We made it. We are here in Florida. Things are calming down. Finally. It was a crazy wild ride getting here. When we were skyping our families and telling them what we went through to get here, we decided we definitely needed to document it.
After such a fun holiday in Utah, we flew back to Michigan and packed everything up and drove back to our humble abode in Georgia. From there, Shaun immediately had to go to Houston for a National Sales meeting for the week so my Mom came and visited Georgia. I'm so grateful for all of her help packing us up. Shaun came back late Friday night and Saturday we finished up putting our apartment into a box and left for our Florida house hunting trip. Everybody told us that we were crazy expecting to find housing in five days. They were right. Fortunately we were able to sign a lease two hours before our flight back to Georgia!
We got back late Friday night and stayed up preparing for the big move in the morning. We had to be up at 6 AM to go get the Uhaul. Shaun picked up the truck while I was running around getting last minute things for our big drive. The 9 o' clock hour rolled around and…nobody was there to help. I was laughing in the grocery store aisle (masking my fear of doing this by ourselves) watching a video Shaun sent me of him taking down boxes to the truck by himself. Thankfully a few friends showed up and saved our lives! We got all packed up and then went to dinner with some friends that night.
We were planning on saying goodbye to our friends kids before they went to bed and then spending the night there to be rested for the early drive. We had to finish getting everything out of the apartment. By that time I was so frustrated about all of the random stuff that was still left that I started throwing stuff away. Finally that was done and all that was left was hooking up our car to the dolly. . .
Shaun had done this before when he made the drive across country to Georgia, but he didn't have me as his navigator! I can't explain to you how hard it is to navigate a whole car to roll over a certain spot that is only a few inches wide. I felt bad for Shaun because he had just moved our whole apartment down six flights of stairs on 4.5 hours of sleep and was now having to listen to my "directions." After many tries and finally switching spots so he was the navigator, we got the car attached. He had me go into the Uhaul and start moving to make sure it was secure. Whoops, we definitely had put it on backwards and it was about to do a nose dive. Let me just remind everybody out there to look out your mirrors and turn down the radio so you can hear your navigator telling you to stop (I don't think he knows this but after I put the Uhaul back into park, I was laughing my head off. I pulled myself together and went back out to "help").
After about two hours, we finally figured out how to correctly attach the car. We got to our friends house about 11:30PM and of course missed saying goodbye to the kids. The next morning started at 5AM. Call me high maintenance, but there was no way I could drive this 17-foot Uhaul + our car being towed behind it plus no rearview mirror. I actually don't think Shaun trusted me to drive it from how nervous I was. So he once again earned the husband of the year award for driving the entire way. It is only an 8 hour drive but in a big Uhaul it took 12 hours. Yes, he drove 12 hours with minimal breaks and no cruise control.
We barely pulled into our place just in time for the movers Shaun had hired to move us in. My family has moved quite a few times so I understand the people you sometimes encounter as your movers. This was pretty bad though. We pulled up to our condo in the dark where I met two hooded gentleman that never spoke (Brion and Trion. Yes they were brothers and yes their names rhymed) and the main guy that I guess owns the company. I was a bit surprised when the owner was telling me how annoyed he was having to drive these guys around to the jobs because they don't have licenses. {hmm. what does it usually mean when you can't get a license…} We were already so exhausted and stressed. It was safe to say that our welcome party stressed us out even more.
They leave, we return the Uhaul, and go get our car that we left at the airport parking lot. We picked up the car and drove to Wendy's for some much needed food. Shaun checks to see if the dining area is open and it wasn't so we went through the drive-thru. It was there that we realize Shaun's wallet is currently missing. We rush back to the airport and it isn't there. We are in panic-freak-out mode because of the following:
-ten hours of sleep the past two days
-Shaun is exhausted from the drive
-we have to turn on the electricity with a card that is in his wallet
-Shaun works in seven hours
-our welcome party was frightening
-it's midnight in a brand new area so everything looks sketchy
After driving through the airport one more time Shaun decides to go back to the Wendy's because that is the only other place we went. We pull up and laying in the curb is HIS WALLET. When he got out to check the dining area, it fell out. We get back home and are both just wanting to cry. Shaun decides to take a shower and go to bed. He turns on the water and it sputters a bit and then shoots out water with a powerful rotten eggs stench. Soon our whole house is smelling like that and we both are just nauseous. We decide the best thing to do at this point is just bury our heads in our pillows and sleep.
Once the sun came up everything was better. We called about the water and I guess it is a brand new unit and the water hadn't been run through the purification system yet. After twenty minutes the smell was gone.
I am laughing out loud as I am writing about this. It is crazy how in the moment something seems like such a huge deal to your wellbeing. Things that make you think your life is over, will have you laughing weeks later. Like I said at the beginning, we're here. We made it. Florida is amazing despite our journey getting here and we are so excited to see what it has in store!
