Moving Day

The day finally came to leave our first house. Actually, it was less of a "day" and more of a "weekend" or even a week. Erin and I did quite a bit of pre-packing by boxing up lots of items we wouldn't need for several months. Since we don't actually have a house to move to we had to pack the majority of our belongings in temporary storage. The big moving day was Friday but we didn't finish up until 7:00 pm on Sunday.

We went with Myway storage containers. They drop 8'x7'x5' boxes on your driveway and pick them up when you're done filling them. They store the boxes in a warehouse and deliver them to your new address when you want them to. They were very convenient but a little disappointing. The boxes were basically nothing more than cheap plywood covered by some water resistant plastic. I was worried they would break in half after I filled them with all my stuff but so far they haven't.

Originally I hoped to cram everything into 3 Myway boxes but as it turns out I needed more than 4. We packed 4 to the very brim. It is amazing how much STUFF you accumulate in 3 years.

After filling the portable storage units we still had a tremendous amount of random junk that needed to go, so I took 3 van loads to Zeeland before we finally finished.

THANKS to everyone that helped. Derek gets the award for doing the most work - he was there from Thursday night until Saturday afternoon. James gets the award for being the most interested - he was a packing guru and helped greatly with the puzzle of fitting the most we could into each box. Tom gets the award for being the most skilled labor - he took apart anything I asked him to.

The first 75% of our stuff went relatively quickly, but that last 25% was miserable. By the end I was just throwing everything into Meijer bags and jamming them into my van. It is not going to be pleasant unpacking. Here is how it looked those last few loads.

On Friday and Saturday nights we had no typical electronic entertainment. Instead we enjoyed some creative Evie time.

Leaving was a little bitter sweet. It was our first home, we really liked it, and we put a lot of work into it over three short years. Some of the highlights of 5349 Wyndtree were:

• Fun parties
• Private back yard with woods
• Proximity to Jason - we trained for 3 riverbanks and 2 marathons together largely because we were only 2 miles away
• Proximity to quick groceries (Family Fare)
• Proximity to an ice cream shop
• Ability to walk to our church
• Bringing Evie home