniture and rooms and thinking about configurations for days. I think we might have her office figured out. Mostly.
She started packing back in February, when she had contract #2. I refused to pack anything until she actually had keys to a house because contract #1 fell apart when the seller couldn't sign because of a contention in the estate. Contract #2 was opted out of because of the incredible amount of work needed on the house. Offer #3 was declined. Offer #4 turned into contract #3 and I still waited until contract #3 became house #2.
So I've packed a few boxes. Not many in the grand scheme of things, but about 30 or so of books. And I have one tub of kitchen stuff packed. And Austin packed a few boxes out of the front closet.
I hate packing. Its so tedious. And there's not really space for filled boxes anywhere at the moment. I'm waiting for Bob to move his Corvette to the new house so I can start loading up and dropping boxes in the garage on Orange, but there's not a super rush on that. He's got a lot of other stuff going on with the move so that is not a priority for him.
Elijah has been surprisingly helpful with packing. He's pretty good at packing books into boxes. Granted, he's had some behavioral issues recently so he's lost screen time (the only punishment that really works around here) and packing and being Mommy's "slave boy" is the only way he has of earning it back, but he actually is useful. He can fetch and carry empty boxes, he's figured out how to put books in fairly efficiently, and he can pack one box for every three that I pack, which isn't nothing.
He doesn't want to pack his stuff yet, though. That should wait until we move. So that's going to be fun. 🙄
I asked the boys to pick out the games in the dining room they wanted to keep out so we could pack the others. There's probably about 20 games in there. They were ok packing the games Austin and I play with friends who come over for dinner and Eden's game. Everything else needed to stay out because they MIGHT want to play it in the next two months.
Everything relating to a move is so daunting. Utilities, insurance, packing, unpacking, the move itself; those are just the must happens. The extras, painting, new decor, special purchases...those don't actually make it just tons more fun. I am looking forward to throwing some color on the walls in the Orange street house, and I finally get to decorate bedrooms for the children, but figuring out the logistics is making me want to just crawl into bed and watch mindless tv and sleep for about two months. Wake me up when it's all over.
Maybe I should hire someone to come pack, too. That's not too terrible, right?
The kids are mostly looking forward to it. Asher is excited to have his own room with privacy. Elijah is excited to have a Mario themed room. Eden is excited to have a pink room. Rebekah...she's 1. She's clueless. They like Oma's new house. They're iffy on BB and Papa living in their old house ("I don't want to leave my stuff for them. I don't want BB and Papa to play with my trains." -Elijah).
It'll all work out and in a year's time, everything will be settled for us (I hope). We're hoping to be all moved by mid-May so I can have the last couple of weeks of school to have two days a week of uninterrupted unpacking and settling. CCF is only once a week this summer, and only in June and July. So I'll have maybe 7 days of no kids underfoot. SUPER.
It's happening. And it's going to be exciting and terrifying and exhausting and I'll be so relieved when it's all over.
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