The Big Move

The cross-country move ended up being quite a production!!  I don’t know how people do this with an entire family and a house full of stuff.  Just moving the two of us and our one-bedroom apartment was enough stress to last me for several years!

Moving preparations began in earnest on May 7^th, when my good friend Nelda flew in from Utah just to visit and help me (seriously, could there be a better friend?).  She packed box after box and even photographed our furniture and wrote our Craigslist advertisements for us.

Our friends will all agree that the ugliest piece of furniture that we own is a ghetto-plastic-grandma lamp that we purchased four years ago when we moved to Buffalo.  I really don’t know what we were thinking when we bought it, as it is truly one of the most heinous lamps I’ve ever seen, but the price was right, and it spread a lot of light in our dark living room.

Anyway, here is a photo of Nelda with our beloved lamp:

And here is the Craigslist posting that she wrote about it:

“Truly unique plastic floor lamp for sale. Features a tall tube of frosted white plastic, edged with gold plastic trim, attached to a plastic base. The flared top piece spreads light rather elegantly, for a lamp made entirely of plastic.”

I giggled when I read it.

Sadly, there were no takers on the “elegant” plastic lamp, and so we moved it with us to Colorado, and it just might make an appearance in our new apartment!

A few days after Nelda left Buffalo, our family arrived for Ryan’s graduation.  In addition to partying with us all weekend, they rolled up their sleeves and packed and cleaned.  It was sooo nice to have so many willing helpers.  (Although I am quite humiliated that my mother-in-law deep cleaned our bathroom, including scrubbing our bathtub, toilet, and floor!  MILs are not supposed to see that their sons live in such filth.  Luckily, my MIL is a saint, and she didn't care.)

You are probably thinking that, with that many helpers, we should’ve been about done, but there was still so much work to be done.  I was planning to just stay up all night on the night before I left Buffalo, but two of my favorite friends came to the rescue.  They texted around 10:00 p.m., and when they found out I was still working with hours left to go, they came over to help.  Thanks, Laney and Natalie!

When we were all finished at 1 a.m., we decided to set off a few fireworks to celebrate so many good years in Buffalo.  I was a little nervous about disturbing the neighbors, but I figured that they had disturbed us enough times that it was probably fine.  We set off a couple of illegal fireworks we got in Canada last summer (I am a rebel), and we did some sparklers and shared memories.

Ryan sets up the illegals...

The next morning, I left on a flight to Seattle for one of my best friend’s weddings (more on that in a later post), and Ryan stayed behind to finish the cleaning and complete the first “leg” of the cross-country journey by himself.  He is a trooper.

After loading up the moving truck with the help of only one friend (thanks, Taylor), he got on the road and started the long trek to St. Louis by himself.

Mid-day, I texted and asked, “How are you doing?”

He responded, “Just riding along with a smile on my face!” and sent this photo:

I forwarded it to my dad, who responded, “Ryan is the ROAD WARRIOR!”

But even Road Warriors get tired.  When I texted Ry at 1 a.m., as he was just arriving in St. Louis after 13 hours, and said, “I love you,”  he responded, “Even when I am grumpy, ornery, and irritable?”

Poor Ry.

Luckily for him, after the wedding, I flew to St. Louis and met him for the second half of the trip.  We also picked up my older sister, Sarah, her husband, Logan, and their son, Callum.  (Logan is completing his residency in General Surgery in Denver, as well.  Funnest!)  We loaded all of their stuff into our moving truck, and together, we caravanned across the mid-west (through several frightening storms that we were afraid would become tornadoes) until we finally reached Denver at 3 a.m., after 14 hours of driving, with a screaming two year old in the backseat.  I have never been so relieved to arrive home in my life!

Here is a video of Ryan and Callum, telling a little bit about the trip:

These two are big buddies

After our arrival in Colorado three weeks ago, we helped my sister and her husband unload and move into their new place (they will be living with my dad), we went apartment hunting and checked out way more places than I wanted to (Ryan likes to consider all of his options), we found a good apartment and went through all of the paperwork and rigmarole (this part is seriously annoying), we moved all of our boxes into our new place and unpacked most of them (thanks, Sarah and Logan), we met with our adoption caseworker twice (she is really nice, and everything is going swimmingly), we planted my dad's gardens and cleaned out his crawl space (Dad loves having his "Slave Girls" in town), and we boarded a plane and spent seventeen hours traveling to...are you ready for this?...HAWAII for a reunion with Ryan's family (yes, Hawaii...are we lucky or what?).


More photos and stories to come!