Moving Day

Yesterday my family, and my friend Dan'l, helped my sister and her family move from their old house to their new house, a full six blocks away. The good part about only being six blocks away - you don't care how many trips you make in the U-Haul truck. The bad part about being six blocks away...you don't care how many trips you make in the U-Haul, so the pace, when you're only moving for 7 hours, is somewhat crushing, literally. I don't think I'm going to be doing anything productive today unless it's low impact - my muscles twitch a little everytime I move and my cup o' joe actually burns my hands because the skin on my fingers is sore. Although there aren't any fancy pictures here - the place is very nice. A big step up from their old place. If any of you were at Rew's and Smartie's housewarming, it's very much in that style but with a bit more floor space. The original wood and refinished basement (with brand new furnace) make it extremely nice, although the one-car garage officially bites. Once there's a snowblower in there, the ability to store a car becomes questionable. Stuff the rest of a two-car garage in there, and it starts to look packed, top to bottom.

Here's our first load. LissyJo is corraling Eryn, who came over to take advantage of a house with wood floors and no stuff in it - ideal for throwing around Dora balls.


This is perhaps the worst thing we had to move - their fold out couch. Damn thing weighed a ton, and was almost impossible to fit around the tiny corners in those old houses, both coming out of the old house and going into the new one. My brother in law told us, on the way out of the old house, "we moved it up here just fine." To which Dan'l asked, "and was the railing here then?" And I asked, "and were all those clips and racks here then?" The answer was obviously, "no". So we removed the legs, hoisted it above the rails most of the way and moved it out. Then removed doors, and spun and wedged and left runnels in the sheetrock and moved it in. Other favorite items, the big analog t.v., the furniture to hold the t.v. (which was supposed to go in the basement, but would not - we discussed ways it might be cut in half or the legs "shortened" to get in - I suggest turning it into a dish-display cabinet for the kitchen and building a new custom rack in the inset in the basement for the t.v.) - and the kitchen table which was just so damn heavy.

As you can probably tell from the picture...I was a little sweaty (it was in the 90s). Don't ask me to help you move if you don't want to wipe everything down later.


Here's Eryn in the new back yard, praying for Dan'l and Dad as they move the couch. She's actually probably reading her book, "The Dinosaur Who Walked Three Miles". It's a made up book she carries around with her and opens up to read now and then (seriously). It's a different take on the made up friend angle.


For example...here we are reading the book at our house while we lounge near Eryn's little purple pool on the new deck furniture we got from LissyJo and family. They had duplicates when they moved into their new place. It's not fancy - but buying our own was at least a year out, so now we just need an umbrella. The swimsuit is brand new - Eryn picked it out herself so she doesn't have to sit around in a swim diaper in the back yard. We finished up our evening with sparklers and a visit to Christy's and Steve's popup trailer, conveniently parked in their front yard where it's easiest to camp. I think having a mobile home of sorts reminds Christy of West Virginia.

By the way - do not accuse The Dinosaur Who Walked Three Miles of being full of swear words - Eryn knows better and gets just a bit irritated over the accusation.