Moving Out

Life is crazy and the simple task of tracking down an hour and an internet connection has been nearly impossible. I flew out to the west coast so I had a long plane ride and found the quiet to write several blog postings about our move. I will post them over the next several days as there was a lot to write. I hope you enjoy reading them. We hope to have more time as we settle in (ya right!) to begin posting on the regular again. Don't give up on the blog and the blog won't give up dispersing all this quality parenting advice!

There were zero fatalities. I really think at the end of the day when one moves from palm trees to corn trees the first thing you should be most concerned about is making an arrival. I made it, my wife made it, my son made it, my brother made it, my in-laws made it and even scruffy made it. We ended up driving around 1,400 miles with a slight turn north to catch a Brewer game. It’s been an interesting ride. I’ve been so busy it took me until Wednesday to realize the Badgers have their opening football game this past weekend. Sheesh!

Carrie, Q and Baby Doe arrived late on Wednesday (8/25) to a parked car (Black Beauty) in the Cedar Rapids International airport’s parking lot full of useful goods for a pregnant woman like baseball cards and booze in the trunk. You know the valuables. But this wonderful wife of mine still took the time at 1o:30 pm after a full day of moving for 8 hours that day, and then got on the plane to fly to IA, to take the car to the new house and unload the stash before taking the one hour drive up north to Q’s grandparents arriving just a shade before midnight. That made for quite a day for Miss Super Mom.

Q of course was a dream. Well, if you can imagine having a dream about a way too tall way too heavy 21 month old kicking the seat of the frequent flier in front of you for an hour or two while throwing the occasional swing at a 32 week pregnant lady, ahem, mom. For the most part he was great. Everyone is going through a lot of transition right now so we are just doing the best we can to cross things off our list and keep what little sanity we have left.

My brother was gracious enough to fly to Tampa to help me drive back. Just to provide some perspective for how great this was. My brother left Wisconsin at 7am to drive to the Milwaukee airport. He flew to Atlanta, took a 90 minute layover. Landed in Tampa. Helped Carrie load her bags on to her plane. Jumped in with me around 5pm. We cleaned up the house, got rid of the goods, had a couple of drinks, slept on the floor after going to bed around 11 pm. Got up at 3:30 am after sleeping in a sleeping bag and drove back through Atlanta to go camping in middle Kentucky. There he slept on the floor of a tent (also in a sleeping bag), woke up at 5 am, drove another 500 miles to get back to his own bed in Wisconsin. Total trip time of 32 hours. Total time in Florida 10.5 hours. Total time in the car? 21 hours. That's a quality brother.

My in-laws drove the aquarium car (Black Beauty) up north a few days ahead and then have been letting the Spiegelhoff clan come home after a day of conquering their everyday lives, a serious challenge as of late, to crash at their pad with Stinky included on the guest list. I can only imagine. My stuff is on a truck. I really miss my stuff. A bed, our own roof and I would settle for one flat screen with an NFL Ticket connection. That’s all one really needs in life.

Before leaving Tampa our roofers showed up at the same time as the movers as did the person building the crates for the real aquarium, TVs and trophy fish on the wall – those will look much more at home in Iowa. So we had a parking lot full of cars and made quite the scene as we were moving out. There was 10-12 people hustling and bustling through our home as little by little our possessions dwindled down out of the house and onto the massive semi parked out front. They used eight foot ladders inside the truck to pack our stuff 20 feet high inside the semi. It’s very much like a giant life-size game of Tetris.

The movers finished at the same time that Carrie and Q needed to catch their flight so in the all the commotion we weren’t even afforded one last final good-bye to our home as a family. I was sad to have missed that as we had so many great memories in Tampa. Carrie was a hormonal wreck on the way to the airport so I was doing my best to keep it together. The poor dog was abruptly left in a totally empty house as he watched his family leave with suitcases. I can only imagine what he was thinking. He was stoked to see me arrive home again 45 minutes later to spend one last night in Tampa.

Upon arriving at the airport my brother had just flown in so as Q and Carrie were getting dropped off he was arriving. Quite the emotional scene he walked into. Q was crying. Carrie was crying. I was trying to get everyone on their way and trying not to think about saying good bye. My brother was very helpful ushering Carrie and her bags to the ticket counter so she could get ready to go through security. He didn’t know what was going on. Q didn't know what was going on. There was way too much going on! Everyone made it and my brother and I settled into a nice evening of cleaning the floors, throwing out any remaining items and sleeping on the floor in sleeping bags like we were 9 again.

Here are a few pictures of us moving out. For perspective, in that first one Q is in front of the truck. He's so small you can barely see him. For scale he is exactly 3 feet tall. I took that pic standing at the back wall in the garage and I still couldn't fit the whole truck in the picture. This will continue in part II tomorrow.