In answer to all those e-mails' and text messages let  me start by saying yes I am alive and well and have not fallen off the face of the earth!

I know I've been gone a while but boy have I been busy.  As you all know I have been packing like mad and I was beginning to think there were not enough boxes in the whole world for all my junk.  However I did get it all done, didn't really have a choice in the end, we rented out the house really quickly to a very nice couple with lovely children.

They were desperate to move in so I gave them a date of the 6th February which at the time was about a week and a half away.  THEN I started to panic.  I was no where near done, my back was hurting and the movers were coming that weekend.  I had just about packed everything we were taking so I wasn't too worried on that score, it was the rest of it plus all the cleaning.

Thankfully I have some wonderful friends who all rallied around.  As the moving truck was coming on the weekend Jeanette decided to drive to California on the Thursday so as to be there when the truck arrived on Sunday and be rested so she could start unpacking. That left me, myself and I to get everything ready.  Come Saturday morning I find out the truck is not arriving till Monday, OK a bit of a reprieve, Tim and I decide he better get his butt up here to Utah cos I need help and big time, so he dutifully jumps on a plane and gets here Monday night.

Of course on Monday morning they tell me the truck is in Utah but it can't unload whatever it's carrying till after 6pm so the truck won't arrive till Tuesday. By the time Tim had got to Utah, Kathy and Tracey being the stars they are had helped me finish most of the packing and even a lot of the cleaning,

Truck arrives Tuesday morning and thank goodness Tim was there because as anyone who has ever moved before knows,  loading day is absolute chaos! Especially when you are not taking everything, I was using a fold up table and chairs in the kitchen as a makeshift office/dining table plus the blowup mattress, suitcases and other essentials to get us through the rest of the week.  Thankfully nothing that was supposed to stay got put on the truck.

Thanks to Kathy and Tracey the place was empty and mostly cleaned and Tim has sorted out  stuff that was left in the dreaded garage and outside. We paid a cleaner to do the carpets and bathrooms (even I'm not that mean to make friends to it ;o) and we were actually finished early.  Instead of leaving on Friday Tim and I left on Thursday and gave the keys to the new tenants 2 days early, they were pretty pleased I can tell you.

Of course things don't always end on such a high note, we had the Comcast modem to take back and the car was filled to the gills, I wish the camera hadn't been packed in the middle of it or I would have taken some pictures.  I wanted to be able to lay down because of my back but the SUV was literally packed so full it was hanging over our heads..

So off we go to Comcast to give them back their modem and guess what, Tim had picked up the bag containing the modem not realizing what it was and just packed it into the car SOMEWHERE.  Here we are in the Comcast parking lot with suitcases, boxes of food and drink and tons of other stuff strewn everywhere as we unpack the car looking for the box.  We find it but as anyone knows once you unpack it never goes back it the way it came out.

By the time we were done we were wrecks and we hadn't even started the drive to California yet.  Needless to say our first stop was to the local Starbucks for a coffee for Tim and a hot chocolate for me so we could calm down before actually hitting the road. At least that way it would be the road we were hitting and not some other car.

Ahhh the joys of moving.

This is the top to my quilting table with the supporting tables tucked inside and all held tight by pillows and plastic moving wrapping tape. I think in retrospect I should have left it empty and moved the supporting tables separately, this sucker was really heavy and at 12 feet long not an easy piece of furniture to move in the first place!

Boxes, boxes, boxes, the final stack not including the furniture or the fridge of course!

Loading the Moving Truck, it was freezing cold, (nothing new there then) and there were 7 guys, it still took them all morning.

The Moving Truck, yeah they look happy now, they haven't started to move the furniture yet!

Note to self: don't fill every drawer of a solid wood dresser with stuff. It will mean it takes 4 or 5 guys to lift it and they will all get a hernia doing it!