DeMarr's Series of Unfortunate and Some Fortunate Events

We have gone through some times here... the past couple of weeks have been quite challenging and stressful.
Moving in itself is challenging and stressful enough. We thought we were quite organized and had a good handle on everything. Of course we were busy packing last minute while the truck was being loaded, and still had a little packing to do on the morning of the move. It was pretty challenging getting packed with the two little ones. I was really limited to how much I could get done with no one else around. I think Mike ended up doing most of the packing. He would pack about 10 boxes to my 2.
Anyway, so the actual packing, loading and 8-hour road trip was a little overwhelming.
Imagine the dismay when we finally arrived at our destination to find a house that was very much not ready for occupancy. I don't even know where to start with that. As soon as we got there, I went up to the door, opened it and saw tons of junk still laying around in the front room. I just closed the door and lit up a cigarette.
The lady we were renting from had done very little to the place since we had looked at it (almost 3 weeks before the move). She had painted most of it, and had carpeted the 2 downstairs rooms and one of the upstairs rooms. She had not touched the kitchen, bathroom or the dining room. They were all disaster areas. I can't even describe how filthy the kitchen and bathroom were. Of course we had no alternatives at that point, so we unloaded the truck. I guess we didn't quite realize exactly how filthy the place was until we started to clean. I guess even if we had, we wouldn't have had much of a choice because the family members we paid to help us move were in a big hurry to get us unloaded and leave.
We ended up staying in a motel for 5 days. The place was so filthy that we didn't even want to eat there or sleep there, let alone use the bathroom. The first couple of days we spent trying to clean the bathroom and kitchen. Mike spent hours cleaning the bathtub... more hours cleaning the rest of the bathroom... we had thought the walls were yellow – turned out they were white. I spent at least an hour on one cabinet in the kitchen. After 2 or 3 days of cleaning we called the Lutheran church in town to see if they had anyone who could come help me out as Mike was going to have to start work.
For some reason the landlady had poured some kind of cleaner or deodorizer in the place. In trying to figure out where the smell was coming from, Mike checked out the basement and noticed the walls were full of black mold... So when the people from the church came over we had a discussion with them and they agreed with us, that we just had to find someplace else to live. It wasn't worth us cleaning the place – especially with the black mold.
We called people all over town to see if anyone had a house to rent. No one had anything. We left messages for a few people. Finally someone called back and said that they had a tenant who'd just given his 30 days notice, but he'd probably be out in a couple of weeks... which we didn't have a couple of weeks... she called back a couple of hours later and said that he'd already moved out! So we got really lucky and got to start moving in right away. The lady was so nice! And completely sane :) The landlady for the first house had offered to take $100 off the rent for our having to clean. The new landlady gave us half a month off rent for cleaning (and the place was not even dirty!!). She came in and shampooed the carpets, painted and stained some shelves and even said she had a trailer we could use for moving!! She has been extremely helpful and just wonderful! And she even brought me some daffodils! And the next day made a special trip to bring me a little jug to put them in.
We have been so appreciative of the help we have received from the community here. The people who came over from the Lutheran church helped us bring a few loads over to the new house one day last week. Unfortunately they were all out of town this past weekend, otherwise they certainly would have helped move the rest of our stuff over. But they helped us out quite a bit. I wouldn't have been able to get much over by myself. And they have offered much emotional support during this difficult situation.
This has all been the short version of a long and trying few weeks we've had... but now we have all of our stuff moved into the new house, and so begins the process of unloading!

Packed in...

Amazingly, we have had several productive packing days! We probably have about 70 boxes packed. Most of the important stuff is ready to go. We just have to pack a couple more boxes of important stuff and then go through some of the junk that's left ;) The kitchen is full of boxes!

This is how Duncan relaxes after a long day of packing
Beatrice chilled out by watching a little Wallace and Grommet

It's hard to believe that we've been here almost two years. It seems like longer. It seems like forever ago we were trekking that U-Haul up here from Iowa. And it seems like so long ago that we were moving into this house. I was looking for pics of the kids from when we moved up here, but of course we packed up the desktop already - and that's where most of my pics are... but I did find one on the family photo site of the kids from our first night in this house. It will be sad leaving.

It's unbelievable how much these two have grown since we moved in here.

Hopefully this move goes a lot better than the one here from Iowa!!