The Houghs: Establishing Headquarters (yet again)

What up, players.

These last two weeks have been Hell on Earth, folks. Fo' real. Allow me to explain. . .

Time to prospect. Or kill zombies.

Like I was telling you about before, we've (I've, rather) have been moving van loads of stuff over from our old house into our new house every day over the course of the ten or twelve days - usually after getting out of work.

"Our achievements pale in comparison to those of the PS3!"

It's been a hellish process - with only two weeks left of school, work was more stressful than ever. I was spending just as much time babysitting my students and keeping them from killing each other as I was teaching them about the Aztec and Maya (for whatever reason, teenagers today seem more interested in sitting at home over the summer playing XBox 360 than they do learning about Ancient Mesoamerica. . . sounds pretty lame to me).

In addition, it's also been in the low 90s with 95% humidity. . . meaning we can steam vegetables out in the open air and one can soak through a t-shirt just by looking out the window at the world outside. Do I jest? Perhaps a little, but you can still sleep soundly tonight knowing that I was sweating like a bastard moving over my mountain of cardboard boxes - containing heavy vinyl records and books - in such horrid weather.

Blegh.

Kris handles these beasts better than I can. . .

Anyway, like I was telling you folks earlier - June 2nd was our moving day with the truck. That was the day we wanted to tackle all the big major crap, as that was the only day when Adam and Clint would be around to lend me a hand. Seeing how we had moved so much of our stuff into the house in the four days leading up to Saturday, I was seriously hoping to round everything up in two loads with a small/medium-sized truck.

We ended up getting a 17-ft. Uhaul, and, sure enough, with only two loads we managed to transport all of our big furniture items over. Granted, it killed Adam, Clint and I to do it - the weather was terrible (the hottest it had been in a long while), and fitting the larger items, like the couch and loveseat, through the front door was nigh impossible - but at least we got it done.

We ended up wrapping up by the early afternoon, and from that point forward, Kris and I went to work unpacking boxes, pushing furniture into tentative position, and keeping the kids occupied and out of trouble.

Easier than it sounds. Check it out:

This is what our old house looked like prior to June 2nd - a total nightmare (those giant pieces of wood are the pieces of Kris' massive command center/desk).

The sellers left an old timey clock in the kitchen for us. We were going to toss it, but decided to pay homage to their last 20 plus years in the house and eventually hung it up over the kitchen sink instead.

The first thing I hooked up was the Entertainment system. This took about two hours, hooking up all the cords to the surround sound, calibrating the speakers, etc. Not a whole hell of a lot of fun, but totally worth it.

The weekend of the Big Move, there was major road construction being done, and our usually-paved road was nostalgically-Michigan dirt instead. . .

Kris was ecstatic that her Tactical Family Transport Vehicle had trademark Clare County marks along its sides. . .

The kids watch Return of the Jedi. Alayna's been asking for Stars Wars lately, and I couldn't be more excited.

The last car load out of the old Sindlesham house was a solemn affair - even though the house was a run-down, disaster-prone, time bomb, it had been home for the last two years. We had put a lot of time, effort, and money into it. Still, as we drove away from it the last time, we were indeed quite happy to be seeing the last of the grimy old money pit.

Here's a few last pics of our old home:

Doesn't take much to entertain this kid. . .

Alayna saying goodbye to her old room. . .

I'm very happy to never have to mow that weed jungle again.

We'll definitely miss the playroom, that's for sure. . .

The end of the Man Room

Emptying out the last of the Garage. . .

Kris Spackled the hell out of the Library - those brackets ripped the drywall to pieces. . .

Farewell, Sindlesham. . .

The Study

(I have a lot of crap)

The Girls' Room (how do you like the impromptu bed setup?)

Boxes are AWESOME!

The Cannonball

The beginning of the Playroom

Master Bathroom. . . sort of.

We set up a TV/VCR combo for the girls, but they couldn't be torn away from those boxes. . .

Kris has some serious work ahead of her. . .

Watching Netflix. Again.

The First Family Meal in the New House: Number 1 Chinese Takeout!

Kris finds the mop amidst the Garage of Doom

Breaking in the new Bunk Beds. . .

The Girls' Room - slowly (but surely) coming along. . .

More of the Playroom. . .

The never-ending disaster that is the Kitchen. . .

Dance Party!

(the paint peeled off the dresser - we didn't intentionally paint in that color. We're going to repaint those once we get the walls painted. . .)

The sellers surprised us by leaving this behind in the refrigerator. . .

Brut's not our favorite, but the gestured was much appreciated.

You might ask yourself, "Hey, where did the 3 ft. tall Virgin Mary shrine go?" Adam and Clint decided to rip it out of the ground when they drove the first truck load over - so they'll be the ones spending eternity in Hades and not me, which I'm somehow cool with. As it turns out, Mary Herself was only cemented into the alcove, so she was removed harmlessly, and is currently keeping a respectful vigil over my workbench in the garage. The alcove was cracked ripping it down, so I'm pitching it. . .