Longhorn Country

We officially "moved" to longhorn country (home of Texas Longhorns - seriously, I don't like this because I'm an Aggie fan, but hey, it's Texas nonetheless) on August 12th. My husband hired a moving company to move us since it was such a long distance. He chose Colonial Van Lines, who ended up hiring a smaller company to do the job. I had a bad feeling and he felt like we were forced to go with them. The company didn't have furniture pads, dollies, or shrink wrap for our stuff, so stuff got damaged during the move. The owner/agent of the company was rude while he was at our house. He was on the phone the whole time he was there and even asked to use our phone charger to charge his phone while he sat in our recliner and continued to talk/yell at people on the phone about money. When I went to the bank to get a money order to pay him, he requested cash only and said that since we were giving him a money order, he was going to take an entire week to deliver our stuff. Since we came in 4,000 lbs below our quoted weight, the owner/agent flat out refused to come back and get the rest of our stuff, so we had to rent a Penske truck to do the rest on our own. We tried to drive the 12 hours to Kansas, so that we could make the kids' birthday party with K's family. We missed it because we had to stop and get sleep. It had been almost 48 hours since we slept and we weren't going to make it.

Upon delivery (which he took 10 days to do), he demanded cash again and told my husband that he wasn't going to play these d*** games anymore. Our stuff was late, the movers were lazy so I had to help them take stuff off the truck, they didn't take stuff to the right rooms, nor did they assemble any of our furniture. We were honestly afraid that our stuff was going to be stolen or severely damaged. It was a horrible situation and we will probably never use movers again.

Before we left Milwaukee, we took a road trip to Michigan. We dropped off two of our glider families to a friend of mine from elementary school and then we drove up through Holland and on to Muskegon, where we took the ferry back with our car. It was an awesome experience. The trip was on the day before K's birthday. We had intended on getting on the ferry around 5 p.m., but we forgot about the time change, so we didn't make it. This left us there until 11:00 that night. The good part about this is that we were in the middle of Lake Michigan when the clock struck midnight. The moon was full and bright, and it was gorgeous when we saw the shore of Milwaukee. I am honestly going to miss living in Wisconsin. The beauty of the trees and wild animals just doesn't even come close to Texas.

While we moved, we left the kids with grandparents for three weeks. My parents took them for a week, then K's parents took them for a week until we drove down to Kansas, then we picked them up and dropped them off at my parents' house for a week while we unpacked, or so we thought we would be doing.

On Saturday, August 18th, we had the kids' 2nd birthday party: Dr. Seuss theme. After the party, we brought them down to Austin to see their new home. Since Saturday, we have been dealing with non-stop toddler tantrums. Today, things were much better, so hopefully that means everyone is adjusting. K and I are at least getting used to moving (sadly). Other then the issues with the moving company, everything else went pretty well. I did most of the packing, thankfully, which is why nothing was damaged. The last time we moved, we had some family helping K pack because I was in Wisconsin working and quite a few things were ruined and had to be thrown out.

Good news is...we're in a bigger house in a cul-de-sac, where cars won't be speeding through. Our neighbor on the backside of our fence is a church. The downside is that the dogs have gotten loose a couple of times by chewing a hole through the fence. Huskies are expert escape artists. We knew this going into it and we never had a problem when we first got them. Moving seems to be what set it off.


I'll post pics of the kids' 2nd birthday party and development updates later when I have more time. Time is even more precious now that we have toddlers.