Move to WA

So we took three trips to Washington while we were staying with Paul. The first we thought "We are never, ever going to move back here." The second we thought "Gee, it's really nice to have friends/family/babysitters." By the end of the third trip we seriously wondered if we should just move back. After much discussion and what I've been told has been the most detailed pros/cons list there's ever been (it just makes sense to have each category with different degrees - low, medium and high. Then I assigned a point value to each degree, did the math and there's the answer!), we decided to move back to Washington. The market was just horrible in Redding, so it seemed that we just couldn't make it happen. Not to mention I was getting pretty concerned about how hot it got there - I can handle 100 degrees, but 115? That's a little excessive. Even if it is so amazingly beautiful with an In-N-Out.

We decided it would be nice to be moved by our anniversary (8-9), and of course we came to this conclussion after Amie's return ticket had been purchased. She decided she still wanted to fly, which was just fine. It would have been pretty tight with her and her stuff, not to mention she had to be home by a certain day for a family reunion.

The cheapest option for us was to rent a moving truck, not just a trailer. So we went to Budget and used a coupon. We had way more space than we needed, but that's better than too little. We rented a small dolly to put the car on behind the rental, and I drove our truck. Paul, Maggie and Luke were working, so it was just us for moving all of our stuff - and watching our kid. Proved to be more difficult than I would have liked!

We picked up the truck and trailer in Redding as it was way cheaper. Moving out of Cali ain't so sweet! We packed our truck and car with our stuff, managed to forget our plants, and headed out from Paul's. Then we picked up the moving truck and packed, packed, packed. It was ridiculously hot. Like 113 degrees. Just crazy. And we had cold/frozen stuff in the car we were trying to keep that way. We were so sweaty and hot, and poor Z was just red from being overheated. At one point I just took his diaper off and let him run around in his shorts - those things must get pretty warm (though Jason wasn't super keen on this idea :)). It wasn't very easy to pack and keep track of him. Especially on the things that required two people (washer, dryer, couches). But it happened. Just not the best experience.

We managed to spill our remaining water over some of our stuff. And I packed stuff to a certain height only to realize later it needed to be a bit higher to fit everything. So we were just chucking stuff to the back. It's almost more tricky to pack when you have extra room - we couldn't pack to the ceiling in the back and just waist height by the door - everything would have shifted.

It took Jason two tries to get the car on the trailer - he drove over the tie-downs the first time. He went pretty slow with the car to get up the ramp, and at one point I said "just gun it." Zachary was the only one that heard me as J was in the car, but he could read my lips. To this day Zach will mention "just gun it" in reference to cars. Pretty funny.

So after spending several hours doing that, we treated ourselves to a meal. I really wanted a milkshake and Jason wanted Mexican food. Redding has a strip mall with those two things - I got an orange dream smoothie from Jamba Juice (which was just FANTASTIC) and we had some Mexican cuisine. And drank an insane amount of water.

We stopped at a Shilo in Klamath Falls for the night. They had an ice machine, so I kept our stuff cool. The also had a fridge, but as I found out in the morning, it wasn't working at all. The room was divided by a half wall, so that worked well with Z. And we had their breakfast in the morning, which included Belgium waffles. It wasn't actually that bad.

Then we drove, drove, drove. And spent an insane amount of money on gas. But we made it without anything crazy happening. I can't remember how late we got in, but we did the unpacking the next day. We put most of our stuff in a local storage unit. The one in Redding had been larger, so we had to do some planning to get everything in quite right. Some stuff ended up a little precarious, but that's just part of the game. It was actually pretty warm that day.

Here's a picture of Z driving the truck before we took it back. He had kept mentioning he wanted to drive it, so I figured we better let him before we returned it. Zach still mentions how "dada drove the big truck."

And waving.

One other thing to mention - I got my nails off! It was painful. I went back to the beauty school that had cut my hair because I figured it would be cheap. It was, but the chick had also never taken acrylics off before. She had to soak my fingers in what can only be imagined as straight paint thinner (my fingers got cold) and then pry off the nails. Leaving my poor little real nails completely shredded. Just thin and flaky. Not pretty. And I had some pretty nice divits between my fresh nail an the nail the guy had ground down before he put the fake stuff on. Jeanie later told me he did a pretty bad job on both of us. But the chick at the school agreed with me - if it does that to your nails, it can't be healthy! But it ended up being free, so that was nice.

I had also wanted to donate blood again before we moved, but couldn't fit it in. And Jason had a point - because it takes me so long to heal he didn't want me at less than full strength when I was the only other person to help him move. Here in Washington they don't have a Red Cross office - kind of lame - I just have to wait for a drive to come.