Hasta la Vista, Texas!

Look at me catching up! We have been living in North Dakota for more than a month and I am finally blogging about our move. Go, me!

Our very last playgroup was at Chuck E. Cheese. I cannot remember the last time I had been to one but Alex and Edison had never been.

Of course they loved it. Alex didn't care about the tickets at all until the end when he realized he could get prizes with them. So he fed them into the "ticket monster's mouth" and then I took them to pick out a prize. I was not surprised to see him point to the candy.

I felt like we were starving in our last few days there. I ate frozen peas for so many meals that I never want frozen peas again.

The packers arrived and there were three of them! When we moved away from New York there was only one. They arrived at 9:45am and were done by 2:30pm. It was also pouring rain that day but that is standard for our moves. We are lucky like that. The packing went so quickly. I wasn't home for very much of it though.

While one of the packers was taking a cigarette break outside, Alex saw her and yelled, "She's eating a cigarette!"

I left the packers at our house and dropped off the boys at Chick-Fil-A with my friend Ariel. She fed them and played with them for three hours while I went to Sam's farewell luncheon. We went back to Pappadeaux and it was a disaster again! They messed up orders, took forever to bring things, and messed up more orders. They gave Sam's boss a $50 gift card which she then gave to Sam since it was his lunch. But we weren't going to be able to use it so we sold it to the guy next to me for $40. I felt kind of guilty, but he wanted to buy it. So we got a free lunch, $40, and presents. Lunch was a success!

His boss gave him a really nice SLB bag and giftcards. Sam was planning to go back to work and to work the next day, too. When his boss heard that, she would not allow it. She made him come home and help me. So we headed back to his office to pick up his stuff for the last time.

It looked like he had been fired because of this box of stuff.

The next day, the movers came to load the truck. The driver was not in town yet so they were loading this truck and dropping off all of our stuff at a warehouse, then reloading it into the other driver's truck who would bring it to North Dakota. We weren't aware this would be happening, and the multiple moves resulted in lots of missing and broken things.

Three men came to load and one of them was named Alex. It was really confusing to our little guy. They were done loading the truck in three hours.

Our car was also picked up that day. Sam ran to the rental car place and they gave us a Crown Victoria as a rental car which automatically made me feel 50-years-old and awesome.

We ate cold leftovers on the counter for lunch.

I spent the whole afternoon cleaning the house. I think the carpet cleaning guy thought I was insane when I asked if I could take his picture. He arrived before the movers were gone and so he was helping them get the stuff out of the way. It was funny how much he wanted to be done. Even though he had arrived early, he was really excited to get started! Or he had other appointments or something.

My friend Angie came over for help me clean and she brought her kids. They helped so much and it was nice to not have to worry about some things. Her kids took my boys outside and kept them out of the way.

It was hard because I had already cleaned the bedrooms, play room, and living room so I had the carpet cleaner come early. I didn't think about how we would no longer be able to walk on the carpet. That ended up being a disaster and I had to trap the boys in the kitchen. This is how I felt:

There was a mishap while cleaning the refrigerator and a shelf was put in before the lightbulb cover. So then the lights exploded (for real!) and the plastic burned. I was already so tired by this point and it aggravated me. Also, Sam wasn't home. He was gone for a few hours because he had to go collect the laptop and ID badge from someone who was being fired, but then that person decided to no show and so Sam was waiting there for a long time. It was just a bunch of bad things all together on a long day and I was feeling lots of ugly cries.

Alex was exhausted because Edison was asleep in the Pack N Play and Alex's bed had already been packed. He eventually fell asleep on the kitchen floor with a towel.

After hours of cleaning, we were ready to say goodbye to our house on Emilee Court. I am going to miss that house. We drove away at 6:20pm.

Both boys fell asleep in the car before we even got to our friends' house to give them our perishable food and paints. But they woke up once we got to dinner at Raising Cane's. We had heard good things about it but had never eaten there and figured we should before we left the Texas/Louisiana area. After Sam forced Alex to eat more than I had eaten, we went next door for frozen yogurt.

We stayed in a hotel by the airport that night since our flight was leaving at 6am the next day. We had to keep the boys up until 10:30pm while we waited for a crib. That blasted crib issue again!

We woke up around 4am the next day and headed to the airport. The boys were confused.

I felt like we were carrying everything we owned with us. People were moving out of our way. It was a circus.

We arrived in Williston at 2pm. When we got to baggage claim, nothing of ours was there. Not a single item of our three bags. Our first flight was on United Airlines and then we had a layover in Denver before our second flight on Great Lakes Airlines. The lady at the desk said she would have to wait until all the rest of the flights got in for the day before she looked for our stuff. Umm, no. I guess that is why they call it "Great Mistakes" Airline. A few hours later, I got a call from a United employee who had found all of our bags in Denver and put them on the next flight that night. We used the time to eat lunch, go grocery shopping, and eat dinner.

We were able to go back to the airport at 9:15pm and pick up our bags. I am so glad they were found. They contained all of our favorite clothes and things we needed until our household goods arrived. Although it was frustrating, I am so grateful it all worked out.