moving weekend

moving weekend turned out to be a little more interesting than a moving weekend typically is. the closing on the 22nd went just fine. we got into the new house that day and spent the rest of the day cleaning and getting things ready for our belongings to arrive the next day. eric headed back to the city that evening to finish up packing and to be there when the moving company arrived the next morning. luke and i were staying with the orozcos so we had cozy beds to sleep in. that night we had a huge thunderstorm and it created many power outages around the area. we were unaware that our new neighborhood was one that was hit until about 10 o'clock the next morning when i headed over to the new house with frank and kathy. when we walked into the house we were greeted by smoke alarms going off and no electricity. as i tried to figure out why the alarms were going off, frank discovered that we had 5 inches of water in our basement! whoa! talk about a big "welcome" to home ownership. coming from a city condo where we hardly had any maintenance to do, we knew we'd need to learn about sump pumps and the like at some point, but we didn't expect it would be on day two!

thankfully we had many people pitch in around us and help us figure it all out. and also thankfully eric's step-dad tony had a generator that he brought over and plugged our sump pump in so we could start pumping the water out of our basement. it worked rather quickly and by early that evening all of the water was out of our basement. the electricity still wasn't on, but the water was out. in the meantime, the movers showed up and moved all of our stuff into the house on a very hot day without any air conditioning. poor guys.

the power eventually came back on sunday afternoon at about 2:00. that was a full 36 hours without power. we met our next door neighbor through it all and he said an event like this hadn't happened in the 17 years he lived here. so that was encouraging. in hindsight there were many bright spots that occurred during this crazy time and we knew God was watching out for us and protecting us through it all.

- if it had to happen, the timing of it couldn't have been better. the previous owners were out of the house and they had that basement packed with stuff. we hadn't moved anything into the basement yet so the basement was completely empty besides a few paint cans. if we had moved in the previous day we would have had a ton of stuff in the basement.

- we learned early on that we didn't want to put anything in the basement until we have shelving units that keep our belongings off the floor about 6 inches.

- we also learned that we'll probably be investing in some sort of back-up sump pump as one of our first major home purchases.

- moving to be closer to family was a great decision! everyone pitched in and helped us out so much. from figuring out how to get the smoke alarms to stop beeping, to getting the generator up and running, to washing our sheets and cleaning our windows, to taking care of luke while we could focus on the house, to just being there as support. great decision!

now, here's a fun video of luke coming into his new house for the very first time. pardon the mess. it does look a little better than this now, but it'll be a work in progress for awhile. :)