oh jealous love, i'm through walking away from you
So we're in Pennsylvania now. We spent the weekend and Monday clearing out our house and loading up all of our stuff, then we left. It was a very busy and exhausting weekend, but it was good.
Tuck has gotten very good at crawling, and his timing is particularly inconvenient. Of course, he started getting into everything just when we had boxes all over. But we managed to wrangle him, and somehow still made it out. (Our friend Heather came over one day just for the purposes of playing with him, then took him home with her for a couple of hours--that was a lifesaver to get him out of our hair for a bit.) On Saturday after loading the truck we went to Kelly's birthday party, which was a great opportunity to see a lot of people we hadn't seen in far too long before leaving. On Sunday, Chris was in the worship band in the morning (really tough to be playing for the last time, but I'm glad he had the opportunity to be there), then we went to Mike and Amanda's where they teamed up with Christi and Michael to throw us a going-away party. The party was awesome--so many friends of ours came by to wish us well. Even an old coworker from my first job in this area came, though he didn't know anybody else! We felt so incredibly blessed to have so many people gather to send us off--it meant a lot. We are excited about the new adventure in PA, but it's a bittersweet thing; we are really going to miss our friends in Seattle.
After the party on Sunday, a few other friends came by to finish clearing out our cupboards and pantry, and one friend took one last load of stuff to Goodwill for us. We spent Monday packing up the last of our things, loading the car, preparing the trailer, packing our suitcases, and cleaning up. Some random things we ended up leaving in the house, for lack of something better to do with them after our car was gone. Whatever.
The property manager we've hired dropped by to talk with us about how he was going to price and market our place. We feel pretty good about him.
My brother picked us up and took us to dinner at Malay Satay Hut, meeting Kay and Kai there. It was a tasty last meal in Redmond. He then took us back to our place, loaded up our suitcases (and a few things we still had laying around that we have him, like the last of the sombreros from our wedding), and took us to an airport hotel for the night. We were completely exhausted, and crashed pretty quickly. It was nice to sleep in a real bed, since we'd loaded our bed in the truck on Saturday.
Tuesday morning we woke up, grabbed breakfast at the hotel (it wasn't particularly good), and headed to the airport. When we checked in, we discovered that Chris and I were in an exit row, and Tuck was seated several rows away from us. We asked at the gate to be seated together, and they did--no problem--except that we were in the row right in front of the exit row (so our seats didn't recline) and right next to the bathroom. That ended up being good and bad; it was good to have quick access to the bathroom, but it started to get pretty ripe toward the end of the flight . . . but the constant stream of people kept Tucker quite amused, and he charmed everybody. One woman even held him a bit while she was waiting for the bathroom. It was pretty cute. He took a couple of naps during the flight (which was great), as did we. When we landed in Philly, though, there was some sort of weather issue that landed us in the middle of a traffic jam and left us sitting out on the tarmac for over an hour before getting into our gate. (I guess we were on the wrong side of an active runway?) Tuck was still very good, and even lead the people around us in a rousing chorus of "Bah bah bah." I heard one girl talking on the phone, saying, "Yeah, it's boring, but there's this really cute baby sitting in front of us . . ."
We had a pretty short layover in Philly, so we figured we missed our connection, but when we got off the place we discovered that our connection had been canceled. I guess the plane that was supposed to take us never left the preceding airport because of the weather. So we were rescheduled on another flight a few hours later. We got some dinner, then went to wait at our gate, then ran down to another gate when it got switched (there was a lot of that happening at the airport). Once again, we weren't seated together, but were assigned new seats so we could be together.
Tucker was very good again, but there was one major problem with the second flight. Since there were two seats on each side of the aisle and three of us, they put us in the very back row (where there were five seats across) so we would be next to each other. But this meant that there was nobody for Tuck to make cute faces at--he could only see the backs of people's heads. He actually got very frustrated, which was kind of funny. "Come on! Can't you see I'm being cute back here??" The flight was a grand total of 15 minutes in the air, and we finally got into Allentown. When we went to pick up our rental car, they were short on vehicles, so we got a free upgrade to a brand-new Ford Expedition (with less than 150 miles on it). Man, after my Civic, that thing is a monster. Good thing I'm not afraid to drive large vehicles! All the storage space has been awesome--so helpful with all of our luggage.
We checked into our hotel, and pretty much crashed. Tried to do a few email-related things, but that was about it. Tuck's schedule has been really goofy, but we're trying to make sure he sleeps as much as possible. It's been a very long few days.
