The Great Move and the Tennis Ball Palace

Where shall I start?

 Josh took off work on Friday and moved boxes all day long in my little Ford Focus. I was extremely impressed with the quantity of things he managed to get in there. He went and snagged Murphy (our dog) and picked me up at work...and off to the new house we went! We arrived and Murphy started pulling towards the front door. Josh opened the door...and woosh! Murphy was off and running. I think she must have explored every inch of the house. I could already see she was thinking about where to put her toys and dog bed. We unloaded the car, and went to go get dinner (at Chipotle...we were bad). After we ate, we drove to Petsmart and Home Depot. Murphy got some new bowls and the cats got a new litter box with a cover (the cover is completely worth every penny...). Bought all of our paint at the depot and headed back to our old home to sleep. 

Saturday 

It was hard to sleep, due to the excitement of moving...but I think we were pretty well rested for the big move. My mother and her husband (Brian) drove all the way from Nags Head, NC to help us out...and it was great. Brian and Josh were on loading duty; they loaded up the big van and drove back and forth between the houses all day. The ladies (my grandmother, mother, and I) were on paint duty. My mom did all the cutting in, and I was a roller fiend. We knocked out the first coat of most of the walls in about 4 or 5 hours. Luckily, the majority of the house was already a nice color, so we only did accent walls.

Once the paint was dry, Josh went and retrieved Murphy from our neighbor Jean. Jean has a really cool red tick coon hound. Probably the coolest blind dog in town. You can read about his "coolness" here Click to see Ray.

Murphy made it to the new house and promptly started searching for her things. I don't know how...and I don't know why...but Murphy had unearthed about 5 tennis balls from our items that were packed up (in about 30 minutes)...apparently we just weren't unpacking her things fast enough! She proceeded to be annoyed that we made a box barricade to keep her in the back of the house, since the doors were open, due to Brian and Josh moving things in from the van. My grandmother volunteered to be on the other side with Murphy, big mistake! She was enslaved to throw the ball endless amounts of times, until Murphy was satisfied with her performance. The 1st floor of our house is all ceramic tile, and tennis balls happen to bounce extremely high when they hit it. Murphy decided pretty quickly...that this was her new tennis ball palace. We would throw the ball and it would bounce all through the house (very exciting for a dog, and very tiresome for people). She will be sorely disappointed when we get furniture! My sister Sarah and her husband Steve dropped by for a little while and dropped off some nice bakeware for me to make sheperds pie in, kidding...I can make anything I want I suppose. They entertained Murphy and then headed home to have delicious steaks.


Everyone left for the evening and we settled in and ordered a pizza. I thought it would be really nice to take a shower...womp womp....I couldn't get the shower in our bedroom to run hot water. "Hey Josh, how to you make the water hot?"....."oh you cant."


um... "wha huh?!"..then Josh said " yeah that shower wont run hot water, we need to do some work on it."  Being sadly disappointed, I then went the the guest shower to heat up the water...."uh josh....this water isn't warm either..."  ........ "huh, thats interesting"


Well to shorten this story, our water heater is broken! DUN DUN DUNNNNNN! The pilot light keeps going out because there is some gunk in the way of the oxygen...we think. So other then those two problems, everything else was great. 


Sunday


We woke up after the first night in our new house, feeling well rested. The sun woke us up at about 6:30 am, but I didn't mind. It was a nice change after living in a basement for 8 months. The sun cast a orange shadow on to our wall and Josh and I proceeded to make shadow puppets until we decided to get up and start moving around the house. Murphy decided it might be fun to look out the window on this lovely morning...she looked out in awe of her future fenced in backyard...only to find....an infestation of S-q-u-i-r-r-e-l-s! She ran around the room like a crazed rabid animal, "OH MY GOD OH MY GOD! They Must have followed US!!!! They're EVERYWHERE! HELP!!!!!" Soon, we distracted her with toys and headed downstairs. Luckily the S-q-u-i-r-r-e-l-s were gone before we made it to the downstairs windows. We gave Murphy some food, and then we headed out to Home Depot.


After a lonnnnggg morning of getting shower curtains, window curtains, piping for the washing machine, food, and blinds....we headed back home for lunch. Murphy was very helpful..trying to give us tennis balls while we hung (hanged?) the first curtain. The blinds were harder then we thought, so we will attempt again Monday night. The family came over again and helped with the second coat of paint..and a few more items that needed to be packed and moved. We made a Costco run with everyone, ran to the old house to pick up the cats, and then we said our goodbyes and parted ways. 


**Funny story about my cat Izzy, and by funny I mean sad...don't read if you have a weak stomach :) ***


Izzy loves being in the car, but not in a carrier, he wants to roam free like the wild cat that he is (not really...). So Sadly he got stuck in the carrier in the front seat, and Turkish got stuck in the carrier in the back seat. Not but 10 minutes away from the new house..did Izzy start vomiting all over the carrier..and himself. His first experience in the new house...was of the sink in the kitchen. Lucky cat.
 
The cats explored for a long time, and decided they were happy and curled up into bed with us.  And that was our long and exciting weekend!


I have some photos, but they were taken with my phone. Better photos to come soon!




Cheers!


Rachel

Old Paint

S-q-u-i-r-r-e-l Alert

New Paint! and Josh