Catching Up: The Big Move

Well...before the next birthday hits and before our October gets any busier, I wanted to go back and capture some of the highlights of the past few months in our family's story! Since I had left off in February, let's begin in March...

Our lovely home in Parowan had been on the market for six months, so we decided to take it off the market and do a few fixer upper projects to add even more charm, then put it back on the market as the spring buying season began.  My Dad came out to help us lay wood-looking tile in our main bathroom, adding a new vanity and new appeal!  It turned out great!

Though Dad worked hard, he also had a chance to enjoy some time with our boys. Jack learned how to play Solitaire!

And we took Papa to a Glen Miller Orchestra Concert!

We ate at IHOP for dinner before the show and the waitresses came up to ask if our boys were in the Newsies musical playing nearby!  :-) Nope!  Just little men ready for a night of Big Band music!

While Dad was here and our claw foot tub was parked in the foyer of our house, someone asked to see our home even though it was off market.  That couple ended up making an offer a short time after.  We were amazed!  Six months on the market and nothing.  A few days off the market and we get an offer!  God's timing is perfect.

So, our April was VERY busy, though we did pause to enjoy our last Passover Seder and Resurrection Sunday in our old home.

And we tried to savor every bit of our last spring there.  We have loved that home so much in the three and a half years that it was ours.

We made an offer on the very first house we had looked at the previous fall - which had come down in price and was still available.  They accepted our offer and the move became very real very quickly, with a closing date set at the beginning of May.

Thankfully, we had some special friends help by providing a storage unit for our use, making meals, helping pack up kitchen stuff....
...and this crew of boys had some SERIOUS muscles to help out with the final two days of packing up the moving truck!

Our last night in our Parowan home was a dinner shared with some of our favorite local kiddos - a perfect way to finish out our time there.

The next day was....absolute chaos.  So much hard work.

The new owners showing up to move in just as we were loading our last truck...no real time to say goodbye to the sweet house that we loved so much.  

One last glimpse of the built-in bookcases my Dad had made the year before.

One more goodbye to the brightly-lit living room where we spent so many fun days and nights.

One more hug goodbye from four boys who have lots of memories stored up here.

Goodbye to our century-old home that served us so well.

And hello to our new home!  We now live close to a bigger city, so we conveniently ordered pizza for dinner on our first night in the new house.  The boys were amazed that pizza could be delivered right to our door!  :-)

We were all...so...exhausted.  So we quickly threw mattresses on the ground downstairs, set them up with sheets and blankets and called it a night!

While we still miss our old home, the boys have really enjoyed making this HOME!  Breakfast at the kitchen counter is still a novelty!

And we were able to move in right when our new house was showing off its most resplendent spring beauty!  

And look at the view from our side yard!  Don't think we will get tired of this for a while!

But making this into our home required some intense, back-breaking work.  We had hired movers to help with the piano and heaviest furniture, but because we had a few stairs up to our main floor, the movers refused.  So Josh called his friend who is a fellow firefighter and has helped us move in the past.  The two of them figured out how to get that massive piano up our stairs and in its rightful place!  

The house was almost entirely painted in a dingy shade of peach.  We tackled it head on and said goodbye to the peach walls, painting THIRTEEN rooms before moving furniture in.  Whew!

Soon it was feeling cozy and more like a Meyer home!

I was able to rest a bit on Mother's Day, surrounded by these sweet boys who did such a great job of helping us make the move.  We are enjoying our new home and thank the Lord for His abundant provisions throughout this whole process!  

Next up:  The Big Move Part II - our trip to Ohio to pack up Grandma and move her to Utah with us!