Thursday, September 16, 2010

The move that wouldn't end

For those who are not aware, we no longer live in Kearns, or in Utah for that matter. I would hope no long-time readers are unaware of this. I feel like I've been talking about it forever. We moved to Utah so Alann could go to school. It ended up being a really great experience and exactly the right place to be. We bought our first house, (the one he owned before we got married doesn't count), had our first two children, I bought my first car on my own, and we made a lot of good friends and had fun with family every now and then. But the time had come to move on with our lives. Neither of us felt like Utah was the place to be forever. Pieces have fallen into place to lead us back to Missouri, specifically to Alann's parents' house. No, they don't live here anymore. They live in California now. We set a date of Sept 7th as our moving date. And a good thing we did. We were tossing around the idea of coming straight back from CA and moving right away. I haven't mentioned it here, out of respect for the persons involved, but since they didn't respect us, I have a hard time respecting them, especially as we find more and more things missing and the jerk hasn't come clean. When we went to Phoenix in July, we had a housesitter. She did a great job, the house was fine, the dogs were happy. So we hired her again. She is younger than me. I know her. She and her sisters have babysat for me. I won't say anything else about her identity. Anyway, when we went to CA, we hired the same girl, who happened to be married now. So I said "sure, let the hubby stay at the house too. You trust him, I trust you." Big mistake. As far as we can tell, she was not involved, but someone, most likely the hubby, stole a LOT of stuff. We are STILL finding stuff missing. And no, it isn't just missing from the move. The biggest thing was at least $950 in cash. Also gone: our Rock Band World Tour set- guitars, three games, drums, mic; at least one other of Alann's playstation games (this is a new discovery); Alann's nice leather jacket; a remote control car; and strangely enough, my Shark Steam Mop. Who steals a mop? Well, apparently he did. Or she did. We aren't really sure now if she was involved or not. This was the only thing out of character for him to steal. Everything else was very manly. But as we were cleaning to move, I said "Boy, I wish the guys hadn't packed the Shark when they packed the kitchen" to which Debbie replied "They didn't pack the Shark. Did they? They shouldn't have." And then we started talking it out and thinking about it and sure enough, I hadn't seen it since we got back from CA. I had done laundry and hadn't seen the pads either. Then we got to MO and Alann went through his PS2 games and found that at least one is missing. It's hard to say off the top of your head which ones are gone. But he knows he had a trio of games and the third is definitely gone. He was very meticulous in packing his games. They were all together. So it isn't just misplaced. It's frustrating because as soon as I start to feel comfortable with the theft, something new comes up. As we were first finding things, it wasn't too bad. Sad, irritating, infuriating. While it was a violation, it wasn't a terribly personal violation. The things and cash we knew about at first were out of the way yes, but not hidden by any means. The housesitters had recompensed us for what we knew about the first week after we came home. Then I felt like I needed to check on my lockbox. I hadn't taken the keys with me, but they weren't taped to it or anything. I checked it, and looked specifically for some money I had for starting a company. It was gone. He had taken my keys, gotten my lockbox out from under the bed, opened it, and gone through it. The money wasn't at the top. That really hurt. Obviously these were personal items. Not things I wanted everyone to look at. I know there was a reason behind the theft that will hopefully work out better for us. But like I said, as soon as I get comfortable again, I find something else missing. The Shark was the last straw for me. I was like "Time to get the heck out of Dodge" after we realized the shark was gone. Then when Alann unpacked his games and found Jak missing, I just felt like "seriously? When will this end?" I know this is a rather disjointed telling. I just wanted to set the preface of where I was emotionally at the beginning of the move. If you want a more in-depth telling, go see Alann's blog. I feel like I can talk about this now because the person involved has unfriended me on Facebook. Rude.
Anyway, we were pretty ready to be rid of Utah. We were planning on packing Monday (Labor Day), packing the truck up Tuesday, leaving sometime Tuesday, and being in Missouri on Thursday. Ha. We packed Monday, but didn't get it all done. How did we ever fit this much stuff in our tiny little house? Alann picked up the truck Tuesday morning but they didn't get started packing until noon. We packed, and packed, and packed some more. Late late Tuesday night came, and we hadn't even finished the truck yet, but we knew that we needed more space. We ended up renting a second pull-behind trailer to haul with Alann's truck. Alann managed to pack the air beds, so we borrowed a twin from a friend and alann slept on some boxes. It didn't matter. We were so tired. Wednesday, we started loading the mini trailer. Mark finally drove off with the big truck, hauling the Firebird on a trailer behind it, around noon on Weds. Alann left around 5pm to head to the rental company to drop off keys and get a head start up Parley's Canyon. If you've never been to Utah, Parley's Canyon is the pass up and over the mountains heading east of salt Lake. This comes into play later. So Alann leaves around 5, Debbie, me and the kids are still at the house, cleaning and finishing up the packing. I get a call from Alann. "what do I do if my truck is overheating?" Dun dun dun! At 7, we leave, grab some dinner, and head up Parley's. We find Alann on the side of the road, halfway up. He pours some water in that I have in the van with us. We make it a few miles. He pours more in. We make it to Park City. And stop for the night. Park City is usually 40 minutes away from Kearns. Ugh. I wanted nothing more than to get out of UTAH! So Alann's uncle comes up to help look at the truck. Something is wrong with the radiator. Turns out, he needs a brand new one. Lovely. So we chill around Park City for the day. Finally, at about 4, Alann, the kids, and I leave in the van, and Debbie stays behind with the truck. They are almost done, but with the kids, we have longer stops anyway. We head out and decide we will stop in Cheyenne for the night. This is Thursday night. We made it to Cheyenne at about midnight. Debbie joins us around 2. We all sleep a bit, and start out again the next morning. This time, Debbie is with me and the kids and Alann has the truck. Mark arrives in Warrenton with the big truck on Thursday night. We barely made it to Wyoming. Friday, Claire falls at a rest stop and busts open her lip. I wake up with a cold. Life goes on. We drive and drive and drive. We drove pretty much nonstop and got into Warrenton at about 3am. Alann ended up stopping and napping outside of Kansas City. Debbie and I just kept driving. We had the kids, and claire was awake. The Whole Night! She wouldn't sleep. She just insisted on watching TV, so we kept the DVDs flowing and just drove and drove. Alann showed up around 5am. We all slept in, thank you kids! Saturday afternoon, a family from the church showed up to help unload. Then their car got stuck in the mud and we spent an hour or so trying to un-stick it.
After all this, we are trying to get settled in our new home. We are still living out of boxes, but it is getting there. Claire seems to enjoy it. She thinks it's fun being with Grandma and Grandpa. Grandma leaves tomorrow though. Grandpa will be gone some next week and then be back for a bit and then leave again. The dogs are being pretty well behaved. They run free most of the time when we are out there, but now have a good fenced area where they can chill too. I'll post some pictures some day. Maybe.

4 comments:

Shannon said...

It was definitely quite the adventure. Certainly not as smooth of one as you had hoped. But you're there now and in 5 years you'll be able to joke about it. :) Hope you get things settled soon. We miss you!

Teene said...

What would a cross country move be without some adventure? You will always remember the move from Salt Lake to Warrenton. Hope to come visit soon. Some days I feel like I have to get out of AZ.

Karen said...

Oh my goodness you poor thing - moving is so stressful anyway. At least you got there and are settling in.
hugs
karen

Debbie said...

Miss you! California is way too quiet ... I need a "Claire" fix