Good news = WE MOVED!

Better news = thanks to 12 of our closest friends (not kidding), our entire move took just over 2 hours – WOW! Huge thank you to our awesome friends who loaned us an awesome stake-side truck for all the big stuff, and who choreographed and delivered a parade of boxes and furniture that flowed into our home in record time. It was an amazing experience, and we feel SO LUCKY to have such great friends! Zoe is one lucky gal :)

While all our stuff was flowing in, two other friends watched all the kids (we had 5 cutie pie kids playing in the yard, including Zoe). Seriously, I’ve never experienced a smoother move, and I’m in awe that we have so many incredible friends willing to give up half a Saturday (and their knees and backs!) to help. THANK YOU THANK YOU, Gavin, Greg, Gary, Maggie, Joe, Jeff, Karin, Luis, Amanda, Holly, Dan & Leslie – and to Justice, Mia, Julia, and Auggie for playing in the yard with Zoe!

After the move, we had pizza and beer and hung out surrounded by boxes, and I suppose we had our first official “party” (with paper plates and paper towels – fancy!). The picture above is the “before” photo I took at 8 am when I arrived at the house to meet our “Merry Maids” who cleaned kitchen and bathrooms, our Time Warner Cable guy who set up our internet access (priorities!), and our plumber and patcher who were finishing up our plumbing – and patching the huge holes in the walls left behind (look inside cabinet above).

Yep, houses are full of surprises. One of our first surprises happened when we were getting quotes on a tankless water heater and had our first plumber tell us that instead of the copper pipes the home inspector assured us we had on all the “horizontal” piping, we have only 7 feet of copper… Basically, the part you can see if you poke your head under the house. Instead, we have decaying (and leaking) galvanized steel pipes. So we ended up having to rapid-fire replumb the ENTIRE house just 3 days before our move. That story is to be continued (they’re still tweaking things and patching)… But I will confess that our tankless water heater pumps some H-O-T water, and that was a wonderful end to our Saturday.

The rest of the weekend was spent unpacking boxes and our friend Bardo came over to help assemble a bed and dresser for the guest room my mom will use later this week and to work on getting the old dishwasher out to put our dishwasher in (also to be continued). Zoe was a bit unsettled after the move and refused to either sleep for more than 15 minutes at a time OR allow us to put her down. Her longest daytime sleep was around an hour on my chest in the chair, and the rest of the time she rode around in our Ergo Baby attached to my body as I unpacked boxes. I just assumed she was thrown off with all the changes, but as we found out yesterday, she’s starting to cut her first tooth! Oh boy :)

So lots of excitement going on for the Johnsons. We’re hoping for some fabulous “after” pictures to share – but for now, you’ll have to just imagine the rooms all filled with boxes and our daughter gnawing everything in sight. Wish us luck!