Sunday, July 29, 2007

Moving and the Joys of Home Ownership

Rob has helped several people move recently and it is always fun and exciting to see people start on a new journey. Rob's father lived in Rob's childhood home until a year ago and my father still lives in my childhood home so as children we didn't experience moving. As adults we've both moved around quite a bit. Rob hates moving and I enjoy many aspects of moving, but it can be stressful. With every move, Rob swears it will be his last. I never believe him. Here is a picture of Rob moving some lamps on the Xtracycle for friend. I wanted our last move to be a bike move since it was only six miles away, but we spent months moving since due to our house taking seven months to sell so we moved some stuff on the bikes, but some in cars, trucks, etc.

Our move from Maryland to Illinois when I was in my last trimester of pregnancy with our first child (almost eight years ago now!) was a roller coaster ride. My dear brother, Jim, and his significant other, Carol, were life savers. They flew out to Maryland and helped us pack two U-Haul trucks (the first one ended up being too small...who knew you could accumulate so much stuff in a two bedroom condo). This put me behind the wheel of one of the trucks (not where I wanted to be) and Rob in the other and Jim and Carol on the plane back to Illinois. Of course, my U-Haul breaks down just as we get to the mountains, I don't have a cell phone, I'm hormonal/tired, I have no idea when Rob will notice I'm no longer following him...long story and interesting Virginians later, we make it to Illinois with our stuff none the worse for wear. It was all for the best and moving to Illinois became much more permanent than the one year stint we expected. Rob has fallen in love with my hometown (he couldn't wait to leave when he lived here before) and it nice for all of us to have my family close by. Here is picture of the kids with my sister, Karen. She is pretty much the only person we've left the kids with and one of their favorite people.

Okay, if anyone is still reading, on to the joys of home ownership. In our old neighborhood we lamented the lack of trees. Fast forward to a few weeks ago on a Friday night. We had heavy rain, but not much wind and I wake up in the middle of the night to this awful sound (of course, everyone else slept through it). I wake up Rob to get him to investigate and he reluctantly goes downstairs and "looks around" (less than a minute) and he is back in bed sleeping. I can't sleep for a while since I know something happened. Then I hear a knock on the door around 6am and I have a police officer on my back porch. He just points to a tree and our power/phone/etc. lines. Our neighbor's tree (which desperately needs to be trimmed) has dropped a large branch on the lines which stretch from the utility pole to our house. I said in a sleepy daze that it isn't our tree. The police officer and the power guy (who I now noticed in the background) said it didn't matter. We needed to get a certified electrician there right away to fix our line. The pole attached to our house had been ripped off and that was the noise I had heard. Great. Several hours later and almost $1000 it was repaired. The local guy was great to get there so quick on a Saturday and even let Rob help which saved us some money. Rob considered becoming an electrician after this, but I'm happy to have him away from live wires. Of course, if we make a claim our State Farm agent said our premiums will go up and we have a $500 deductible anyway. Grrr. Why do we have insurance??

We live in a college town so people moving out of the area is pretty frequent, but we are especially sad about our friends/neighbors leaving soon. Mike and Alison (and their dog Percy) are the greatest neighbors and they are so patient with the kids (even having vegan cookies and other treats on-hand and sharing their tractor toys). Luckily, we'll probably be able to visit them, but it is super sad for us anyway.

2 comments:

The Fearless Freak said...

I hate moving. We moved from Champaign to Rantoul when I was pg with C. I can't imagine moving states at that point!

Lizzie saw the picture of Rob on the bike and asked when she could play on the bike too :)

VeganLinda said...

We love to give rides to the kids in the neighborhood so anytime! :-) The three of us were on the snapdeck (back) of Rob's Xtracycle Wednesday riding around. It is fun being a passenger once in a while and have Rob do all the work.