The Knowlan Adventure: New House!!!

Despite Virginia's best attempts at keeping us snowed-in, we moved last weekend. We were expecting a huge winter storm to come through the entire area on Saturday, so friends at school advised me to take a "sick" day on Friday to do the move then. So, Friday was spent packing and loading the truck. I completely underestimated how long it would take us to get it all done. I was forgetting that every other time we've moved, we've had lots of help! It was an all day, all night event and we were so exhausted. We didn't end up getting to the new house until almost 1am. We decided to just unload the bed and get to sleep... but we hadn't planned our truck loading accordingly, so there were several things that had to be unloaded before we could even get to the bed. We finally laid down around 3:20am and promptly fell asleep!

We woke up on Saturday morning to about 8 inches of snow and we had an entire day of unloading the truck ahead of us. As all of you probably know, I'm a complete wuss in cold weather and I had already had my fill on Friday night. (It was about 20 degrees during the move-out.) Stuart graciously offered to do all that he could by himself, so we set up "the porch system" where he'd get it off the truck and onto the porch and I'd get it inside. Other than most of our stuff being covered in snow, unloading wasn't all that bad. It was a nice change for us - not having to take everything up a flight of stairs! Saturday night, a friend of mine from school offered to pick us up in their 4 wheel drive and have us over for dinner. We were thankful because we didn't have much in the way of food! By the time the snow stopped, we had 10-12 inches.

Sunday was crazy... we cleaned off a car and the Budget truck and adventured out. We ran some errands and then Stuart dropped me off at the apartment to start cleaning/painting and he went to school for a few hours for meetings. We barely made it out with everything in two car trips (the final car ride was quite packed... I couldn't move any part of my body), but we got it done! And we've been unpacking ever since! :)

I had snow days Monday & Tuesday, a day at school without kids on Wednesday (still haven't figured out why we were there), a 2-hour delay on Thursday, and by Friday, another storm was coming through - giving us another snow day! The extra time has been wonderful for getting settled, but I'm dreading the end of the school year because my district didn't build in snow days this year. I'm just hoping it doesn't interfere with our Montana vacation! Only time will tell... Things are snowy and icy here again and I'm just glad we have the house to relax in rather than a tiny apartment! The biggest advantage of this house is definitely the fenced-in back yard. The dogs are absolutely loving the freedom! And we love being able to let them out whenever they need to burn some energy... especially since it doesn't require us getting all of our snow gear on! They have been playing so much; they're actually tired at night, which is new to us!

Overall, things have been a little hectic (and messy!), but we're so happy to be here. It was all worth it! The inside of the house isn't quite picture-ready yet, but I'll post some when it is. For now, pictures of our snow-covered new place! (And of course, the dogs playing.) :)