A literal Labor Day Weekend

For most, Labor Day weekend is a time of complete relaxation...usually filled with bar-b-ques, trips to a lake or cabin, hiking excursions, softball games or other outdoor activities, and most importantly, NO WORK. For us, it was quite the opposite.

Friday was the day that Mike and I were able to pick up the keys to our new apartment. We planned to start taking boxes over when we picked up our keys and start unloading that afternoon. We woke up Friday morning to a torrential down-pour! (not a good sign) It did not stop raining from the time we woke up until the time we went to bed. But, like troopers, Mike and his brother James did end up loading the suburban with boxes and fought the elements as they started to move us in.
When we woke up on Saturday morning, it was still raining, though not as hard as the day before...this was just a steady mist--just light enough so that you couldn't really tell if it was raining by looking outside, but just hard enough so that it was really irritating. We went to pick up some furniture from a lady in our stake whose calling it is to coordinate furniture donors with people in need of furniture. We made two stops to pick up furniture--Mike's dad driving the Burb and Mike and me in his car--and took a load over to the aparment. Then we went back to the Wheatley's to load more furniture and boxes, and this time we headed to Arlington in a convoy of all the cars at the Wheatley house. We decided to hold off on taking the bed and our clothes over until the rain stopped, but we made a lot of progress. That night I went Target to get more stuff for the apartment--it felt a bit like stocking up on the necessities that I did when I first arrived at BYU!



On Sunday, we went to our new ward in Arlington and then headed to our apartment to start unloading boxes. We worked until we were starving--which, as it was fast Sunday, didn't take too long. But, I felt pretty good about the progress we'd made.
By how exhausted we were on Sunday evening, I would've thought that most of our work was done. As it turned out, I WAY underestimated the amount of work we had left to do! As we were cleaning out closets and making trips from various places in the house out to the car, Mike said, "I'm to the point where I feel like no matter how many trips I make to the car, I am never going to be finished." (Very similar to what he said the day we moved out of our apartment in Provo when we were taking things down to the car...I think he counted 87 trips to the car that day--just his trips, not mine.) First we took apart the bed and moved the bed frame, mattress, and box spring. Then we moved all the clothes in our closet and wardrobe boxes...it's times like those when I wonder how in the world I can often think in the morning, "I have nothing to wear!", but I still do. Finally, with the suburban and the Trailblazer loaded again, we made another trip to Arlington. Two and a half hours later, we were back at the Wheatley's to drop off the car and then off to buy a couch--finally one thing that we can have someone else deliver! The good news is we got a great deal on a couch that I am really excited about. The bad news is it won't be delivered until next Friday. Boo.

Now that our "vacation" weekend is over, Mike has had to get back to his law books, and I come home from work everyday to continue to take things up to the apartment--yesterday is was half of Costco's inventory, today I plan to clean out the grocery--and unpack and try to find storage in our little apartment, but I am very excited to be moved in and finally have a place of our own. It almost felt like Christmas to open so many boxes of things I haven't seen since June, and even some wedding gifts that continue to trickle in. My forcast is that it will be until the couches arrive that (almost) everything is in its rightful place.