Let’s just say that after almost ten years under one roof, you tend to accumulate a few things…
As if three trips out of town in the 18 days we had to pack wasn’t enough of a challenge, five of the days I was in town fell during my In-Service. That’s the week right before my school year starts, and it’s all-hands-on-deck so we can flip the campus from summer camp back into shape for the school year. Long story short – thank God for good friends and family!
We had several friends stop by in the evenings to help pack and Poppy & Da (Shane’s parents) came to help entertain the girls so we could focus on packing. They not only entertained the girls, they even helped pack some boxes. And our sweet friend, Dawn, probably packed as many boxes as I did! She even took off work early a few times and came to pack things up before I could make it home from work. In fact, I still call her occasionally just to ask if she knows what box something is in. Seriously, I do.
Since this was the only house the girls had ever lived in, I wanted them to have a role in removing some of the things that were important to them.
Finding a rental house in the girls’ school district proved to be more challenging than I expected, especially so close to the beginning of the school year. Several times, I thought I had found the perfect rental with loads of storage space and close to school, but before I could look at it, the house would get rented. My favorite potential rental had more storage space than you can imagine and they scheduled for me to view it immediately after they were showing it to someone else. The other person turned out to be an old friend of the family who was willing to sign a 3-year lease and they liked the idea of not having to lease it to someone else in 12 months (I totally get that, but still wish I had all those extra rooms for storing things!). Needless to say, when I found the place we are renting, I went to see it as soon as I ended my phone call with the owner, and within one minute of walking through the door, I told him we would take it!
We managed to move out in time for the closing, but just barely. Our closing was set for something like 10am on Monday morning and at 7pm on Sunday night, I put in an emergency call to a babysitter to come hang at the house after we tucked the girls into bed so we could make a few more trips. Whew.
