May 2019 Part 1: Finally Moving In!!

Even though my parents' house in Idaho wasn't completely finished back in May, they were able to pass the occupancy inspection so that they could move back in while the builder finished the exterior and a few other things on the house. And there was much rejoicing across the Chadwick Family!! Gabe and I took the Frontrunner train up to Ogden on May 1. 

We were pretty excited

In Ogden, Taryn and her four kids picked us up, along with our luggage, and we all headed up to Idaho to get a head start on cleaning Mom and Dad's house in preparation for the moving crew to arrive the next day.

I had hoped that we would be able to have everything spotless during our 24 hours before Brian and David arrived (Brian picked up our two kids after school, picked up Lea's two younger boys from school [since Lea and Shayne were on a cruise, and we said we'd help out for the weekend], and then picked up David from work on his way through Roy before heading up the next evening.) We didn't quite make it since we spent a lot of time taking care of so many little kids along the way, and the babysitter I hired to watch Gabe needed a little more help than I had expected!

Brian and David pulled into the driveway and I sweat had the storage pod unlocked, open, and partially unloaded before then engine even had a chance to cool. 

It was so thrilling seeing each piece of furniture brought in. One of the highlights was my mom's kitchen table.

The table was a little too big for her old kitchen, even without the leaves, and she'd really never been able to extend it and put all of her leaves in it.

That is no longer the case!! 

In addition to cleaning, I'd spent a good chunk of the day trying to get beds ready for the kids so that they could go to bed on time. The furniture that we brought back in April was accessible, so I set up the newly refinished trundle bed that I'd found on DI upstairs, I got those beds ready, and the boys helped haul up the queen size bed from the shed before they got too crazy with the other things in the pod, and we got everyone in bed and out of the way at a decent time. 

And then we stayed up too late moving things in.

The piano was a fun ordeal, but we got it back in and we couldn't resist playing some tunes on the instrument that we'd practiced on for all those years.

My mom and dad's yard was basically a bunch of dirt fields and dirt hills. Each kid had to be bathed each night before going to bed, and basically were banned to the great outdoors. Thankfully the weather was nice!

I remember how exciting it was filling this big pod up back in the previous August/September, but it was even more exciting watching it get emptied. David and Brian worked really hard to move all the boxes into the yard so that the pod company could come pick it up and save the rent money.

My parents' new master bedroom is such a beautiful room. It's the old kitchen, and they added so many windows to the space. It looks out over the side yard and back yard and out onto the grain fields. My mom's old office (and the boy's bedroom before that) is now the large master bath, and my dad made this barn door for it. 

Getting furniture upstairs was tricky, but the menfolk managed without putting too many scratches in the new paint. My parents got the old metal railing powder coated, and it looks amazing! My dad's finishing trim went back up onto those old stairs. That support beam is new, but those stairs that my mom had carefully designed and my dad and grandpa built remain. It's amazing to me every time I go up them!

The old attic got a bit of a touch-up, the floors reinforced, new carpet and paint, new baseboards, and a new railing. I love this part of the house. The room that my brother is standing in was the one I grew up in, and this trundle bed is in the "middle" room, which used to be our playroom and my mom's sewing room.

I love this elephant bedding that I found for the trundle bed.

The kids ran around like orphans for the weekend, and whenever they came in for meals, they left lots of bum-shaped dust piles on the chairs. Their dirt mustaches were epic.

Finally, the pod was empty!!!

Once the big pieces of furniture were brought in, our attention shifted to curtains. Even though my mom doesn't have neighbors really close by, there is enough traffic and neighbors to not want to live in a fish bowl. 

I failed to mention that Emily & Pete & their kids came, as well as Cal & Cassidy. 

Also, Brian and David hung mirrors in the bathrooms. 

If my mom wasn't really sure where to put a certain item, it went into the garage. Good thing there was a lot of space in the garage!!!

I spray painted my mom's piano light. It used to be C-3PO gold. It didn't fit into her house anymore.

It was funny reading the labels that we'd put on the boxes when we packed them up:

 We went to church. We all clean up nice, right? 

At one point, Henry hurt Skyler. Skyler was really sad and wanted me to take this picture to send to his mom to show her how sad he was. 

