We are excited about being back in the Bay Area, in the sunshine and closer to family. But we also have feelings of sadness. We are leaving behind our first home together set in some beautiful creation. We will miss driving across Lake Washington everyday to get to work, we will miss the mountains and snow and good hiking being just minutes away, and we will miss the food spots we have grown accustomed to going to on the weekends. Of course most importantly we will miss the dear friends we have here. God has really blessed us with some special friendships. I will greatly miss the sweet sweet neighbors we have next door. And my lovely co-workers from whom I have learned a great deal about how to be nurse in a tough environment. We also will be sad to leave our friends whom have just had babies and those who will soon dive into the great joy of parenthood.
Elias had a blast while we were packing. The more stuff we loaded in the trailer, the more room he had to roam around!
____________________________________________________________________
Our haul down I-5 from Seattle to the Bay was much much longer than anticipated. And actually packing up the trailer took a whole day and half longer than we were expecting. We ended up leaving behind some miscellaneous items that wouldn't fit into the trailer including our vacuum and grill to some random people in the parking garage. We finally left Mercer Island at 10pm after a full week of packing and cleaning. We drove 4 hours and stayed the night just south of Portland (not very far at all). But we always look for the good, right? Well because we stayed in the Portland area, we were able to go to our oh so delicious Humdinger's diner. I can sum this place up in 4 words: deep-fried Anaheim chilies.
With our bellies fed of greasy goodness we hit the road. Turns out we should have just went with the truck instead of the trailer because when we finally weighed our load on the scales (4 hours into our drive) we found out it was close to 2000lbs over the maximum weight allowance! We were thankful to find out this useful piece of information before the mountain passes and were able to drive to Roseburg, Oregon to transfer our load to the truck...yes, we completely unpacked the 6x12 trailer and reloaded it all into a 14foot truck.
Look at those thighs!!!
So after 3 hours of this manual labor and with our new configuration (Aaron driving the 14ft truck towing the Ford and me driving Gunter, our BMW, with baby and Bandit in tow) we were on our way. By this time (7pm Saturday) we were pretty exhausted but we needed to keep moving because Aaron had to be on a flight to Chicago Sunday at 11am! We stopped for some food and Aaron called his airlines to see if there was a later flight he could take. There was! So we had a few more hours until we absolutely had to be down in Pleasant Hill. And we used those hours to sleep. Oh precious sleep. And restful sleep at that. We stayed in Ashland (just before the California-Oregon border) at a surprisingly nice hotel/suite for a pleasantly decent price.
The last leg of our trip was great. It was a quick 6 hour drive with great weather. We arrived to Pleasant Hill around 2:30 and had about an hour to unload the truck. Why did we have to unload the truck you ask? Well, we didn't plan on our trip having so many obstacles so we didn't anticipate having so little time between arriving in Pleasant Hill and Aaron leaving on a jet plane. So all of his work clothes (slacks, dress shirts, ties, and dress shoes) were in the front right of the truck. As if we weren't tired enough. Thankfully my dad, sister and her boyfriend Andrew were there to lend there hands (and muscles) and we unloaded pretty quickly.
I said the last leg of our trip in the previous paragraph. Well, it wasn't the last leg of Aaron's trip. I dropped him off at BART to catch a 4pm train and he arrived at San Francisco International Airport at juts after 5pm just in time to go through security and be at his terminal as they were starting to board the flight. He arrived to Chicago around 1am local time and to his hotel around 2am. Sleep eluded him until close to 4am and he woke up around 7:30am to be at his job orientation at 8am. Needless to say, he was extremely tired.
And I capitalized on those extra hands and muscles I had around and was able to get our heavy mattress up to the bedroom and the dressers into the garage. I am still putting things in there place but we are settling in quite nicely. We are so thankful to my parents for kindly letting us stay in their home while we transition back to California. Now I just need to get a job so we can move again!
0 comments:
Post a Comment