Saturday morning began super early! Some friends from church (Ben, Kristin, Jen and Matt) and family (Chris' sister, Amy, and her husband, Jeffrey) came to our Smyrna house to help us with all the rest of the stuff. Everyone loaded up their cars/SUV's - IN THE POURING RAIN I might add - and as we began to leave - Chris' work truck - OF COURSE - got stuck in our back yard in the mud. So - in comes Jeffrey and his expedition to get it out of the mud - well then the expedition gets stuck in the mud! This left all the ladies inside our empty house, out of the rain, and all the men outside trying to get the expedition and truck out of the mud. Finally - an hour or so later - the expedition was free from the mud, but the truck was left for the day/evening!
Saturday was a complete whirlwind! My sister, Whitney and her husband, both Chris' parents and Chris' little brother, Scott joined us in Cumming to help unpack the house - along with everyone that had been in Smyrna - and all I remember is Kristin never stopping for more than 2 seconds - every time I looked up she was carrying a huge box upstairs or unpacking my ENTIRE kitchen for me. She, my sister, and Amy mostly did this, I think. Which was a HUGE chore considering we had more boxes labeled kitchen than any other room. And 95% of the stuff I hadn't seen since we got them as wedding gifts - since we've never had a big enough kitchen to have all our stuff out! They were AWESOME because they required NO direction - they just opened boxes and unpacked into whatever cabinet/drawer they were near. Ben, Kristin's husband, and our friend Matt from church were just grabbing HUGE furniture from the garage and just taking it to the room it belonged to. My brother-in-law, Doug, Chris' dad, Chris' brother and Chris were doing the same. I hardly even remember seeing anyone for more than a few minutes at a time - that is how fast everyone was working. My sweet mother-in-law made soup for everyone and my sister went and got sandwiches for everyone for lunch. On Saturday night, Chris and I realized we couldn't find our toiletries... so after 30 minutes or so of looking around for them, we were about to go to CVS down the street to get them - but we called Kristin and Ben first. And OF COURSE Kristin knew exactly where they were! I don't know what I would have done without them!
SO - I just had to write all that just to THANK everyone SO, SO, SO much for helping us. Y'all have no idea what a life saver you were! I seriously have no doubt that I would not have been able to sit down and relax for baby Parker as much as I was able to this weekend if it hadn't been for you! THANK YOU!
Now - on to our few little episodes of Crazy Things that Happen with LIFE IN THE NEW HOUSE!
- We don't have a fence yet, so we just have to let Jack out and yell at him to come back if he goes too far. He hasn't really been bad at all - he stays pretty much within our yard and he has already "made friends" with a fat lab next door! Buddie, on the other hand, CANNOT be trusted to go anywhere without a leash or being restrained to something. So - we have a shepherd's pole that a bird feeder goes on (the bird feeder was knocked off by our foster dog we had last Summer - so it's just a pole now!) and we connect a long 20ft leash thing to it and the other end to Buddie's collar. Buddie is NOT used to this at all as we have always lived in a house with a back yard since we've had him the past 3 years. BUT - it's gone pretty well so far. Saturday night was fine - all day Sunday was fine - 6:15 AM this morning.... it happens. I wake up and go downstairs to let J and B out - and after I hook up our long leash to him, I open up the back door and Jack and Buddie RUN out into our back yard at the fastest speed I have ever seen either of them run out of the house. I knew what was going to happen as soon as they darted out... and it did. Buddie's leash caught him 20 feet out into the yard and he yelped the loudest yelp I've ever heard from his sweet little throat, he does a huge back flip as the leash pulls him back, and in the process, I guess his collar entirely broke in half. Yes - you guessed it - Buddie was free. I knew I was doomed. Jack quickly did his business and ran back inside... Buddie - not so much. I stood in the doorway and Buddie stood at the top of our hill - daring to go darting through the incredibly thick and impossible wooded area behind our house. I knew if I panicked or went after him, he would be GONE. I ran into the pantry to get a treat for him - he wasn't interested. I poured his food into his bowl which normally gets him in the house in a split second... he wasn't interested. Chris came running downstairs in his underwear and after I calmly explain the situation, he runs out into our - UN PRIVATE/UN FENCED yard to show all 5 houses that have FULL view of our back yard all his lovely-ness! :) Chris stops in the back yard and I could hear the whistling noise you always hear in Western movies in the background when a shoot out is about to begin. Buddie gets into his "I'm about to run as fast as I can away from you" stance and Chris just stares at him. I could see what was about to happen so I coax Chris into coming back into the house - mostly just so he wouldn't be standing mostly naked in our back yard on a 35 degree morning! But also to calm Buddie down. Chris comes in and thinks to grab Buddie's squeaky toy and much to our surprise, Buddie comes RUNNING down to the house to get his toy! YAY! Crisis over... however... building a fence has now moved from something that needed to get done in the next few months to something that needs to get done THIS OR NEXT WEEKEND!
- Alarm System - we have never had one and we have no idea how to work ours. But Chris gets the bright idea to figure it out at 10:30 last night. Well - we didn't know we had a "master code." And Chris goes on to SET the alarm - and we are now trapped in our house because we have no idea how to dis-arm the system. Of course - I begin to think I'm going to go into labor ANY second now and we will have to leave our house - alarm blaring for all our neighbors to hear throughout the night! Thank goodness I didn't :) Anyway - we found a number for the security company and figured out the situation - but there were a few minutes there where I was SURE all the worst things were possible!
The commute this morning was pretty awful - but apparently Monday mornings are the worst for 400? We'll see tomorrow -but I left home at 7:30 (note - in Smyrna, I normally WOKE UP at 7:30) and I got to work at 8:45 (which is the time I normally left our house when we lived in Smyrna!) Anyway - it wasn't all that bad - The Bert Show saved the day once again with talk about questions black people have for white people and vise versa... it was very enlightening :)
As far as the house is concerned, I am feeling TOTALLY overwhelmed. My sweet sister, Whitney, is planning to come this week to help and I think my mom is planning to come this weekend if I need her. I just feel like I have SO much to do - I started a To-Do list today and had to stop about 10 bullet points in just because I could feel my blood pressure rising just thinking of everything that needs to get done! I am just praying that Parker does not come a day early now so that I can at least get everything organized in our house. This may be wishful thinking -but hopefully it will happen!
Thank you again - to all our awesome friends and family for helping us!
