Moving Stinks, But Moving With a Baby is Ten Times Worse!!

I have to warn you in advance that this is going to be a LONG post because a lot has happened recently!

So we moved.  Yuck.  I had no motivation to do any packing in advance so that left us not prepared when the movers (also known as the men in our church) came on Monday.  Plus, anytime I tried to get anything done, I would have to put Jaden down, and when you're moving, your house is practically a mine field for a baby.  There was nowhere safe to let him play on his own, so nothing got done.  So on the day of the move we ran around frantically throwing things in random boxes and taping them up quick.  Not the most efficient way to move, I can assure you!  Also, to keep Jaden out of the way of the movers, I strapped him into our Baby Bjorn and I carried him around all day.  This led me to hurt my back and I was completely useless for the next week or so while it healed.  Also, we had completely underestimated the amount of junk stuff we had so we ended up not getting enough U-Boxes (U-Haul's version of Pods) so we had to order an emergency third one and even then we still had to much crap!  So I went through all of the leftover stuff that had to fit in our two cars, made some drastic cuts and did a painful purge, and through some amazing Tetris skills, Jake stuffed it all in our cars.  But before that happened we had the ladies in our church come over to help clean the place, but we still had so much stuff to simply box up that they ended up just helping me box up my kitchen.  By this point in the day, Jaden was tired, hungry, and cranky, and I was tired, hungry, and cranky as well.  I got to my breaking point.  I told the ladies thank you, but they were welcome to leave, and we were just going to pay to have the landlords clean the house and the carpets.

Thankfully on Wednesday we finally took off!  Our cars were packed so full that you couldn't see out of either one of our back windows, but we were really fortunate to miss all of the severe weather on our way down!  Wednesday was kind of discouraging because after being on the road for hours, we were still in the same state we started in when we stopped for the night.  Illinois is a lot longer than you think!  So it was crazy that on Thursday alone we went through Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee (we actually got lost in downtown Nashville looking for gas), and into Alabama.  And then on Friday we finally made the last push into Florida!  Jaden handled the drive so well!  My back did not.  Oh well.  Time will heal it.

When we got to Pensacola, we met my mom who flew here to help us with the move and finding a house.  She had rented a condo for us to all stay in until we found a place, and it is seriously a piece of paradise!  This is the view from the balcony, taken on the day after we arrived:

The weather has been up and down and at one point really cold, but I really can't complain because there is no snow!!!  The fog here can get really creepy.  It is SUPER thick and can come out of nowhere and disappear just as fast.

The search for a house was really crazy.  We have a pretty tight budget and we wanted a place that was safe and clean.  After viewing several rental properties, I felt like that wasn't going to happen.  And then we stumbled on The Perfect Place.  It's an end unit townhouse, 3 bedrooms and 2.5 bathrooms, 1 car attached garage, washer/dryer in unit, on Perdido Key, has a community pool, community beach, community playground, community boat pier that you can fish off of, lots of windows with screens, 2 air conditioning units (one for upstairs and one for downstairs), a MASSIVE master walk-in closet, a corner jetted tub in the master with a separate shower, two sinks in the master, the best staff around, AND it's in our budget!  I had to be super aggressive to get it, but it's ours!  The funny part is that it's in an RV park....  But it's an upscale one and Jaden will have plenty of grandma's and grandpa's to love him!  We move in next week!

Jake reported for duty and originally we thought they were going to let him come home at night, but then they told us that until he had a lease agreement, he couldn't even apply to live at home with us!  That was another reason to be aggressive to get the lease for this place.  He was put into night classes which means he  goes to class from 2:30pm-11pm.  Ugh.  Right now he is doing the exact same schooling he already did in Great Lakes so he is super bored, but in about a month and a half he should start some new material.

Holy cow that was a lot of stuff!  I'm glad we have a place to live next week, I'm glad that we have this great weather, and I'm glad that I can sit on our balcony and watch the dolphins right off shore!  (they are the dark spot on the middle of the picture)