And we have arrived!  It was a loooooooong week but we’re all here (questionably) in one piece.

So first, the packers showed up, packed and loaded our entire house:

Which was pretty entertaining because the movers were from Grand Rapids, Michigan (45 minutes north of us) and had been gone for two weeks.  They were dying to get home, so I think there was an added motivation to get everything in boxes and onto the truck.  Towards the end of the packing of the van, the van driver was thinking the same thing that Angel and I thought: “is this really all going to fit?”  And the answer was: hardly.  There were probably at least 6 inches to spare, and the sweet folks from Atlas Van Lines are driving all of the way to Michigan with my stuff in their cab.  Our BBQ rode on top of our 60 inch TV (which I assume was broken by the time that they hit the highway).  And I have a number of Ikea furniture pieces that were completely dismantled into a pile of boards and a stack of screws.  So good luck to the people who deliver this from storage trying to identify what items these wood parts resemble but that’s totally not my problem and I’m just planning on having to replace those.

While all of this was going on, Molly was pretty concerned that she was going to get left behind:

While the packers were there loading the van on Wednesday, I got a phone call from a realtor who wanted to come by the house to look at it for her clients.  That night, the clients returned, we loved them, they’re from Portage, Michigan, and it’s just the two of them and a little Maltese dog.  So we successfully rented the house the day before we left town to someone from the tiny city that we are moving to.  Fate?

The next morning went my car:

And after my car left, literally everything that I owned was on a truck between Phoenix and my temporary housing complex in Battle Creek, Michigan (that I affectionately call our “Crap Castle”).

We flew out early the next morning with an infant and a dog.  We had so much stuff that Angel dropped me off at the airport and then went to return the rental car and meet me at the airport so we could check in.  Have you ever seen a woman sitting outside of security with a stack of suitcases, a baby in a stroller, and a puppy who is crying hysterically?  Well, neither had anyone else until Friday morning.

We made it all of the way to Detroit and were on our final approach when this little dude:

decided to blow out his diaper.  It’s bad enough trying to clean it all up when you’re at home, but when you’re on an airplane moving across the country, trying to clean it up in the airport added a whole new challenge.  It took 30 minutes, but I got it all cleaned up and then quickly told Angel that we can’t change any more diapers until we get to our Crap Castle because I don’t have any more wipes after using half of a container on one diaper change giving my 8 pound baby-with-an-attitude a diaper wipe bath.

We make it all of the way to our Crap Castle, have friends drive in for the weekend from Chicago, and the boys went to the Detroit auto show while Laura and I stayed in with the babies and went out to lunch.  This may be the first and last time that we plan a trip to Detroit because seriously, why else drive into that city?

I’m now in our Crap Castle and am reminded every 10-15 minutes why I am so grateful to have moved on from apartment living.  Our building has an inside hallway, and our poor puppy doesn’t understand that it’s “normal” to hear people walking up the stairs and walking right by our front door.  She’s also not used to people parking right outside of our window and all of these sounds make her bark like crazy every few minutes.  I can get past the noise if the people living above us didn’t start practicing their Stomp routine at midnight every night (seriously, every night) if I didn’t have to take my fur ball out to the bathroom in snow and freezing rain every few hours.  She’s not sure what snow is so my little princess just takes a few steps and then looks at me like “where the heater, mom?”

We’re getting settled.  Lucas got his first stuffed animal that he seems to love:

and overall I’m loving my Lucas time at home.  This afternoon, I had Lucas sitting on my lap while we watched tv and he thought that was a great time to blow out his diaper.  Seriously, it came right out the top and he may as well not had a diaper on at all.  At least this time we weren’t in an airport, and since he and I were both messy from this one, Lucas and mommy got in the bath together because his baby bathtub that would make this task easy is on a truck somewhere in this country.  Before I had kids, taking a bath with a poopy baby was gross.  But now when I’m here by myself it seems like the only solution to a poopy problem and I sort of love the naked baby cuddle time that follows:

Alrighty, it’s time for me to sign off so that I can start dinner before Angel gets home.  And Lucas is starting to scream, so I can only assume that means that he pooped on something else.