Tales from "Moving 101"...

I have a running list of updates going for the 2008 year. I'll post them to get those of you new to our blog "up to speed" on our life so far (which would be most of you, considering this has only been up for 2 days!)

Update #1: After six months and 13 days of unemployment, Jim was called by Quinault Baptist Church to be their new Worship/Youth Pastor! We are so amazed and blessed by this opportunity.

Update #2: I am finishing (finally!) my LAST semester of nursing school. It's hard to believe, but I will have my Bachelor's of Science in Nursing May 9, 2008! Yay for almost being a "real nurse" (as opposed to a fake one!)

Update #3: I have bangs. It was slightly traumatic, but I seem to be recovering nicely.

Update #4: After 6 months on the market and 1 month off the market, we have sold our house. And we have 3 weeks to find an apartment and move. So between finishing clinicals and classes, taking finals, applying and interviewing for nursing positions, and working, I will be looking for an apartment and packing my house up. YIKES - but what an amazing blessing at the same time!

Update #5: We have found a great new "pad"! And after two days of packing (following two days of Daja confined to her bed with sickness), we have moved in. Unfortunately it's not as easy to unpack as it is to pack :(

Elaboration of Update #5: What a comical time this was for us! As usual, the basic laws of JimandI's universe apply: Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. Let's begin with step one...

Step One - Packing
We opted to move in the weekend of March 14 - 16, figuring this was the best time because a) it was right at the end of my spring break, and b) I did not have to work. Instead, I worked the nights at the beginning of the week. My schedule looked like this: Work Monday night, sleep Tuesday, pack Wednesday and Thursday, move Friday and Saturday. I went to work Monday night thinking "wow, I really don't feel well" and left Tuesday morning thinking "give me the bottle of NyQuil and nobody will get hurt!". I spent Tuesday and Wednesday in bed, getting up only to replenish my body's NyQuil supply. I still did not feel up to snuff on Thursday, but knowing that we were going to move the next day (plus I had my first "real job" interview on Friday!) I dragged myself out of bed and starting packing my house. Luckily for me, one of the women from our church came over and packed my kitchen while I blew my nose repeatedly.

Step Two - Moving, Part One
Part one began on Friday morning. Being the loving, considerate, and deperate person I am, the I called on two of my friends to help me start moving the "little stuff" - one was 39 weeks pregnant, the other has congenital heart defects. Between the three of us, each handicapped in our own special way (I'm pretty sure my handicap is mental), we were able to move some quite a few small items.

Step Two - Moving, Part Two
Part two began on a gorgeous Saturday morning. Jim was scheduled to umpire at the little league jamboree all morning, so we agreed that we would wait to move until one in the afternoon. I spent the morning doing one of my favorite pastimes - shopping for storage and organization solutions. I stopped for to pick up lunch at Bruchi's around 12:45, and in the 10 minutes I was inside waiting for our food, it began to rain. Not the "spitting" rain, as Jim so delicately puts it, but pouring rain. Hail, in fact. I made it home, where a group of people from our church had arrived to help us move the "heavy stuff". We voted to move small boxes first in covered vehicles before moving the furniture in the now-wet-and-muddy trucks. My mother managed, while carrying a box of glassware, to slip and fall on the driveway. At the time, it appeared that she had just scuffed up her knee, so I didn't think anything of it... Later she found that her hand was in quite a bit of pain and she could no longer bend her leg. Needless to say, after four hours in the Emergency Department, we discovered that she had broke her hand and probably has some ligament damage in her knee. She is currently still at home, laid up with a cast on her hand and a splint on her leg.

Besides those few "hiccups", we were able to successfully move. Jim finished up the move for me while I took my mom to the hospital. Of course, when I returned late that night from taking my mom to the ER and home again and then running around the Tri-Cities trying to find a pharmacy open on a Saturday night... I arrived to our brand-new apartment full of random furniture and boxes with no rhyme or reason or walking paths... and my OCD took over my body and put me fight-or-flight mode (fight-ing with my husband over the lack of work he did, flight-ing to get everything unpacked and put away!)

But don't worry, the TV was set up.