I was insanely stressed about our first move with movers. There are some horror stories out there, but we seriously lucked out. The guys were polite, efficient, they didn't steal or break my stuff, and they showed up to deliver early. Hopefully our next experience in three years will be the same.
The car ride was surprisingly better than our 90 minute trial. For once, my problem of completely over planning came in handy, and when we arrived there were still things to do in the "bag-o-fun" that the kids hadn't even seen yet, which was great because all of our belongings were still in transit, and we needed something to do in an empty house. Hide and seek gets old after a while. There may have been very little leg room, but to me that is a small price to pay for 20 hours of minimal whining.
On the must do list for your next road trip are the following: laminated faces with dry erase crayons, play dough, and ELECTRONICS!
Back in my day we had to lay in the back of the non air conditioned van, because seat belts were overrated back then, and it was more spacious if we just removed the entire middle seat altogether, while driving through the middle of the desert, and make up songs that make no sense yet I can still recite to this day. And if that got old your sister might throw your shoe out the window of the moving blazing hot van for entertainment. How times have changed.
Upon arriving in Kansas we went straight to Manhattan to sign our lease and move into our house that we had never seen before. I found this house as we were about to sign the lease to another residence. The new owners had not even closed on it. By the end of the week, and $20 dollar postage to guarantee our deposit checks arrival in a timely fashion, it was ours. We had never been inside, and neither had the rental company, but it had tons of space, no carpet in the bathrooms, and a concrete safe room for tornado safety.
When we walked in this is what we saw:
Coming from our 952 square foot townhouse in Virginia, we now have almost 2500 square feet to call home. It makes the adjustment to what is outside the 2500 square feet pretty easy to deal with. Saint George is a hole in the wall town with a widespread, mostly farm population of 639. If you blink you'll miss it.
Downtown St. George:
There is no Target, no grocery store, no drug store, no library, and no restaurants. My sister makes fun of me because I went into a bit of a state of shock after arriving. In my own defense about this state of shock, I did walk in to the brick building on the left to pay my water connection fee, and the county treasurer was wearing ripped up jeans and a Budweiser t-shirt, perfectly accessorized by his huge white beard. This feels like the deep country even though we are only a 10 minute drive into town. My neighbors wear hunting camo, there are turkeys, foxes and deer running across the road, at night I can not see the end of my driveway, I had to fill out a special postal form for rural areas because if I get a package that post man better know what to do with it if I am not home. He is not coming back!
Since we've been here almost a month now, I'm starting to really love living here. Everything is so quiet and peaceful. Instead of firetrucks, I hear a train in the distance every so often. I can see stars from my windows, my kids can play outside and be kids without having to have constant supervision.
This is what my traffic looks like (speed limit 75. take that Virginia!):
The school, has shown me all that Polk was lacking. Guess how much history my kid learned in Virginia. NONE! We lived minutes from the nations capital with so many opportunities to teach them about government and our country's history, and they failed miserably. The school in our tiny little town is phenomenal. When you find a school that teaches things other than where the biggest sources of funding come from, you know its going to be great. And Ashton has gone from having up to 5 hours of homework a night (not even an exaggeration), to homework once a week if even that, yet he picked up right where he left off in his accelerated classes. I can see him less stressed which makes for a slightly nicer, and more helpful pre-pre teen.
Our house sits on the top of a pretty big hill. It might be more likely to be sucked up by a tornado, but we get cell service (we don't at the bottom of the hill), we have perfect view of storms rolling in:
Life is good in the sticks.
On the must do list for your next road trip are the following: laminated faces with dry erase crayons, play dough, and ELECTRONICS!
Back in my day we had to lay in the back of the non air conditioned van, because seat belts were overrated back then, and it was more spacious if we just removed the entire middle seat altogether, while driving through the middle of the desert, and make up songs that make no sense yet I can still recite to this day. And if that got old your sister might throw your shoe out the window of the moving blazing hot van for entertainment. How times have changed.
Upon arriving in Kansas we went straight to Manhattan to sign our lease and move into our house that we had never seen before. I found this house as we were about to sign the lease to another residence. The new owners had not even closed on it. By the end of the week, and $20 dollar postage to guarantee our deposit checks arrival in a timely fashion, it was ours. We had never been inside, and neither had the rental company, but it had tons of space, no carpet in the bathrooms, and a concrete safe room for tornado safety.
When we walked in this is what we saw:
Downtown St. George:
There is no Target, no grocery store, no drug store, no library, and no restaurants. My sister makes fun of me because I went into a bit of a state of shock after arriving. In my own defense about this state of shock, I did walk in to the brick building on the left to pay my water connection fee, and the county treasurer was wearing ripped up jeans and a Budweiser t-shirt, perfectly accessorized by his huge white beard. This feels like the deep country even though we are only a 10 minute drive into town. My neighbors wear hunting camo, there are turkeys, foxes and deer running across the road, at night I can not see the end of my driveway, I had to fill out a special postal form for rural areas because if I get a package that post man better know what to do with it if I am not home. He is not coming back!
Since we've been here almost a month now, I'm starting to really love living here. Everything is so quiet and peaceful. Instead of firetrucks, I hear a train in the distance every so often. I can see stars from my windows, my kids can play outside and be kids without having to have constant supervision.
This is what my traffic looks like (speed limit 75. take that Virginia!):
Our house sits on the top of a pretty big hill. It might be more likely to be sucked up by a tornado, but we get cell service (we don't at the bottom of the hill), we have perfect view of storms rolling in:
and we get this view every non-stormy night:
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