Every time I’ve moved, I swear the next time I am going to hire someone else to do it. This time was no different. All my friends who are in the military kept saying to me, ‘you’re packing your own boxes? you’re moving yourself?’ Sadly, the government isn’t paying for my move, we have an allowance that NIAR has given us, but it wouldn’t cover the 8K+ it would take to move us. I kept trying to tell Royal it was worth it, let’s just spend our own money, it would make it so much easier. But we didn’t have the extra money for that laying around and really I don’t want to go in big debt just to make my life easier. So, we compromised. I found a company that would drive our stuff for us, we just had to pack it and load it onto the truck. I’ve spent the last 2 weeks packing and packing and packing and then doing some more packing. I am so sick of packing. On Friday the moving trailer showed up and then on Saturday, I spent 12 hours packing the rest of our stuff while Royal took care of Jayden. Finally Sunday rolled around, the big loading day. Just about everything was packed up and ready to go. The first order of business was getting the piano onto the truck, and that’s where the drama starts. Fireball, Royal’s dad, is a great helper, but he does things really fast and without thinking and you sometimes have to reign him in, hence the nickname Fireball. He wasn’t there 5 minutes before he inflicted some major trauma on one of our walls. While pushing a chair out of the way to get the piano out the door, he managed to nail it on one of our rounded corners and in doing so, bent the metal piece that goes around it. Bent it so good, it created a good 4 inch crack in the wall and we couldn’t bend it back in place without more cracking happening.

So off goes Norma (Royal’s mom) to Home Depot. We ended up glueing it, then putting these tiny tiny screws in the wall to hold it down. Then spackling it, sanding it, and after I went back to Home Depot to buy paint (because we didn’t have any left over from when we painted the walls), we painted it and all that is left now is a small dent in the corner that you’d have to look for. However, it got Royal’s blood boiling right away, and Royal sometimes has little patience with his dad and some of the things he does, so lets just say there was a bit of tension. A little while later, I was in the kitchen packing up the rest of our lamps, Royal and his brother Gabe were carrying a heavy dresser down the stair, and I hear a crash and Royal yelling like he just severed a finger on the railing. I go to the bottom of the stairs where Gabe is just standing there waiting for Royal to get it together. Luckily all digits were intact, but Royal had bent over and when he stood up, he managed to crack his head on the lip of the dresser. Not good, not good.
Later Royal asks me to take apart the bed frames. No problem. Jayden at this point is following me around and wants to use the screwdriver on things, so this is a good project for us. Jayden is using his screwdriver on the footboard, so after I get one of the bed rails out, I ask Royal to come hold the footboard while I take out the other rail, so it doesn’t fall on Jayden. I take the rail out of the footboard, and push the headboard up against the wall and then take the other side of the rail out of the headboard. I turn around to hand Royal the rail and the stupid headboard comes crashing down on me. Nails me in the back of my right hip then continues on it’s way to the floor while hitting my left calf. I pretty much think I’m broken. Once I stop crying and stand back up I tell Royal, ‘I’m freaking done with this whole packing crap’ Sadly, it was only 11am at that point and we didn’t finish loading the truck until 3:30. Here is some of the damage. My leg actually hurts worse than my back, but this one is bruising up much better. And I keep wonder why the heck didn’t Royal catch the stupid thing before it fell????

Royal and I went back to the house yesterday to clean it and make sure all of our stuff was out. I had to wrap my poor bruised leg up just to give it some compression so it would stop throbbing and I could walk around. It took us all day, but it’s finished. We grabbed Scooter and we’re now living out at the lake with my parents and the Wagners. Our trailer got picked up this morning, so all our stuff is on its way to Wichita, and we’ll meet it there next Wednesday. I’m sad about leaving, but I know I’ll be back and it’s hot and sunny in Wichita right now, which is way better than all this cold and rain.

Bye little house. I’m really gonna miss that huge yard, but I bet Royal won’t miss mowing it all the time.