Today we went exploring, both checking out the area (and food places!) and looking for a new place to live. But it's late, and I'm tired, and I'll write more about that later. In any case, things are going well! We're having a good time, and are excited to see what happens next.
Tuck has gotten very good at crawling, and his timing is particularly inconvenient. Of course, he started getting into everything just when we had boxes all over. But we managed to wrangle him, and somehow still made it out. (Our friend Heather came over one day just for the purposes of playing with him, then took him home with her for a couple of hours--that was a lifesaver to get him out of our hair for a bit.) On Saturday after loading the truck we went to Kelly's birthday party, which was a great opportunity to see a lot of people we hadn't seen in far too long before leaving. On Sunday, Chris was in the worship band in the morning (really tough to be playing for the last time, but I'm glad he had the opportunity to be there), then we went to Mike and Amanda's where they teamed up with Christi and Michael to throw us a going-away party. The party was awesome--so many friends of ours came by to wish us well. Even an old coworker from my first job in this area came, though he didn't know anybody else! We felt so incredibly blessed to have so many people gather to send us off--it meant a lot. We are excited about the new adventure in PA, but it's a bittersweet thing; we are really going to miss our friends in Seattle.
After the party on Sunday, a few other friends came by to finish clearing out our cupboards and pantry, and one friend took one last load of stuff to Goodwill for us. We spent Monday packing up the last of our things, loading the car, preparing the trailer, packing our suitcases, and cleaning up. Some random things we ended up leaving in the house, for lack of something better to do with them after our car was gone. Whatever.
The property manager we've hired dropped by to talk with us about how he was going to price and market our place. We feel pretty good about him.
My brother picked us up and took us to dinner at Malay Satay Hut, meeting Kay and Kai there. It was a tasty last meal in Redmond. He then took us back to our place, loaded up our suitcases (and a few things we still had laying around that we have him, like the last of the sombreros from our wedding), and took us to an airport hotel for the night. We were completely exhausted, and crashed pretty quickly. It was nice to sleep in a real bed, since we'd loaded our bed in the truck on Saturday.
Tuesday morning we woke up, grabbed breakfast at the hotel (it wasn't particularly good), and headed to the airport. When we checked in, we discovered that Chris and I were in an exit row, and Tuck was seated several rows away from us. We asked at the gate to be seated together, and they did--no problem--except that we were in the row right in front of the exit row (so our seats didn't recline) and right next to the bathroom. That ended up being good and bad; it was good to have quick access to the bathroom, but it started to get pretty ripe toward the end of the flight . . . but the constant stream of people kept Tucker quite amused, and he charmed everybody. One woman even held him a bit while she was waiting for the bathroom. It was pretty cute. He took a couple of naps during the flight (which was great), as did we. When we landed in Philly, though, there was some sort of weather issue that landed us in the middle of a traffic jam and left us sitting out on the tarmac for over an hour before getting into our gate. (I guess we were on the wrong side of an active runway?) Tuck was still very good, and even lead the people around us in a rousing chorus of "Bah bah bah." I heard one girl talking on the phone, saying, "Yeah, it's boring, but there's this really cute baby sitting in front of us . . ."
We had a pretty short layover in Philly, so we figured we missed our connection, but when we got off the place we discovered that our connection had been canceled. I guess the plane that was supposed to take us never left the preceding airport because of the weather. So we were rescheduled on another flight a few hours later. We got some dinner, then went to wait at our gate, then ran down to another gate when it got switched (there was a lot of that happening at the airport). Once again, we weren't seated together, but were assigned new seats so we could be together.
Tucker was very good again, but there was one major problem with the second flight. Since there were two seats on each side of the aisle and three of us, they put us in the very back row (where there were five seats across) so we would be next to each other. But this meant that there was nobody for Tuck to make cute faces at--he could only see the backs of people's heads. He actually got very frustrated, which was kind of funny. "Come on! Can't you see I'm being cute back here??" The flight was a grand total of 15 minutes in the air, and we finally got into Allentown. When we went to pick up our rental car, they were short on vehicles, so we got a free upgrade to a brand-new Ford Expedition (with less than 150 miles on it). Man, after my Civic, that thing is a monster. Good thing I'm not afraid to drive large vehicles! All the storage space has been awesome--so helpful with all of our luggage.
We checked into our hotel, and pretty much crashed. Tried to do a few email-related things, but that was about it. Tuck's schedule has been really goofy, but we're trying to make sure he sleeps as much as possible. It's been a very long few days.
Today we went exploring, both checking out the area (and food places!) and looking for a new place to live. But it's late, and I'm tired, and I'll write more about that later. In any case, things are going well! We're having a good time, and are excited to see what happens next.