This note comes after reaching relative sanity after 3 weeks of utter chaos. Here is a run-down of our move:

First, I drove to Phoenix to find a place to live, I arrived on a Tuesday and met Tony there (who had flown in via New Jersey) We flew home that Thursday, so we managed to make a decision on a house to rent within two days. We flew home to Oregon on Thursday and prepared for our movers who were supposed to be there on Sunday. Tony left Saturday morning with his dad and Kailey to drive down because he had to begin work the following Monday morning. The movers called and couldn’t make it on Sunday because their truck had broken down and they were going to need to get it fixed. They did come Monday, and here is where the real party began.

The movers immediately began telling me that the cost of their original estimate wasn’t going to cut it. They approached me no less than 5 times, with pricing quotes raising each time. While I ha been told the loading of the truck would take 4.5 hours, 5 hours later they hadn’t even begun loading and were still “prepping.” Later in the afternoon we came to an agreement that we would pay per pound with proof of wait and I was going to leave to start my drive to Phoenix with Caitlin and my boys. They promised to meet me in Phoenix by Wednesday.

We drove overnight Monday night, since that seemed to be the easiest way to make the 15 hour drive to my moms house in palm springs with my two and four year old. The drive went fairly smoothly, with the exception of Caitlin getting extremely sick and needing to pull over frequently for her poor stomach. Nevertheless, we arrived in Palm Springs the following morning and planned to stay there until Wednesday when the movers delivered our household good to Phoenix. This is where is gets really interesting, along with the price more than doubling during the moving process, the movers hadn’t brought a truck large enough to transport everything, so they were supposedly re-loading everything onto one larger truck. On Tuesday, we were informed that the truck had broken down and they were reloading onto another truck. On Wednesday, Tony found out the original truck had actually been in an accident, which necessitated the movers going north to Portland, prior to re-loading and starting towards Phoenix. Finally by Friday the first truck arrived and began unloading- OTHER PEOPLES STUFF- Oh the truck had some of our stuff, plus another load they had picked up- and wanted to charge us for those pounds as well. Eye-eye-eye. So, they trekked to the scales in Glendale (40 mins) and then back to unload only our stuff and then back to the scales to weigh the  other peoples stuff plus the weight of the truck. OK well, at least we have beds now, all of us except Caitlin of course. J Finally, Monday, the rest of our stuff shows up. With lots of headache we negotiate an acceptable price (still thousands of dollars more than they had bid) and the happy ending is that we have our stuff.

The house we are renting is gorgeous. It’s really big, so if anyone is in our neck of the woods we would love to host! It has a super insulated media room where Caitlin’s drums are set up and Sebastian plays for hours on end. It looks like Sebastian has gotten into Saint Timothy Pre-K, and we will be attending that church. Their music program is really great, along with the many other programs they have at this church. (including, my favorite- childcare during mass!!)

The bottom line at this point: Tony really likes his job, and we are both very grateful he has one. I am waiting for January when, hopefully, I will be licensed to practice law through reciprocity and will open Access Legal here. Sebastian is in school and we have found a parish- this is really huge for our family’s well-being. Caitlin is checking out the many many parishes around here through daily mass and searching for a job. We’re all doing really well and trying to settle in.