We have survived....

The team of five movers showed up yesterday at shortly before 9 am in the BIGGEST moving van I had ever seen in my life. Every inch of the van was FULL.

EEEKKKKK!!!!!

I had labeled each room in the house, and had created a "cheat sheet" list of where I wanted our household items to go. I knew where I wanted holiday items to go, and what couch where and so forth.

The tricky part was this: The Houston movers had boxed everything with labels like "attic", without noting if it was the attic in the house or over the garage and "Hall Closet" without noting which hall...you get the picture...I often had no idea what could possibly be in the box!

Thankfully the "Marley" room is a big room that would hold a lot of boxes out of sight, so I just had all the mystery boxes loaded in there.

The movers agreed that Bernie and I were a very efficient team. B. checked off box numbers as the mover rapidly unloaded the van and I stood at the doorway to steer the movers with the boxes and furniture into the right locations.

Tiggie did his part by "snoopervising" all the activity from inside. He is such a good and faithful orange cat. The movers all just loved him! Hart bailed out early...and was stuck outside unnoticed in the snow for hours. We felt kind of bad about that, but he got lots of love later to make up for it.

And with a half hour lunch break and two fifteen minute breaks...the whole van was unloaded, non-stop, in only TEN HOURS.

{thud}

That was me falling over in that last line above. Yes, ten hours of five guys wheeling boxes and furniture. At one point two of them were folding packing blankets for about an hour, and another hour was spent re-assembling beds and tables.

Two hundred and twenty two friggin' boxes.

B. had to take the door casing off one door to get our over stuffed chair into the house.
All the cabinets and glass front book cases that used to be in my hat room are too tall for this house. I'm pretty dismayed about the bookcases....

The green flecks in the downstairs carpet matchs the green overstuffed couch and chair perfectly. The beige we painted the walls looks horrible with the furniture however.
Paint is cheap though...and repainting can be done after the house is settled in.

The green tea color in the living room might have to go too....we'll see how it feels after a little bit more time with the furniture.

The long triple bedroom dresser and the high black headboard actually made the turn to get into the master bedroom.

Jeff showed up about six o'clock with a bag full of delicious Mexican food. That was a lifesaver as we had been racing around on a bowl of cereal and a sandwich for food the whole day. He helped me unpack some lamps, and was horrified to discover how much paper is used to cushion the contents inside of packing boxes. The ecology of it bother him until we told him that the company picks up the boxes and paper...and that in fact all those boxes were NOT just filled with our stuff...but likely 30-40% of the bulk is just paper.

Still...it is an awful lot of stuff. The garage is full of things that we will try to sell on Craigslist, or a garage sale or just donate. Things like our mahogany office desk, the hat room cabinets, the red couch. The cars will be in the driveway until all that can be arranged, and this morning that meant that I had to brush snow from my car before I could drive to work.

At least it wasn't icy...just a wet spring time snow that barely even stuck to the driveway. I can manage as long as there is no ice!

And let me also share the best news of all...the plumber showed up while the movers were working. We had a working upstairs bathroom for the first night that we spent upstairs!

More good news: Today we are to get our kitchen counter top. And Laura arrives at 7.

There maybe a ton of work to do at home, and I may have to show up at work instead of staying home and unpacking, but at least I know that little by little eventually the house will be put together and will start to really feel like a home.