A Nice New House.

So, I never officially posted that we have moved!  

At the end of October, we bid farewell to our wonderful first home,

and hello to our beautiful new-to-us house!

We told Carter about the move about two weeks before it actually happened, which in hind-sight might have been a little soon because every night after we'd put him to bed, he'd say "tomorrow we move to a nice new house!"  It was adorable, but then we'd have to try to explain to him that it wasn't actually happening the next day.  I think it did help him to know it was coming, though.  We'd have the cutest conversations about what all we were going to take with us to the new house.  He'd ask, "take the chair?" ("yes Carter, we'll take the chair").  "Take the shows?" ("yes Carter, we'll take all your shows").  "Take Daddy?"  (yes Carter, we'll definitely take Daddy).  We also really tried to talk up the new house so that he viewed the move as a fun and exciting thing.  

The move went really well thanks to LOTS of help from our family.  I took the boys to Mr. C's parents the day before closing, and they watched the boys on closing and moving day.  After dropping off the kiddos, I headed home just in time to do our final walk-through on the new place.  The next day was closing day (we set up back-to-back closings), and then last minute packing (we worked out a 24 hour lease with the new owner to buy us some time to move sans kids).  While we finished up, I had a few of my mommy friends over for one last wine night in the old house for old time's sake. :)

The next day we hit the ground running.  Mr. C went over to U-haul at the crack of dawn to pick up a moving van, and I headed to starbucks to pick up some caffeine to fuel the day.  Then the fun really started!  My uncle was a life-saver.  He volunteered at the last minute to help us, and we couldn't have done it without him.  He came with his flat-bed trailer, and all his moving knowledge (he's a bit of an expert after moving once or twice in the last few years).   My mom and my dad also came with their two vehicles and loads of moving boxes and packing materials.  With five sets of hands, five vehicles and the trailer, we were able to get almost everything except for the big furniture pieces over the new house by mid-afternoon.  At noon we arranged for a team of three movers to come do the heavy lifting, moving all the furniture into the U-haul.  Then, they followed us to the new house to unload all the furniture.  Best money spent for-sure...all we had to do was point to where we wanted everything, and they did the rest!

We tied up a few loose ends at the old house (cleaning and paint touch ups mainly) before saying one last teary good bye, and locking up.  It was hard to walk away from the house we created so many wonderful memories in, but so exciting to come home to our 'nice new house' as Carter would say :).  We ordered pizza and cracked open some champagne and toasted to new beginnings and making new memories.