We're Here

Well, we have arrived in the great state of Florida after nearly a week of our lives being turned upside down.

Last Wednesday, 4 total strangers came to our house and began packing up all of our worldly possessions - and let me tell you, we've got A LOT of worldly possessions! The packers actually ran out of boxes not once, but twice. While they were packing us, my friends Elizabeth and Mary Chris graciously entertained Brian & Sean while Colin hung out with the packers, making them smile.

Thursday dawned bright and early with our new best friends arriving to finish packing us up and loading the above mentioned worldly possessions into a rather large moving truck. What I thought was going to be a shorter day turned into another 10 hour day. When Brian and Sean came home and saw their house was empty, let's just say that they were a little out of sorts. Brian, with tears in his eyes, told me that he wanted his couch back.

Thursday night also saw the return of our friends David & Lala from their anniversary trip to Hawaii. I saw Lala blinking back tears when she saw our empty house. We went out to dinner with them at Red Robin and afterwards, Chris and I went back to our house to finish patching holes, picking up all the little junk left over. The boys took a cat nap during all of this and then around 11, our little clan headed over to the Residence Inn for the first of 2 nights. When we arrived to the hotel, all 3 boys decided that their 2 hour nap had been sufficient. We had a 2-room suite and Brian and Chris were in one room - Brian finally fell asleep around 1 am. I had Sean and Colin in the other bedroom - Sean finally slowed down around 2:07 am, and Colin at 2:52 am. Of course Colin decided that he then needed to wake up at 6:30 for breakfast.

Friday was spent returning cable boxes, Smart Tags, and other various wrap-up type of things. We met David & Lala for breakfast at Cracker Barrel, and again for dinner at San Vito. Between the two meals, I had to say good-bye to Mary Chris and Elizabeth - I was a mess. After dinner, David & Lala accompanied us back to the hotel where the 4 grown-ups spent the next 3 hours trying to ignore the good-byes that were coming. Finally around midnight, we realized that we couldn't put this off forever. Let me just say this - saying good-bye to them was just awful! There were tons of tears, lots of hugs, and then more tears. Chris and I were deliriously tired at this point, so emotions were running even higher than they normally would.

Saturday dawned nice and early. We had to go pick Bailey up from Club Pet and then we got on the road. We were traveling down to Virginia Beach and Chesapeake to say good-bye to Chris' Uncle Frank & Aunt Anne and many of his cousins. We also went to my Aunt Gail & Uncle Gary's house so that we could see my Gramma Summers and her new husband Lyman. Gramma & Lyman got married 6 years ago September 8th. They are so cute together - they still hold hands, and sit close to each other on the couch. I had to laugh when Lyman said that they were celebrating their 5th anniversary - I had to remind him that it was their 6th! They got married a few weeks before Chris and I did, so I definitely know how many years they've been married. We had a nice visit with everyone, and the night ended with Chris spending time hugging the toilet. He wasn't really sure how he was going to be able to drive, and seriously thought he might have to go to the hospital. Fortunately he didn't, but he was pretty weak on Sunday morning.

Sunday was a long day - a 7 hour drive that turned into 9 hours. We pulled into Yemassee, SC around 8 pm and tried to get everyone in bed and asleep at a decent hour.

Monday saw the final leg of our trip south. We left SC around 10:30 and were scheduled (according to the GPS) to arrive in Melbourne at 3:45. We didn't get here until close to 5:30 after driving through what felt like a monsoon! We met our friend Kellie at our apartment complex where she brought us dinner. Afterwards we took the boys to our future neighborhood and showed them where our house is going to be built and walked them through the model home.

We spent today waiting around for Mark, our moving van driver, to arrive with the items we are going to have in our temporary residence. I've spent the rest of the afternoon/evening unpacking and trying to get our life back to some semblance of normalcy - or at least for the next 59 days until we have to move to another apartment!

Thanks for all of your thoughts and prayers during this time. My family and I really appreciate it. More posts on our last days in Virginia coming soon.