The Houghs: The First Transport is Away!

'Sup, Internet.

As you know, we've been spending the last few months packing and purging for our upcoming move back to the northern homeland of Michigan. This plan of ours has been in the works for over a year, but the packing portion of it started shortly after the Holiday season uttered its death rattle.

During the neverending sorting and boxing of clutter, closet crap, and things-we-didn't-know-we-owned, one thing became abundantly clear:

We definitely weren't fitting all of our shit in a single 26-foot truck like the one we originally drove down to Florida in January of 2007.

Back then it was just Kris and I, a Quaker parrot, and the contents of a two-bedroom/one-bath apartment. . . and it was a tight fit then. Now, as a family of four, we had a three-bedroom/two-bathroom house, with a two-car garage, attic, shed, and back sunroom. . . and we were bursting at the seams with crap around the house.

Enter Grandma and Papa John.

When we came to grips with the fact we were going to need more than one truck, Mom and John offered to fly down one-way and drive back the first truck for us. They even offered to store the truck's contents in their garage and basement, with my brother Chris offering to keep anything that wouldn't fit at Mom's house in his basement. Obviously, we couldn't refuse such an offer, and pounced on it.

Kris looked around for moving companies to get our stuff back up north to Midland, and once again it looked like we'd be traversing the continental United States under the Penske banner. They gave her a hell of a deal, too - $480 apiece for two 26-foot trucks. . . including optional insurance (which we took this time around, seeing how we kinda 'like' our stuff.) When we drove down from Clare to Orlando in '07, we paid around $1000 for one of the same sized vehicles.

Pretty much.

She was told that the insanely low price was on account that, not only was she reserving two trucks at the same time, but that - more importantly - nobody in their right mind was moving north to Michigan.

Nobody, that is, except the Houghs.

(Honestly, I'm kinda surprised they're not paying us to move their inventory across the country for them.)

Anyway, Mom and John flew down on Monday. . . three days before they had to turn around and drive the first moving truck back up north, so it was definitely a quick visit. The consolation, here, was that we'd be hanging out with them on a regular basis in less than three months.

Needless to say, at the end of their whirlwind visit, with the first of our trucks heading out of our driveway and off towards the northern tundras of Michigan, only one thing was going through my mind. . .

(Honestly, if you can't appreciate that clip, watch The Empire Strikes Back. . . my all-time 2nd favorite movie.)

So here's some pics from Grandma and Papa John's mini-visit, and the sending off of half of our crap.

Enjoy.

Baptism by Barbies.

Serious discussions regarding which shoes go on which dolls. . .

I'm pretty sure our dog is a homosexual - he doesn't like female company in our house, but can't stay away from men.

Not sure what's being discussed here, but whatever it is, the Cannonball's not buying it.

Hedbanz (yes, it's spelled like that.)

Abby schools some grandparents in the art of Star Wars. . .

Winding down the girls

Mom and John flew in on Monday, so Kris took off Monday thru Wednesday in order to clean up around the house and pack up more stuff for the truck (FYI - to date, she's packed ONE box - everything else was me.) Yours Truly, unfortunately, suffered no such luxury, and had to work both Monday and Tuesday. Like a sucker. After I got out of work on Tuesday, I came home to find everyone getting ready to decorate Easter Eggs ('cause, as you know, that shit's practically around the corner - definitely snuck up on us this year.)

A family activity with a dad circling around the perimeter with an SLR pressed to his face? Rare occasion in this family.

As we've done with every Easter since having kids, Kris and I opted to buy the over-priced, pretty-much-junk Paas Easter egg-decorating 'kit' for the girls. This year, the girls picked out a Star Wars-themed Paas kit. . . which made the ordeal slightly less mundane.

Han Solo/Millennium Falcon egg? Don't mind if I do.

"Green. Like Yoda." Nice job matching colors, Product of Public Education.

At a young age, the Cannonball mastered the practice of taking selfies.

Whenever Kris and I offload the pictures from the Canon PowerShot's SD card, we generally end up with several dozen pictures that resemble this face. She's gotten into the habit of snatching up the camera and taking fifty pictures around the house over the course of ten minutes or so. . . usually of her toys, Watson, Abby's butt, Abby crying over the fact that Alayna just took a picture of her butt, ridiculous selfies like the one you see here, and Abby crying over the fact that Alayna just took a picture of her crying over the fact that Alayna previously took a picture of her butt. Kids are awesome.

I ended up taking off Wednesday morning, as that was the day we were to load up the moving truck. Nevertheless, we opted to drop both girls off at their respective schools. . . if only to keep them from bothering us underfoot as we moved a bunch of heavy crap around the house and into the truck. While mom (taking pictures from her shotgun vantage point) accompanied me to drop off the girls, John and Kris drove over to Penske to pick up the moving truck.

Here we go again. . .

Ready for a day of toil and turmoil.

This is what I've been up to in my spare time (by the end of the day, everything you see here would take up a mere 1/3 of the truck.)

We were forced to back the truck up mere inches from the front of our garage in order to get as much of it as possible off the street.

Hard to believe we'd be needing two of these things to get us back up north.

And it begins. From the get-go, it seemed to make a lot more sense to have one person up in the truck packing things in tightly while another person lifted boxes up into the truck. Mom and Kris helped out for awhile, but eventually John and I figured they'd be a lot more help packing things up inside and bringing them out into the garage for us to mess with.

Fortunately, Kris was able to get a hand cart from her work to help us move multiple boxes at a time (all the boxes shown here are books, which we wanted to load first. . . and yes, I own a shit-load of books.)

This is around lunch time, when we took a short break. About a third of the truck is filled at this point, and the garage is just about emptied. We started loading furniture up at this point.

As you can see here, there wasn't a lot of clearance for people walking up the truck's loading ramp. That made moving heavy furniture up into the truck really, really fun.

We had so much space in the truck that we decided to take as much of the furniture in the house as humanly possible. So Kris' desk was disassembled, and she ended up taking over my desk in my Study (it was fun while it lasted.)

Round two begins.

Taking a cue from my little brother Jeff - who meticulously recorded the contents of every, numbered tote and box in his move from his Air Force base to Midland over a year ago - I recorded all the numbered items and their contents as we loaded them onto the truck. This would come in very handy.

Taking it a step further - since I'm borderline OCD - I also designed a color-coded labeling system, as I knew that after awhile of unloading and moving items off the truck in Michigan, the likelihood of family members taking time to read the labeling on every box was next to nothing. So, since I wanted certain items stored inside, and others had to be handled gently, I bought extra rolls of duct tape to label all totes, boxes, and drawer-bins. Green for Fragile, Purple for Indoor Storage. 'Cause I'm a friggin' genius.

Turns out we had room enough for the patio dining set, too.

Progress.

The Armoire heads north.

Papi Juan

Mid-afternoon, with the truck about halfway filled.

Topped off (Kris made me pack both mini-fridges, which I wasn't a big fan of. . . now I had to find space for all my craft beer in the family fridge.)