In addition to moving, there was some spray-painting of newly acquired second-hand end tables and lamps, furniture making, and things like that. 

Here's what the rooms looked like after our weekend of moving:

This is the new master bedroom. See all that beautiful light coming in???!!! My parents had lived for far too many months in my grandparents' basement, and while that was amazing that my grandparents had the space, they were beyond ready to be back in their own bed in their own space. Brian and David worked really hard the first night of moving things in to make sure that they had this bed all set up and ready for them to sleep in before any of us went to sleep. My dad made this bed when he was in high school, and I made the quilt on the bed several years ago. It was cool to discover that the curtains that used to hang in the old living room fit perfectly in this bedroom! 

This is what we are calling "The Heritage Room." This used to be the master bedroom, and it is located in the old section of the house and shares one wall with the new section. I found this double wedding knot quilt on clearance at Cracker Barrel (of all places) and I thought it would be perfect to go into our old fashioned/family history themed room. 

This is my old bedroom, the north attic room. It doesn't have a good name. We should work on that. Cassidy and I made the headboard. We were going to put tufting on it, but somewhere along the line, we lost the tacks that we bought for the tufting. As of this writing, they have still not been found. Mom and Cassidy picked out the bed spread here. Cassidy and I dream of putting a really sweet chair in this room to give it a little more personality. 

The middle room, complete with organized toys and trundle bed.

This is the South Attic room. I call it the Granny Americana Room, but that name hasn't completely stuck. This was Emily and Taryn's room, then Chelsea's room, then the boys room. It was never my room though. We inherited this quilt from Shayne's grandma's condo years ago, and tried to find other items that matched with it. 

Here's a view of the new great room. We made sure that those chairs and couches got set up right away! We all needed a place to put our feet up after days and days of hard work!

This is one of the new basement rooms that we're calling the Mid Century Room or the Cassidy Room (since she's the one that headed up the decor in this room). 

This is the other new basement bedroom. When we were talking about decor ideas, my mom really wanted a room to house my dad's naval memorabilia, a place to honor his Navy days. This room is home to all that and is therefore the Nautical Room. The bed and nightstands used to be ours, but I refinished them to go into this new space. We keep adding elements to it, but this is where it was after the first weekend. 

This is how we feel about our progress:

My poor dad had bronchitis the entire weekend. He watched all of us moving in all his things because he felt too terrible to help. There were a lot of late nights on this project with a lot of earlier mornings, and for those of you who don't know already, I really don't do well without sleep. As the days went by, I got grouchier and more easily irritable. Late Saturday night, I finally made it into to clean off all the grime from moving dusty furniture. Showers and sleep are my recharge things, by the way. The water washed away the filth as well as some of my tired-induced irritation, and the image of my dad sitting at the kitchen table, struggling to breath came to my mind, and it was like I got snapped out of my very focused "moving-in" mode. I had the thought, "What if we lose him from this?" I dismissed that as a little dramatic, but I still quickly finished my shower because I knew that  my dad needed a blessing, and I knew he'd already gone to bed.

I went to Brian and told him that my dad should get a blessing, and I went to Dad's door to see if he was still awake to ask him if he wanted a blessing. He did. My mom and he got dressed, and Brian, Pete, and David (and those few of us who were still awake) gathered in the living room so my dad could get a blessing. With the move and all, they didn't have any consecrated oil on hand, and so they found some olive oil in the cupboard to consecrate. My missionary heart burst when we convinced Pete to offer the blessing to consecrate the oil. (My clumsy invitation to him to read the Book of Mormon eventually led to Brian baptizing him, something that I had never thought possible. As a missionary, one of my favorite things was watching newly converted members serve and grow in the gospel. I  got to be a part of his conversion journey, and my heart was so happy when he consecrated the oil.)

David anointed my dad, and Brian sealed the anointing and gave him a blessing. If I had written this blog post back in May, I'd say that this blessing was sweet, and there was a strong spirit in the house at it's conclusion. There were hugs and tears, and it was a welcome break from the hustle and bustle of the moving madness. And that's where I would end it. But, hindsight is 20-20, and I know things now that I didn't know in May. The blessing contained things that we expected, like "Your Heavenly Father is aware of you and knows how frustrated you are with this and your many afflictions." There were other things though, like advice to read his scriptures more and turn to the Lord more. Brian felt a little uncomfortable telling his father-in-law to get closer to the Lord--as if he were chastising my dad who had always been good about reading and studying the Word. But, Brian felt impressed to say those things. There aren't words to express how I feel about understanding the words and impressions from that blessing now after everything that happened just over a month after that night.

