As posted previously, we received the keys and moved into the new house this morning. In short order, Sarah headed up north for her new job. She’ll be back on Friday, returning with Griffin. Until then, Oliver, Maggie, Piper, and I will hold down the fort.
Despite the many tasks we needed to tackle today, we had a lot of fun in the new place. My favorite part was throwing the ball with Piper in the back yard. She loved that she could sprint!
Maggie and Oliver, I suspect, had their best time when our friends came over and they played some epic games of hide-and-seek.
We’re all a bit ragged, but thrilled to be in the new house. Now we begin the epic task of unpacking, and, more importantly, finding all the things we need in the interim.
What was originally to be our closing day yesterday became the movers day. We were up until the wee hours of the night Wednesday night (as the timestamp on my last post attests). We awoke at about 5 AM to continue packing. And, we were still packing while the movers were here. (Despite purchasing 40 more boxes in the past 24 hours, we eventually ran out and had to stop.)
Fortunately, I think, for us, the movers underestimated how much stuff we had. They did a virtual walk-through with Sarah last week and determined that we would likely require eight “vaults.” Each vault is a crate on their truck. The truck holds five vaults which can then be offloaded into a storage facility until they can deliver them to the new house.
After a long, sweaty day, the moving team ended up filling 13 vaults. (I like to think that one vault was dedicated solely to my collection of roleplaying games.) We still have piles of junk to sort through, but it feels pretty good to have made it over this hurdle. We’ve got a few days to sort, clean, haul stuff to the dump, and get ready to hand over the keys on Monday. Until then, we’re sleeping on the floor. I’m writing this while sitting on the steps, since we have no chairs.
I’ll post a few pictures below.
The last of the moving trucks.
The leftovers (including the banner from Griffin and Maggie’s last day of school).
More leftovers.
Celebratory dinner on the patio at a neighborhood restaurant.
We stopped by the new house after dinner to pick up a few packages. The kids ran around to the back garden (not pictured) and exclaimed, “I’ve never seen anything more beautiful!â€
Oliver convinced Sarah to pitch her tent for him to sleep in.
Addendum: We went to bed early and slept long and hard. (My Fitbit says that I got almost nine hours, which is unheard of.) Feeling good today!
Griffin is off on a two week backpacking adventure at Camp Widjiwagan. Sarah drove up with him yesterday to drop him off. He’ll spend a few days in a cabin before heading off with a small group to Isle Royale in Lake Superior.
It a whirlwind start to the summer. The last day of school was Friday. Saturday he went to camp. When he returns, we’ll be living in a new house!
Addendum: I found a photo of meeting Peter Jackson at the screening. My costume doesn’t exactly fit the Braveheart look—I should have been sporting leather and body paint.
Andrew, Luis (a colleague), and Peter Jackson, circa 2002.
I seem to recall this was where Luis was trying to impress Peter with the fact that I taught a Tolkien class in college. Peter was very polite.
Sure enough, last night she emailed me a lesson plan with a 350-word mini-lecture about the June Rebellion of 1832, including images to share with the class and a short video. I honored my end of the bargain. at 1:45 sharp, we ended our regular social studies class and went to Paris to learn about the unrest there. At 2:00, filled with revolutionary zeal, we tore apart the classroom and built a barricade. (I did have two recommendations: don’t break anything and don’t get hurt.)
Here are the pictures my student shared followed by a picture of our 8th-grade version.
