Let's see...what has happened since the last (and first) move update? For one, we sorted through 6 years of household accumulation including owning our first home and the births and babyhoods of both of our children, plus less sentimental items including absurd numbers of packages of Top Ramen discovered in a storage space, lots of hideous shirts of unknown origin, and many many cat toys discovered under furniture. We haven't bought the cats any toys since the children were born, when we discovered they are more fun to buy presents for (and we no longer have to suffer through pervasive jingling all night long), so those were some antique cat toys.
Anyway, what have we accomplished?1. Sorted an entire house into "Sea" (sea shipment, heading across the Panama canal for 6 weeks), "Air" (stuff we'll need for the last 6 weeks in Seattle), "Storage" (very small pile left in our basement), and "Yard Sale" with appropriate stickers applied. The first three were provided by the moving company; Amelia set up a sweatshop and made dozens of "Yard Sale" tags by herself. Here are some examples of massive piles of stuff ready to go:
2. Entertained a crowd of movers (Mary, while I was at work) while keeping track of children and making sure things went in the correct piles. The movers first said 3 days, revised down to 2 days in the pre-move survey when they saw we didn't fit into the typical 4-person American family house size (gasp! Only a 2-bed, 1-bath!), and then ended up taking less than 6 hours. They commended us on how organized and prepared we were - all credit here goes to Mary!
3. Moved our own stuff to our temporary furnished apartment. We now live in the South Lake Union neighborhood. It's really fun to have the opportunity to explore a new neighborhood while being within the same city. The kids are delighted by the huge playground across the street, and given the tiny size of the apartment we spend a ton of time there! Amelia continues with her stigmati-building obsession with monkey bars at the new playground. And the kids are treated like spectacles as there are very few of them in this area - many more young hip urbanites. Here are some pictures of the kids being "urban."
Playing around with some public art outside the nearby Whole Foods (after one trip I now drive 3x as far to pay 1/3 as much)
Amelia showing off a new Amelia-esque pose at their newly beloved playground across the street.
Shopping together at the neighborhood weekly farmers market.
Taking in the fountain scene after attending the pride parade and festival.
4. The big yard sale came next. We held it on a blazing hot day (my birthday!) to coincide with a pretty cool antique/hot rod car show they have in our neighborhood every year. This leads to a lot more traffic in the neighborhood. We managed to get everything out by the allotted time, although I was unwilling to spend an hour applying prices to everything, so I just put out 5 sheets and had a $10, $5, $1, 25 cent, and free pile. The aforementioned Top Ramen went in the free pile and made some people very happy. The traffic, nice day, and of course my winning salesmanship led to a lot of good sales. I would say that almost everything that had true value did sell, with the exception of some nice enough sweaters. On a hot day no one can consider buying sweaters! At the end of the day Mary bundled the remainder up into a large pile for a thrift store.
5. Here is where my hat really goes off to Mary. After getting the entire house sorted into appropriate piles, including hours of work, she then took over entirely as soon as we moved to the apartment. It was time to get the house ready for our wonderful new tenants! We were very lucky to find the perfect tenants, or rather they found us. They even want the house for the full 3 years we'll be gone. They seem to adore the house like we do, and they're really excited to be living there, to take care of it and the yard, and to really enjoy it. YAY! Anyway, Mary worked all weekend, then every weekday following that until the 1st, starting her shift at 6pm when I got home and usually getting back to the apartment at midnight.
Getting the house ready, though, was a TON of work. Mary repainted all of the rooms, many with two coats in areas where we'd hung a lot of art or there had been fading/staining. She cleaned and cleaned and cleaned some more. She sorted through all the detritus of which there was a LOT. She did countless dump runs, fixed clogged sinks, replaced hardware on some cabinets, basically all of those things that you think "Hmm, I should get around to that" but then never do. She could barely walk as of July 1!
So now we're happy tenants in our apartment and we have happy tenants in our house. It's not 100% smooth sailing - sometimes the apartment seems a bit...cramped...and we definitely miss our house at times. But we're enjoying all the fun changes and trying to take advantage of the remainder of summer we have here. In fact, we're heading off camping for the long weekend...but I suggested and then insisted that Mary stay home to recuperate from the endless hours of hard labor. Going camping with this group (7 adults, 9 children 2-5) may not be the most relaxing!
