PhoeNAMenal Days: Our Move

This past summer we prepped our Maryland house to go on the market. We spent a good bit of our summer vacation there doing just that.

Imagine our delight when we had a contract a week after returning to Phx... never having to list it... AND to make it just too perfect--we were able to sell our house to friends!! We have tried for years to get these friends to move into our neighborhood...and now they were going to buy a house in the neighborhood--ours! Who would have guessed a quick visit to say hi would turn into a sweet deal for everyone! How kind of the Lord to orchestrate it that way!

So with contract in hand we knew we'd need to return to actually pack up the house.

After hours and hours and hours of research and dialogue and thinking and more research, we decided to store our stuff there and only ship out books, Christmas stuff and a few other special items we could no longer live without:) (legos, anyone?)

I thought about the move, packing and the administration of it all for weeks. I'd go to bed thinking about how i was going to pack everything, which room to start with , how to organize the kids' help, etc etc etc. I'd find myself walking thru stores thinking,"if I had that item, I'd probably give it away.." or "that item could be stored upside down to make the most room in our storage facility"...etc etc...

It was an all-consuming task.

Thank goodness it was summer time.

The dad and Twinkle weren't going to come until the weekend (Twinkle not until the last weekend) which meant I'd have 10 days and 3 kids to help to get it all packed up and ready for the truck to arrive.

I was so excited when the day to fly to Md arrived... to finally finally!! be doing something rather than thinking about it. Action was such a stress reliever.

SO.

Packing began.

In earnest.

In the basement/school room.

Uugh. The hardest room first.

It took me 2 hours to go through a filing cabinet.

Honest.

I was a little worried. I had only budgeted 1 hour for this task. (yes, i had a time table for each day... it was ambitious... but possibly do-able...maybe..with lots of help.)

Do-able. With help.

Lots of help.

Can i type that one more time....ambitious, yet doable with help.

And boy did i get help.

More help than i could have ever hoped for... More laughter, box building, paper rolling fun than I could have ever imagined.

Thank you dear friends for making moving possible and even enjoyable. You know I couldn't have done it without you. Or if I tried, I would have slept little, cried alot and barely laughed. Friends stopped their life for 10 days to help accomplish the task... putting their lives on hold to come participate fully in mine. Thank you.

Here are some pictures of our pack n move.

The prep area:

This was box number 9... I figured on about 60 boxes....we capped out over 90!

The younger neighborhood boys helped get boxes from the basement to the garage...we filled over 30 'banana boxes' with books to give away (what can i say--i am a homeschooler who loves book...there are many of us:)). But when they weren't answering cries for "More banana boxes" or "more to go upstairs", they provided us with lots of comedic relief....

See what i mean?
But after a day or two this is what my basement hallway looked like:

We hired professional movers to move and store Mimi's piano. Minnie played it one last time before we ALL--and i mean all 15 of us--watched the movers wrap and move the piano.

All giveaway and other larger items went into the garage..... it was amazing how much stuff we had we didnt' need....bags and bags and bags of clothes!!! boxes and boxes of books that Mickey is too old to read anymore .... extra kitchen stuff and decorator items i didn't want to have to store. Even looking at this picture now makes me so glad we got rid of all of it. I feel lighter already!!