We're Moving!

We leave tomorrow for Denver! The last week has been full of shopping and packing. Yesterday it took only 2 hours to load up the truck and now we are ready to go. I am so so so excited to get there and start unpacking. But also really overwhelmed. Looking at that truck filled with stuff made me feel like it's going to take a looong time to get it all unloaded and put away. We threw away a ton of stuff and sent even more to Goodwill, but we still have so much. I'm picturing opening up a box and having no place to put all the stuff inside. I'm particularly concerned about our kitchen. It's pretty small and we have a lot of dishes. I'm afraid there will be no room left for actual food. But we'll see. We don't really have a lot of room to store cleaning supplies and random stuff. There are 3 linen closets upstairs, but they have a bunch of small shelves. Not really good for storing boxes. And there's one big closet downstairs, but it's just exposed beams. No shelves or anything. I hope we didn't overestimate how much room we have and take too much stuff. I keep trying to picture what the rest of the week will be like with unpacking and everything. I don't know where to start there's just so much to do. We have a ton of Ikea furniture to assemble and then a million boxes to unpack and put away. I just have to take a big breath and take it one box at a time. I hope that by the time Daniel's parents leave there are just a few boxes that I have to unpack. We did all of our shopping here, so we won't need to run to Target or anything. We will go to Costco and get some groceries, but that's it. We tried to think of everything we need (which is a lot) and get it all ahead of time. We spent exactly $1500 on everything for the house. I think that's pretty good. So Daniel and I have to pay for the moving truck and the hotel tomorrow night. So many people were generous and gave us stuff. Daniel's mom went through their entire house and gave us almost anything we wanted. My parents gave us two bookshelves and anything else that belonged to me. I took a bunch of my favorite books and piano music. My grandparents gave us their beautiful piano (which actually belongs to my mom). My Aunt and Uncle gave us some furniture and kitchen supplies as well as 100 Euros for our trip to Europe! And My mom's best friend's husband's mother just died so we went through her house and got a bunch more dishes and cleaning supplies and towels and stuff like that. She also gave us a lawn mower, rakes, shovels, and other yard stuff. We feel so lucky to have such generous and giving people around us. So we are really set.

At Ikea we got really nice stuff too. I wanted to get a cabinet to put our dishes in so we would have more room in the kitchen for food. We got a beautiful cabinet with frosted glass doors on it. I'm so excited to put it together and put our dishes in it. We also got this really cool window treatment for our front window. There are big long panels of cloth that slide past each other on a track in front of the window. We got 4 red panels and 4 sheer white panels with swirls cut out. So when the white panels are in front of the red, you can see it through the swirls. It was really expensive, but it will look so cool when it's all done.

We also got to experience the joy of shopping at Costco :-) They have such amazing prices there! We paid less for a 20 pc set of ceramic dishes at Costco than a 16 pc set of plastic Corelle dishes at Target. They are really beautiful. And we got a blender, bath towels... a ton of stuff. For the past few weeks I was sort of afrair our house would look like Goodwill with all our random hand-md-downs that don't match or anything. But actually the stuff we got from family and friends is really nice and we bought just enough new stuff that I think everything else will look new too. I'm so excited to see it all put together!

I'm really not looking forward to the drive though. Daniel made me drive the truck around yesterday with all the stuff in it so I could get used to it before I have to go 70 on the highway. It's not that bad. It's just a really long drive. Really really really long. The worst part is there is no way to hook up our iPod to the truck. We are going to Best Buy to buy something for the trip there. We have to. Or I think I might die. That may be exaggerating a bit.

Anyways, I'm so ready to get out of Phoenix and move into our own home. Me and Daniel get to make all the rules :-) And I don't have to deal with my parents anymore. After about one week, I was going crazy in this house. I'm getting along fine with my parents, but I don't know how long that will last. It's much better for our relationship if I live somewhere else. So tomorrow morning, we're leaving and I never have to live in my parents house again. I'm happy :-)