we moved again. and it was a nightmare again.

One of our trials while being married has been moving. We have moved several times and it has {almost} always been a nightmare. Something always goes wrong...well, actually, a lot of things go wrong and make the process incredibly stressful. Back in January, when we moved to Blacksburg, we were excited to know where we were going, but we didn't have a place to live yet. I also miscarried during our drive out to VA. If you remember, we also had a stressful move back in Utah, and then when we moved back to AZ last year.

This time, however, takes the cake. We were scheduled to move July 13. We picked up the truck and started to load. I dropped Lincoln off at a friend's house and went to pick up the keys to our house. I went over to the house to check it our before we started moving stuff in. As soon as I walked in, I got punched in the face with a terrible smell. Now, when we originally looked at the house, it had a slight smell, but the people living there weren't the cleanest and they had a ton of stuff, so we figured that once it was clean and painted, it would be fine. NOPE. It was a thousand times worse. The best way that I can describe it is like one of those hotel rooms that is supposed to be non-smoking but it was smoked in, and then they tried to cover up the smell, so it smells smokey, dirty and chemically all at once. Now multiply that by a thousand. That's how the house smelled. I couldn't stand to be in there. And Lincoln has bad asthma, so we can't put up with even the slightest of smells because he has attacks.

I called the management company and they said that they would have someone out there within a couple of house. I went back to our current house and told Derick about it. He said it would probably be fine, and we both thought that maybe it was me and my pregnancy super sense of smell. As soon as he got to the house with a truck full of stuff and 6 other guys helping, he called and said, "It smells horrible." He also found some poison oak and ivy in the yard. That would have been fantastic for Lincoln to be around. Sheesh. He then called the management company. After several calls and demands, they finally sent out a crew of people, including the company owner and a carpet guy, who all claimed that they couldn't smell anything. Derick said, "Ok, there are 7 of us who DO smell it, and there are 3 of you that don't. There's something wrong here."

Thankfully, the owner of the company let us out of our lease with a full refund. YEAH! But now we were homeless. To make things worse, I had only reserved the Uhaul truck for 6 hours on accident, which would have been enough, had the move gone smoothly. Someone else had the truck reserved after us, so we couldn't extend. So we had nowhere to put our stuff, and we still had a bunch left at our other house. So Derick and the other guys had to unload it all at the smelly house and take the truck back. We called our current landlord, and thankfully, she let us stay for a couple of extra nights in the house.

On Saturday, we basically drove around looking for another place to live. It's not that easy to find a decent place here in Blacksburg. There are lots of good places, but they are hard to come by. Derick also made several calls to people that he knows, including people on his board of directors. They immediately started making calls and looking for some things for us. They were a huge help. They day ended and we had some leads, but nothing was settled. Sunday came. We had to be out of our house by that night. We still had a ton of stuff to move. We had to stay home from church (which we hated to do) and clean and pack up everything. Then two of our good friends (bless their hearts) came over with their vans to help us move everything because we couldn't find another truck to rent. Everything was rented. We had to move the rest of the stuff over to the smelly house. Finally, everything was out of that house and clean. That was at least one sigh of relief.

We then went to our friends, the Parkinsons' house for dinner. They invited us to stay at their house that night, but we declined. Derick was having one of his busiest weeks yet at work (great timing, right???) and so we just decided to get a hotel and have our own space. When we looked up hotels, we found that the prices were much more expensive that the last time we had looked. So we just went to the cheapest and closest, which is not nice, but we just needed sleep. Well, the sink was clogged, the TV didn't work, and it just wasn't that nice, but we were pooped and just decided to deal with it. Well, at about 1:30 in the morning, Lincoln woke up and couldn't breathe. He was having an asthma attack. We had to immediately give him his inhaler, and get him out of the room. I quickly packed up our stuff while Derick stayed with Lincoln. Derick then went and asked for a refund and we then had to find another place to stay. We went to another hotel that we had stayed at before, gave Lincoln a breathing treatment, and slept the last few hours of the night.

Monday morning brought some promising news: we got a call from a friend of someone Derick knew, and he had a house that was for rent. The owners had been trying to sell it with no luck and were just now decided to rent it instead, so it wasn't even listed as a rental yet. We got ready, and went to look at the house. We loved it {and we were desperate} so we immediately applied and got approved that day. They still had to finish paperwork with the owners, however, so we couldn't sign the lease until Wednesday, which brings us back to our stuff. What were we going to do with all of our stuff?? Well, we rented a truck on Monday and got our friend Nick Daley to go to the smelly house to load it all up. We were able to keep the truck until Wednesday at 8:00 a.m. Which was great, but not so great since we couldn't even sign our lease until Wednesday afternoon. John, the property manager, let us unload our stuff into the basement late Tuesday night, which was a blessing.

In the meantime, we had dinner at the Daleys' house on Monday and stayed the night there too. On Tuesday night, we stayed at the Callahans' house while they were out of town. We signed the lease on Wednesday evening. We decided to still stay at the Callahans' that night too, because it was already getting late. So on Thursday, we were finally able to get into our house. Hallelujah.

It was probably one of the most stressful weeks I had ever had. We were so lucky to have so many great friends that were willing to help and open up their homes to us.

Moving in has been somewhat of a slow process, because Derick has been working a lot and then he has had to move everything up from the basement. Being pregnant, I can't do a whole lot. But we're getting there. We finally feel like we are getting settled, even though we still have a lot to do (moving and unpacking takes forever!).

If you read this whole thing, I am beyond impressed.

Oh, and one more thing, we found out as we were signing the lease that the owners of the house are going to put it back on the market next spring. Let's hope it doesn't sell so that we don't have to go through any of this again for a long time!

Here are Lincoln and Graham playing in the Uhaul. Lincoln loves moving for this reason.