I had never really thought of the idea of starting a blog about our move until recently, and I started kicking myself for not having done it! But then I thought, well, what the hell, better late than never, right? So I guess what I am going to do is start at the beginning and kind of blog as though I was doing it as thing were happening.
I suppose the beginning really would have been when we decided when we were actually going to move. Of course, whoever knows me knows that I decided to go a long long time ago, but our plan was obviously more recent. Zach had decided that he wanted to move to California pretty much as soon as we had visited back in August 2010, and originally the plan was to wait around a year and a half and move in March 2012. By the end of 2010 we had decided that we wanted to move the date up a little bit, to sometime around the end of 2011, maybe October. Then, a couple of months into 2011 I think we were just starting to get really anxious about it because Zach was always saying "Let's move now. I want to move now. I'm ready." I was always a little more hesitant, thinking about it in terms of how hard it would be and saving money. After a while, however, I gave in and said, " Okay, let's just pick and date and that will be that" And so the last week of August it was.
As soon as we decided the date, there was nothing else on my mind but to save save save so that we would have enough money to make the big move! I am a big, big, big planner, so I was constantly looking for tips other people had about traveling, calculating the costs of gas, hotels, food, the uhaul, etc, researching different travel methods and routes, and anything else you can think of when it comes to a move... but not just any move, a cross-country move! All of the planning is what really made it all seem real. We ended up booking the uhaul months in advance and then started slowly buying all of the other things we needed up until the days before we left (a hitch, new tires, a cooler, food and booking our hotel rooms for the week).
I think my favorite part of the whole planning process was the route-planning. (I seriously ended up doing it on mapquest, having AAA map it out for us, and highlighting it on maps. And what a waste of time, because all we really used was Zach's phone and mapquest. Better safe then sorry?) But it was a lot more complicated than just entering in a starting address and a destination. First we found the actual route we would be taking and then had to figure out how long we would be driving each day. For the most part, this revolved around us being able to stop in Las Vegas for a night because Zach had never been before. It ended up being about 11 hours to Mt. Vernon, Illinois, 10 hours from Mt. Vernon to Elk City, Oklahoma, 13 hours from Elk City to Kingman, Arizona, 4 hours from Kingman to Las Vegas, and 6 hours from Las Vegas to San Diego! I planned the time around roadside attractions we would stop to see too, so the longer days we wouldn't be seeing much and the short days we would see more. This was pretty much planned out a good two months before we were gonna go.
This was also around the time that I started looking for a job. Zach didn't really think he would have too much trouble finding a job, but being the worry-wart that I am, I was freaking outttt! So I probably applied in advance to a good 50 nannying advertisements in the couple months before we moved, hoping to have interviews set up when we got there and a job within a few weeks. (HA!!!) Also in the two months before we moved I was so uber anxious to pack. I wanted to pack everything except the basics, just because I was so excited! Besides being a planner, I am also very impatient. As soon as I decide I am going to do something, no matter how far away it may be, I start thinking about it and planning it out just because I can't wait. The thing that sucks about that is, although I get everything organized quickly and well in advance... when it gets closer I have nothing left to do or plan! wah! So since Zach worked for a moving company at the time,he was able to get us a crap-ton of boxes and, ohhhhhhh boy, did I go to work on it. I tried to space myself out and was packing slowly, but of course I ended up packing everything that I could and was always just anxious to do more. We ended up having a stack of boxes in my room for a good month before we were even ready to go. I even tried to pack up everything of mine besides the clothes that I would need a good few weeks before we were leaving. At this point, looking at all of our boxes before Zach had even packed his, I was just scared that we had way too much crap to fit in the uhaul. (They look so tiny from the outside!)
As time eventually crept up on us we started moving boxes downstairs a weekend or so before the move. That was when it really hit everyone, I think. Zach packed up the trailer when I was at work the weekend before the move, and to my surprise everything fit with room to spare! So then we ended up packing a bunch of stuff that we didn't even plan on taking. We had the car pretty loaded all week, stuffed to the brim. Uhaul filled, check. Trunk filled, check. Backseat filled, double check: cooler, two suitcases, three bags of food, laptops... Lord only knows how we even handled trying to even find stuff back there.
until next time,
xxox
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