Goodbye Texas, Hello Colorado

Yes, we moved

...and that's the main reason I haven't blogged for a while. It all started about six weeks ago, when I got a really interesting job offer. Then I was told that they wanted me to start the new job in two weeks, even though it meant moving a thousand miles. I managed to push the start back a week, but it still meant a lot to do in a short time.

What I should have done was to have professional movers come in, pack all our stuff, load it, move it, unload and unpack. If I'd done it that way we'd have probably been done in just a couple of days.

But I didn't do it that way. Instead I rented two trucks and a car transporter and we did most of the loading ourselves. I hired a couple of guys in Texas to load the heavy stuff we couldn't manage, and another bunch of guys in Colorado to unload.

The whole thing was a nightmare. There was far more stuff to pack and load than I thought. Kate wore herself out packing; I wore myself loading stuff onto the trucks (and unloading and reloading one truck when the guys I hired to load the furniture did it so badly they wasted more than half the available space).

Finally, at about 4am one morning about three weeks ago, we got to the point where we were ready to leave... and couldn't, because when I got the car onto the transporter I found the thing had a broken ratchet on the right side, and we had to wait four hours for a mechanic to come out and fix it.

We got just a couple of hours sleep on a hard floor, and finally got away at about lunchtime. Kate was so tired that we didn't even make it as far as the Texas/Oklahoma state line before she started falling asleep at the wheel and we had to stop and get a motel room.

Starting off from there the next morning, we didn't stop again except for bathroom breaks, coffee breaks, food breaks and fresh-air wake-ups, until we got to our new house. Normally, after a night's sleep it wouldn't have been so bad - but number 1 son had shared his bad cold with us before we left and that, probably combined with exhaustion to lower our resistance, was the final blow. By the time we got to the area around Denver Kate was so ill I was wondering if we'd have to park the trucks up in the parking lot of a hospital.

But we finally made it. We're still unpacking things but the house is becoming more homey every day. The area is beautiful - we can see the rockies off to the west, covered in snow; there are places to go and things to do, and unlike Texas you can go for a walk without having to worry about dying from exhaustion in 110° heat.

But if we ever have to move again, it will be done the proper way - like I said, I'll get the professionals in to do it for us, even if it means going into debt to cover the cost. Anything is worth not having to go through that again...