Moving Day 1

Okay, I started this post this morning and just don't even know where to begin. So what I've decided is that I'll do this in several chunks and hopefully I can get across my emotions and all else that's happened on the fun little journey we've been on the last week.

Logistically the original plan was that we would rent a 24 ft truck that would pull a rented trailer that would carry Jason's SUV and I would drive my car to Colorado.  Cooper would go with Jason in the big truck and Sam would go with me. We'd pick up the truck on Friday, load up all our stuff in the city then drive out to the burbs and load up all we had in storage (from staging the condo). We'd then head out of the city Friday night to avoid any traffic and make sure everything was out and place was cleaned and head to a hotel in Naperville where my brother's family would meet us for pizza.  We'd get a good nights sleep and then head out early in the morning after having breakfast with my parents.  Along the way we'd stop in Des Moines to see Jason's family, drive another 4-5 hours to spend the night somewhere in Nebraska then drive the rest of the way to arrive in our new home on Sunday night.

While I like a plan (and especially like a plan when it's something as big as moving across the country with a cat who can't travel in a car without whining like an ambulance and pooping and peeing within 3-5 minutes of our departure) my husband decided to switch things up on me.  (okay to defend him a little...in the end his new plan may have saved us about a day's worth of travel but at this point in the journey I didn't know that yet. ;-)   So basically Jason found out he was able to get the truck and trailer a day early so decided to pick them up and came up with a new plan for the two days of packing the trucks. To make a really long story short, when we got to Budget only the truck was available that day, so our plan got way shifted. For the most part there wasn't too much of a glitch though and our biggest concern was that he'd have to park the (half loaded) truck in the city and we were afraid of it being broken into. We said we'd pray and hope that nothing would get stolen...especially parking it on a major street.  Jason went to the burbs on Thursday and my brother and dad along with a few of my dad's friend's workers had the truck loaded in about an hour and a half.  Jason was back to the city by about 8:00.  We were half loaded...and I hadn't lifted a box yet!  Woo hoo!! :)

Okay so we get the great idea to park my car directly behind the truck which would hopefully prevent anyone from breaking into the truck.  So after a few hours Jason went outside on the balcony to check on the truck and saw this...

Take a look at the truck.  Do you see a car parked behind it?  My Honda Accord...do you see it? Neither did we, so we of course freaked out cursing the city of Chicago for towing our car when it was legally parked (or so we both thought since we had checked the signs).  We called the city of Chicago...they had no record of anything.  We called the auto pound who also had no record of it.  We were both really really upset with the city and really happy to be moving out not having to deal with this kind of city stuff.  We went down to check the signs once again and as we walked out...there was my car!  It had been there all along.  I took this picture to  prove to you all and myself that we weren't going crazy.  Sorry city of Chicago for cursing you in such a way...we know you'd never ticket people or tow them when not necessarily. ;-)

What a relief to not have to deal with finding my car in the morning. All we had to do was get up, bring Cooper to day care and get the truck loaded before headed out for the long drive!

to be continued...