Living in an empty house

Our California house was packed up on January 24th and our nomad life began.  We originally thought we would be in Mint house on February 14th, but that turned into the 28th.  After a full month of living displaced, we were ready to be in our new home!  

Unfortunately, it didn't turn out as rosy as we needed.  Mint house needed a lot of love.  It needed love and elbow grease and a lot of repairs.  It was overwhelming.  AND our truck still hadn't left California.  We lived in an empty house for 8 days and we spent every minute of those 8 days cleaning and repairing and painting.  We found Walmart and bought some cheap chairs, bedding and dishes.  We had just enough to function, but we were basically camping.  While we were thankful to not be in and out of places, it was still kinda creepy living in an empty, old house. 

 

Ben bought a Lego set along our travels and this was the perfect time to work on it.

You don't realize how important furniture is, until you don't have it.  Every morning was a debate over who got the 2 comfy bean bags.

Master bedroom:

Colin did NOT like his bedroom while the house was empty, so he ended up camping out with us or with Eli.

There wasn't a whole lot for the kids to do during this time.  Colin resorted to playing with boxes and then Maya would claim it as her house.

We did find some perks.  7-11 is right across the street and we can walk to get slushies.  There is also really good food here and lots of good choices close to our house.

The day our truck finally showed up, was just like Christmas!  We had been without our belongings for 6 weeks!

This sums up our trucks journey:

They told us that first the truck's transmission broke and they had to wait for a new one (COVID has messed up the supply chain) and then 2 drivers quit.  I wanted to hug the driver that didn't quit and got our stuff here.  And while we were excited to see our belongings, it also was quickly apparent that the packers were terrible.  We had lots of things broken or damaged or missing.  This was our first PCS that they didn't have a checklist and by this point, we just had to roll with it and pray that most of our stuff was there.  Funny things from the day: they unloaded several things that weren't ours.  Somehow, someone else's decorative pillow was packed in my china cabinet.  Also, our basement has very low beams and the movers kept smacking their heads on them.