The Move

       We had the movers scheduled to come on Tuesday October 29.  We were planning on leaving town November 1.  That way the girls could trick or treat with their friends and we would have a couple days to clean the house to get it ready for our final move out inspection.  Well, pretty much everything that could go wrong, did go wrong.  I received a call on Thursday, October 25 from the moving company saying that they were coming the next day, Friday, the 26.  I had planned on prepping the house and packing that weekend for the movers to come on the 29th.  There was no way in the world I could be prepped by the next day.  I had to clean, organize, and pack for a months stay at my parents' house in Texas.  I had to arrange babysitters for the girls, too.  Well, we were able to work it out so that they would come on Saturday instead of Friday.  That gave me an extra day for preparations.  Friday was a busy, busy, busy day.  First I had to call the housing company to reschedule our move out.  I didn't want to be in a house with nothing for a week nor did I want to stay in a hotel for that long.  I was able to reschedule it for Monday morning the 29th first thing in the morning.  We would take off right after that.  Then proceeded the packing, cleaning, scrubbing, getting rid of food, organizing, picture taking for some friends, and then we also got a surprise visit from the Crossleys!  I didn't complain about that.  It was a nice break to head to dinner with them.  I was up super late that night, though, just finishing up everything and packing the car.   A good friend who works at a hotel was also able to get us a good deal on a room for the 2 nights we would be without our belongings.  I managed to get a few hours of sleep that night.  The movers would be there between 8 and 9 the next morning.
        They got there at 9.  They quickly got busy tearing the house apart and loading things into boxes.  I dropped the girls off at the Milligan's house, but had to pick them up by 1 that day which means I had to find somewhere else to take them after that.  Around lunch time, I left to get lunch for the movers and to take the girls to our friends, the Roach's house.  They were able to stay there for a couple hours and then I had to bring them back to the house for a while.  The Pfeiffers came to get Mina and bring her to a fun Halloween party with them and Dalia stayed with us.  It was difficult having her there and keeping her out of the way.  When dinner time finally rolled around, I sent my mom and the girls off to the White's house, thinking the movers would be done shortly.  Boy was I wrong.  Not only did they not finish up until 10 o'clock that night, but they couldn't fit everything on the truck!  It was a ginormous truck, but there were a couple other households already on the truck and we happened to have the tail end.  When I realized they were nowhere near being finished, I started taking things apart in the house and hauling stuff downstairs and outside. We eventually had to put everything that wouldn't fit into our garage so that I could at least still clean the house.
Since the next day was Sunday, the movers said that it was highly unlikely that they'd be able to get anyone to come pick of the rest of the stuff.  I asked about early Monday morning which brought on the next huge problem.  Hurricane Sandy was making her way to land.
          My mom graciously offered to finish cleaning the house on Sunday by herself in hopes that we could still leave Monday morning and I headed to church with the girls for Sacrament meeting.  I happened to talk to my bishop and when he learned we were still planning on leaving in the morning, he suggested taking a route far west before heading south to avoid the hurricane.  I was grateful for the encounter and the advice.  After several phone conversations on Sunday it was decided that our stuff would not be able to be picked up by the movers until after the storm passed.  They did offer to come help me move it somewhere else if I could find somewhere to move it to and they said that I wouldn't have to be present for them to pick it up which means we could still leave.  Luckily, a wonderful family in our ward offered to let us store the stuff in their garage until the movers could get it.  Then, several other families offered to bring their vehicles and help us transport our stuff.  I think we had 3 vans and a truck show up and we moved it all in one shot.  I was so incredibly emotional by this point and I was on the verge of a total breakdown.  These wonderful people prevented that from happening.  I was still fighting back tears, but things finally started falling into place and I was so grateful for everyone who helped us.
         We checked out of the hotel early Monday morning and headed back to the house.  Our inspection was at 10 and we had just a few things left to do, including figuring out what to do with all the trash.  Trash day was the next day.  We couldn't put it on the curb because of the storm.  It was already raining pretty good.  I called housing before we left the hotel to see if I could arrange to have a friend take care of it for us the next day, but the lady on the phone said that we needed to take care of it before the inspection and that there was a disposal place on base.  There was lots of trash and our car was already packed to the max because we were leaving.  I responded by asking, "well, you guys just don't want to make this any easier on us, do you?"  She responded with a nasty, "excuse me?"  and then hung up on me.  I was so mad.  Luckily our neighbors let us put all of our trash in their garage and they offered to take care of it for us.  Then, housing showed up almost an hour late to the appointment.  They were obviously upset that they had to be there in the bad weather.  They quickly ran through the house checking for damage.  The mean lady wrote down that there was damage to one of the blinds.  There wasn't.  Because we fixed it.  When they conducted our pre-move out inspection, that was the only thing they found wrong.  And we fixed it.  But because it was on our pre-move out papers, she was sure to find a tiny, miniscule dent in one slat that was cause enough for them to have to be replaced at our cost.  15 bucks. Then she went upstairs and noticed I forgot to take some star stickers off of Mina's bedroom ceiling.  I asked her how much that would cost to have them take them down when they came in to clean the house because I could not reach them and I had nothing to stand on.  35 bucks.  It was that moment that I burst.  I asked her if she was serious and when she confirmed she was, I stormed out of the house, sobbing.  She ran down after me and said to not worry about the stickers because the guy was with her was tall enough to reach them.  Then when she wanted me to sign the papers saying that I would pay for the blinds I told her I wouldn't do it until she removed that charge.  She finally did and she left and we were free.
        My bishop had called me before we left the hotel to tell me that there was a terrible snowstorm coming from the west and that if we were to take the route he suggested the day before that we would probably get stuck in it.  He suggested that we just drive as far south as we could to avoid the snow and to hopefully beat the hurricane.  We took that advice.  I am so grateful for inspired leaders who care so much.  After stopping by to quickly say goodbye to a few friends we booked it south.  This route would add a few hours, but hopefully we would avoid all bad weather.  And we did.  Nobody was out on the roads.  We got through D.C. faster than we ever had before.  Other than a little rain, we didn't hit any other obstacles.  No traffic, nothing.  I was so grateful for everyone who helped because even though so many things went wrong everything worked out.  It was all because of good friends.  It just reminded me that we don't have to do things alone.  When you are in the service of your fellow beings you are in the service of our Lord.  I think that you can take that two ways.  When you are serving others, you are serving the Lord or that when you are serving others, you are doing the work for the Lord that He is not physically here to do.  All the people who helped me were doing both.  They acted as the Saviour to help me and were serving him by helping me.