Farewell East Coast

Brace yourself, this is going to be a long one...

I have to admit, it was pretty tough leaving Virginia. We loved the town of Williamsburg. We loved the restaurants. We loved our house. We loved our neighborhood. And we loved our neighbors (in a friendly sort of way - just to clarify for Todd). But I think we will make our way back there in the not-to-far future, so I'm not too sad. Plus, our friends have promised to visit, and we're going to make sure they stick to it :) The perfect weather here in So Cal helps too. That being said, moving was a pain in the @$$!!

I get nervous about moving. I'm very anal about going through every room and making sure nothing gets packed that I don't want packed or isn't allowed to be packed and I like having everything organized and this time it just didn't work out that way. We had stuff going to PA, stuff going into VA storage, stuff going into CA storage, and stuff going to the house. Ideally it would have been separated ahead of time and we would have been able to give away all the stuff we couldn't move (cleaning supplies, etc.) but life with a baby is tough (I've lost my ability to multi-task) and we just didn't get to it. While our house was in chaos, Kurt dutifully ensured that the important things remained working, such as the Xbox 360. The guys were all on this NHL 07/08 kick and played just about every night until 12-2am or so while the wives were sleeping. They were crazy about it. They've even managed to figure out a way to play together from across the country - talk about dedication. The move went fine though and everything made it onto the moving truck. I'm not sure it's going to arrive in the same condition it left, it never does, but as long as it gets here we'll be okay.

After the movers took away all our furniture we still had a lot of work to do in the house like loading the car, packing up all the little stuff that was left behind (i.e. hardware to hold curtains up), cleaning the fridge and getting rid of cleaning supplies. But we didn't want to do any of that, so instead we went and had dinner with our friends and drank beer. On Friday morning I woke up early and got Kurt up and we worked on all that stuff listed above and barely made the 10am move out time that we had told our landlords (they had cleaners coming in). Our neighbors got stuck with all our condiments (which they probably already had) and the lucky new tenants got at least a hundred dollars worth of cleaning supplies. After everthing was finished we headed out for a weekend in Central PA with our friends from Williamsburg. Georgia, Todd, Logan, Mike and Kris all came up for a golf tournament/final weekend with the Weavers. The drive up to PA was okay, I was in the Audi with the fussy baby, but Kurt had the Jeep with the dogs and the broken drivers-side window. We hit a ton of traffic and construction, but when we finally got to the house we rented in Blue Knob, PA it was worth it, the place was awesome. It had this huge balcony with a great view and the weather was nice and cool (a big change from hot VA).

Various pictures from our balcony:

We had a great time up at Blue Knob with our friends. On our first day there Georgia and I were troopers and got back in the car drove up to Kurt's parents house to drop off the dogs and then drove back down to Altoona to go shopping for groceries. We met the guys at Del Grosso's amusement park where we played a bunch of mid-ways games that of course Kurt won and the guys took Micaela on the Crazy Mouse while Georgia and I took the babies on the train ride. That night we went back to Kurt's parents house and everyone had a great time riding 4-wheelers and eating hotdogs and sitting out by the fire. Those pictures are on Kurt's camera so I'll have to put them up later.

Crazy Mouse and the Train Ride:

We were so tired after first day that they whole second day was spent at the house relaxing and going to the pool. We had fun playing poker that night too. A lot of Yueng-ling was consumed over the weekend knowing that we wouldn't be able to get any in CA. We're counting on our friends to hook us up with illegal cross-border beer shipments.

Pool Pictures:

Kurt and Mike sharing a moment (at least that's what I think it looks like) ;)

Pictures of poker:

(p.s. we all got spanked by 11 year-old Logan)

Okay, I think this blog is long enough for now. Next one will be about the golf tournament, our expedited departure, shipping the dogs, and the plane flight to L.A.