So long, Canada!

It's amazing how quickly our life in Canada came to an end. Two days to pack the house, a day and a half to load the truck, and then out of there. We filled an entire truck! It's a fairly efficient process. They were packing as quickly as I was pulling things aside for the summer house. They'll even pack trash if it's something they're unsure about. A separate company comes in to pack the TVs and artwork. They build custom sized wooden crates on site to protect the items. We were pretty impressed. Let's hope it all ends up in one piece on the other end! 

My mom, the kids and I bailed out of there once the packing began. We had an early morning and a long day of travel. Three hours to Minneapolis, three hour layover and another two and half hours to Pittsburgh. The kids did great on the flight. Tate had his own seat so he even took a nap for a while. I was very grateful to have my mom with me. I could have done it alone if I had no choice but it would have been really stressful. It was nice to only have to take one to the bathroom at a time and have someone to watch our stuff and the other two kids. We arrived to 95 degree heat (35C), broken A/C and an ill equipped rental house. Thankfully my mom was there so I could make a late night run to the grocery for some necessities.


Dayven and Finley arrived on Friday evening after a 2400 mile drive, some horrendous traffic and $50 in tolls. They sailed across the border without a hitch, but failed GPS lead to off-roading on a cattle filled dirt road in Montana. They slowed to a crawl in horrible congestion in the Chicago area and hit construction in Indiana. They had countless meals on the road, watched 3 sunrises and sunsets, listened to hours of sports and news on sirius radio and found two dead birds in the grill of the car. Needless to say, he was very glad to be "home". We were all very glad to see him too. What a trip! 

The moving truck arrived Monday to drop off the items I had designated would come to the summer house and the rest went into storage until our house is done. There were a TON of boxes and items that they dropped off.  The rental is furnished and has a stocked kitchen, but I could tell after just one day it was very minimal and would not work for me. The kids needed some of their things as well, not to mention all the clothes, shoes, coats... We decided Tate would sleep best in his crib and we'd need his rocker to rock him at night so we had those things dropped off too. Dayven was shaking his head and reminding me that we have to get all this stuff to the new house. The movers will only move what is in storage to our house. It will take us multiple trips, but oh well... I'd rather have it and not need it, then need it and not have it!