Our last week

Last Monday, we were packing up our house with our friend Laurie.

On Tuesday, we went to Disneyland (which turned out to be a bit more than the kids could handle, as they were either coming down with a cold before they got there or picked one up at the park, and wanted to go home by about 3 p.m.)

On Wednesday, we loaded the van and said goodbye to Laurie in the evening.

Thursday around noon, my folks came down and, seeing our panicked faces, agreed to load their truck with as much of our remaining stuff that wasn't fitting in the van as possible. Then around 2:30 p.m., Steve headed out to a U-Haul place to rent a pull-behind trailer, which we packed up with the last of our stuff, including the keys to the Penske moving van. So we unpacked the U-Haul about halfway til we found the keys, repacked it, and finally rolled out of town, frazzled and four hours behind schedule.

As I had foolishly made a non-refundable room reservation in Cedar City for Thursday night (it would have been so much better to go stay the night with my folks and take off the following morning), we drove from 4:30 p.m. to 1:30 a.m. and rolled into bed at 3 a.m. local time. Four hours later, Harry awoke us all with the croup, though he refused offers of walking and being held and chose to take a shower by himself instead, which worked wonders and he was able to get back to sleep about an hour later. Not me, however.

We made an on-the-fly decision to not push through to Fort Collins on Friday (I was stressed enough about driving a van with the U-haul trailer -- I'd read a piece in the Times a while back about the terrible accidents that occur when trailers were pulled faster than 45 mph, which I was definitely doing).

We made reservations instead for Glenwood Springs, where, to our delight, our new friends Jill and her son Lucas, met us and stayed overnight as well. Why would an unschooling family from Fort Collins drive four hours to see us on our drive east (aside from a general sense that life is an adventure)? Because we were transporting a puppy from Jill's sister (a dog rescuer in San Diego) for them. Little Spanky was a godsend on the drive, keeping the kids diverted.

After another night of disrupted sleep because of poor Harry not feeling well, we got up and walked dogs and played in the hotel pool with Luke, then took off around noon.

We rolled into our new home shortly after 4 p.m. Saturday, in time to unpack a mattress and a few kitchen essentials.

Maddie woke up Sunday morning with a fever, and slept most of the day. Jill came over Sunday afternoon and helped us unload ridiculously heavy furniture, and Cindi, Chelo, Chelo's mom, Alicia, and Nic and Owen came over yesterday and raked a season's worth of leaves up, helped us move the rest of the furniture from garage to house and toted boxes hither and yon as well. The kids weren't up for playing with their cousins much yesterday, unfortunately, but we'll see them at Thanksgiving.

Today, they're definitely feeling better. Except for the pinkeye. We've never had this before and the kids are finding it so unpleasant they're actually willing to do the eyewashing and soaking.I feel terrible that they've been sick and now infected -- moving has proved a much greater stress on them than I expected.

All in all, though, we're excited to be here. The kids miss my Mom and Dad (and Fang), their friends Joseph, Robbie, Spenser, Luna and Solie, and our old house, but they're having fun in the new one and in that sense, seem immensely adaptable (I don't know how much to blame somatasized stress for their illnesses, or whether it's just coincidence that they're getting sick now.) They're very excited about tonight's forecast of 2-4 inches of snow (we had lovely, 70-degree weather since our arrival, but that's all to change today).

I'm going to wrap up this post and start putting rooms back together. I'll post photos once we get our internet service (I'm poaching off a neighbor's wireless at the moment, and I don't want to slow their service down too much.)

It seems like an insane thing that we just did, but it's also exciting to be exploring a new area and a new climate. I reserve the right to fly back to SoCal frequently in the next year, though, to stay in contact with everyone we've left behind!