moving

We did it!  We bought a house!  We moved! We are homeowners again!

Yahoo!!!

The big move happened on August 30 and 31st and it was quite an event.  First - the prep.  If you take a look at the following photos, you will know why we were concerned whether or not we would even make it out of the house.  These were taken from our driveway the Wednesday before we moved.

And this was taken the Thursday before - after a whole lot of rain.

Thankfully Eric had already talked to the men doing the construction on our street and they said they would make sure we got out.  And they did.  This was the drop off from the yard to the "road":

Well, they came in and built up a nice little ramp for our driveway so that we could somewhat smoothly get in and out.  It was a little sketchy with the rain and such, but it worked.  We got out!

Lots of packing, of course:

Or not:

We were extremely thankful to have the use of Jared's (my brother-in-law) trailers.  He has an 18' and 24' trailer that we could load ahead of time.  It made it so much easier to move quickly - which is what we needed to do.  Eric packed those puppies up nice and tight.

Then on Saturday we had a small group bbq party at three.  Once we ate and hung out for a bit, we headed out to the new house for our possession at five.  Since we were in the same neighbourhood, Eric and the kids just rode their bikes over (which also meant we didn't have to cart the bikes there a different way!).

Soon after, everyone from our small group followed us and came over to help clean and move in.  It was amazingly helpful!  What a great crew of people.  Everyone was in there working like crazy.  It was so great.  And we are so thankful!

Cade found his new favourite (and extremely dirty) spot.

Noah helped him down, even though he kept finding his way up there by himself.  Sheesh - what a nut ball.  Over the next few days he was almost constantly up there.  He also managed to monkey his way up and down once he figured he could us the door/hallway entrance frame.

On Sunday it rained.  

And got pretty messy.  But Eric and a few of Maddy's friends (Maddie, Riley, Kyle and Ezra) all chipped in to help.  They worked their booties off.  Poor guys.  They unloaded a whole lot of stuff.  You see - it was Labor day weekend…. and most everyone we knew was busy.  Especially our family.  They were all busy - very busy.  And even very busy after the weekend.  But thankfully Maddy had some willing, hard working friends - otherwise we aren't sure what we would have done!  They were easily paid off with pizza and soda - stuff like that.  They are a great bunch of kids.

After the weekend, we still had to move the garden (pots) and the trampoline.  Eric borrowed my uncle's truck and we took care of business.

We loaded up all the pots onto the back of the truck and only one fell over.  They all did pretty well.   Looking back now, a month later, I'm not sure it was worth the effort.  With all the cold weather we've been having (had to cover the plants in early/mid September due to frost warnings!!  sheesh), the plants haven't done that well.  Oh well.  There's always next year!

Had some pretty amazing rainbow sightings over the days of the move as well.  A nice reflection of the crazy weather we had.

Eric also disassembled the trampoline and had the ever-helpful Lucy to put it back together again in our new yard.

At first I wasn't sure it would be worth all his effort considering that he will have to take it down again soon.  But looking back - it has definitely been worth it.  The kids, along with neighbour kids, have been on it a lot.  They've had a great time with it and has been a draw to get kids here (even though there are a lot of trampolines in the area).  I'm thankful he put in the work for it.

So far, the best thing about our new place is this:

We have a dishwasher!!!!

It is amazing how absolutely wonderful it is to have a dishwasher after being without one for five years.  It wasn't the worst thing ever, but man life is sure easier and tidier with one.  It is fantastic.

I must say I had many doubts about this place, but now that we are here I am very thankful.  God has blessed us richly - again - and we are grateful.