We worked hard on Sunday too. We had to go home, and the ox was in the mire. We stayed as long as we possibly could, knowing we needed to drive four hours and that the kids had school the next day, and then stayed a little longer to do a few more things. Eventually though, we had to acknowledge that while there was still so much to do, we had to go. 

We came back a few weeks later for Memorial Day weekend. My parents hadn't made a ton of progress because my mom got bronchitis not too many days after we left, and, as a result, had no energy to help. This was a blessing in disguise as it gave her insight and compassion into how my dad had felt the week before during the move and at other times when he'd been fighting an infection.

This trip, we focused on unpacking boxes. We unpacked games, and put all the puzzles with under 200 piece together to make sure we weren't hanging onto puzzles with missing pieces. This meant that kids "had" to play a few games with Grandpa.

Brian and Dad put together their new grill, and dad treated us to some amazing hamburgers! 

 My mom was really tired of all the mud in her yard and her new large and empty flower beds. We went to a local nursery and got tons of plants. Brian and I helped her plant them in the rain and mud.

Brian and I got them some bushes/plants for Mother's and Father's Day. Normally, my dad doesn't like getting presents before the actual day, but he seemed to be okay with getting the flaming bush next to the front porch, even if it was early.

Brian made fun of my for my morbid drawing at church for Gabe:

On Sunday, we mostly relaxed. Grandma and Grandpa Linville came over for dinner.

While we were hanging out, it came to our attention that Gabe had figured out how to climb the tallest tree in the yard, and to climb it really, really high. To give you some perspective, we had three of these trees growing up. They have big, thick trunks, and where the trunk first splits into branches, the trees have these sweet natural treehouses. This gave us and we all easily climbed into two of these "treehouses" as children. One of them, however, was too tall for any of us to get up into regularly, even with boards nailed into the tree. It was kind of scary. And that was before it experienced twenty more years of growth. Before I found out that my baby was up in it! My heart stopped beating for a second when I found out where Gabe was!

Brian and my dad got the big ladder to go rescue Gabe.  If you make this picture bigger, can you find Gabe?

Here's a hint:

He ended up climbing up a few more times. We're still not sure how. Michael, who often climbed into this tree, said, "I was sitting up there, and I looked over and there was Gabe."

We enjoyed the beautiful weather and the green part of my parents' yard (everyone was forbidden from going into the dirt!!)

Rachel and dad put puzzles together. 

The next day, my dad tried to mow the lawn a couple of times while we were there. The first time was on Saturday just as a big storm was rolling in. A shot of lightning hit, followed by an immediate clap of thunder. Thankfully, he came right in. He said he saw it hit the ground out in the field. On Monday, he tried again,  but I think there was a problem with the mower, and they ended up having to take it into the shop.

I unpacked a ton of books over the weekend, and Rachel loved finding these HUGE Disney Princess Books!

Here's how we left the house the second time:

We found the box with the shell lights for the nautical room:

Found some pretty hardbacks to go in the nightstand in the Mid-century room. 

Unpacked the encyclopedias and Childcrafts, as well as the children's books.

Put this shelf and lamp up in the Granny Americana room, and filled the bookshelf with books.

We filled other bookshelves with books. I basically unpacked books the entire time (I think!). Our main goal was to clear enough space in the garage that my parents could park in it.

One car in and there was much rejoicing!

And then we got my dad's car in!!! Huzzah!

There was still a lot of work to do, but we felt really good about our progress.

We stayed as long as we possibly could on Monday (Memorial Day), and gave couldn't take it anymore. He fell asleep on the couch an hour before we headed home.

As we pulled away, I made Brian stop to take a picture of the house with it's completed facade (well, minus a few minor touch-ups), and it was so perfect that my parents were in the driveway waving us goodbye. 

It's such a beautiful home, and I'm so glad they finally got to live in it!!!