We're Home!

Yes...we are home!  It feels good, but...it was a very exhausting week and weekend!

We started off the week with everyone finishing up their work on the house on Tuesday, including getting the gas tank hooked up.  The range worked, the dryer and fireplace did not.  The dryer needed a conversion kit for LP gas and the fireplace needed new batteries for the igniter.  Once those were installed (almost) everything worked fine.

The warm glow of the fireplace.

Wednesday, inspection day, arrived tying Neta and me in knots waiting to hear something...anything.  The inspector didn't make it out there until late in the day...and when he did...he FAILED us.  Luckily it was only a couple of minor items, so no need to spiral into depression.  One shower had the hot and cold switched and we needed two GFCI breakers on a couple of the rooms upstairs.  Tracy had the plumber and electrician fix their items the next day (Thursday) and the inspector signed off on our Certificate of Occupancy.  We were cleared to move in!  YAY!  Since this crazy dream began, this was the day we'd been waiting for.

To add more fun and adventure, we waited until that night to start packing.  That's not entirely true.  It's true we did start packing the night before our move, but it was mainly due to the sudden realization that the day was upon us and we wanted to be completely sure we'd pass inspection on the new house and not have to call the movers to postpone.  To Neta's credit, she had almost the entire house packed up in a couple of hours.

The calm before the storm

Friday - Moving Day!  The movers showed up at 9am and I pulled in with the U-Haul at about 9:10am.  To say the movers were efficient was an understatement.  We were pulling away from the rental house and on our way to the new house at 10:15am.  Yeah...those guys were good!

The movers unloaded the truck and the two full, large PODS that have been sitting in front of the house.  One POD had been there since January, the other since June.  Both were filled to capacity and organized like a perfect game of Tetris. Neta coordinated with the movers where all of the furniture and boxes went, while I grabbed lunch for everyone.  When I got back, she had them putting everything else on the carport because there needed to be room to move around in the house.

The dining room was merely a hallway between these boxes and our table.

The movers finished up and left and I coordinated with the cable/internet installers about where all the connections would go.  Once the that was straight and the installers left, it was time to start unpacking and setting up the essentials like beds, stuff to eat with, making sure the dogs were reasonably calm, etc.  By the end of the evening we were exhausted.  A long night of deep sleep would be just the elixir to get us ready for a long Saturday of unpacking.  If only.

Our new kitchen!  Sorry...it's behind those boxes.

A few months back, before we knew when we'd be moving, Neta signed us up, through her company, to attend the Savannah Bridge 5k Run/Walk.  It was something we'd wanted to do, just not on a day when we could be doing...you know...the "Hagan Farm 15K Unpacking and Carrying Boxes Run/Walk" (sponsored by "We'll Never Move Again").  Since her company was footing the bill we didn't want to be a no show, so we got up at 5:30am on Saturday to be in Savannah by 7am.

Uphill...because we weren't tired enough.

All in all, it was worth it as the weather was nice and the walk allowed us to view Savannah at a slower pace from up there rather than in a speeding car.

Looking into the sun with the Savannah River and port in the background.

With the walk over, we grabbed some groceries and a few items for the house (What?  All those boxes didn't contain "everything"?) before heading home.   As if that wasn't enough exercise for the day, we still faced having to clean out the rental house, and then go home and continue unpacking.  Easier said than done.  The clean out of the rental took us longer than we'd planned as we found stuff that we'd overlooked in the packing.  Life...

The entryway and office.

The laundry/mud/dog room.

The two pictures above are from today (Monday morning).  It's chaos as you can see, but less chaos than it was Friday evening.  There's still so much to do.  We've had a couple of "Oh no" moments.  Our dryer stopped spinning and heating in the middle of the first load on Sunday morning, though it still counts down and says it's drying.  We hope to have it fixed soon.  Also, the electrician put our gas range on the same circuit as a GFCI plug, so whenever the convection fan kicks on, it trips the circuit.  Tracy is having him come out and fix that as soon as possible.  A few growing pains but nothing we can't weather.

It's going to be a busy time leading up to Christmas.  I think Neta and I are just going to wrap up a bunch of moving boxes, hand them to family and friends and hope they'll unpack them for us...while we collapse until New Years.