Moving Day

We decided to pack our early in hopes of getting our stuff by the time we got to Maryland. When Spencer scheduled the move, both our big shipment and unaccompanied baggage were slated to arrive at our new place on June 9.

The "Aridatos" (or "Arigatos," which is what Shawn calls Japanese people) had their supplies out and were ready to go at 8am on moving day. Despite staying up incredibly late doing prep work, we weren't quite prepared. I was in full on panic mode trying to shove stuff into Kate's room, our designated "do not pack" area.

The sad view of 6234 C Camp Lester.

Kate's room.

Sydney and Shawn's room.

The dining and family rooms.

Those Aridatos were fast! They were driving away with our sealed crates just after 1pm. Thankfully this little cutie had no problems napping while they worked (no easy feat with those guys noisily taping up boxes).

Before packing out, I wasn't emotionally quite ready to leave Okinawa, but seeing and living in a mostly empty house definitely helped me feel more ready to move on! The stuff for our express shipment was packed the next day, and that one didn't go quite as well. They packed up a bunch of stuff that we wanted to keep for our last few weeks there (e.g. spices, other junk we wanted to throw out), so we had to go out and buy a few things. We had to wait a few days before getting temporary furniture, so we slept on mats we borrowed from the Perrins.

I was so excited to get our borrowed couch, chairs, and mattresses. We put the double bed in the kids room for them to share, and it was the loudest mattress ever. It creaked so loudly every time anyone moved an inch. In our bedroom, we pushed two twins together to make a fake king bed. I was on Syd's former mattress, which was perfectly comfortable, but the new one they gave us was terrible. We could feel the springs poking out of it. Spencer slept in it, and I insisted that we trade every few nights, but he was nice and let me sleep on the comfortable one every night- for 5 weeks! Poor guy. Thankfully we had really nice friends who let us borrow stuff. The Donahue's gave us a quilt and a TV, plus an Apple TV so we could still use Netflix. They were life savers!