Well, can you believe it? We’re out! We’re turning over the keys tonight (except that we can’t find the keys). Charity had her last slumber party with the other two musketeers (Erin and Mallory) there last night! They have spent so many hours laughing and crying together in that house! Accompanied by tears, we just had a final prayer in our very special living room this afternoon as she departed for Provo. Charity is in mourning and even though I must admit having pangs of sorrow as I packed up the Christmas stuff knowing we probably won’t use those Christmas decorations again (they’re up for grabs if anyone wants stuff for your own Christmas trees), I’m also rejoicing about going on to a new era in our lives!
Dad thought it would be pretty easy to just pack up and leave, I knew it would be hard but none of us could ever have imagined what it took to get thirty years moved out of that house! We did leave some stuff as you’ll see in the pictures I’ll be posting tomorrow. But every drawer and shelf has been emptied and scrubbed, including scraping Richard Eyre for Governor stickers off of drawers, replacing rusty intake vents and finding many treasures from the past on the way. Just when I thought I was done, I opened yet another drawer loaded with “stuff” and last night I realized that I never vacuumed up the spilled dog food from the cupboards under the downstairs bar! It just seemed that it would NEVER end!
I don’t know how we could have done it without Jonah and Aja (who went right to Costco and got me 30 “banker boxes which I was sure I would never fill, but which i promptly filled and then emptied some and refilled them again!
Finally, we have only one more pile outside Charity’s room and one more box to fill with our huge collection of CD’s and we’ll be done! Three of us put in 18 hours of cleaning yesterday and finally got every slat on the shutters dusted, the fireplace ashes cleared out and the every room vacuumed, getting ready for the carpet cleanings today!
Yesterday I even moved out the washer and dryer because they are bringing their own front loading washing machine. The lint behind them was scarier than anything you’ll ever see at Halloween! The pipes and hoses looked as though they were made of pure hairy-gray lint! By the time I got through with that, I looked like I had run through a car wash that throws out lint instead of water! Marla “vacuumed” my clothes AND my hair before I went to my hair appointment. It was pretty funny!
You’ll be happy to know that I took about 200 pictures just before we dismantled to add to the beautiful book that Shawni started a couple of years ago. So here are a few of the “befores” until you get home to see them all:
So many memories..so many trips to the DI, so may places to distribute “stuff” BUT so many babies, so many farewells and homecomings, so many sacred experiences in our living room, so much food…so many friends, so much basketball, music and dancing so much laughing and crying, so much triumph mixed with just the right amount of trials and tribulations! So much JOY!
Watch for the next blog for the “the after” pictures.
2 comments:
you are pretty amazing that you got all that cleared out. great memories. you prolly found some pretty random stuff cleaning out all those drawers. we should have kept a running list of all the stuff that came out of the drawers. i would like the sand dollars for our christmas tree. those were always my favorite.
Yikens! 1098 isn't going to be yours anymore?? What will they do for a mailbox? =]
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