As most of you know, we recently moved across the country to Elkins Park, Pennsylvania (a suburb of Philadelphia) for Tyler to go to Optometry school. This is the story of our trip... I apologize for the lengthi-ness, it's a pretty long story.
Our journey began on July 22 when the moving company came. There was a Hispanic guy helping load things and the other mover said he was getting deported in a few weeks, so me and Tyler joked that they would just deport all our stuff with him, then our renter's insurance would cover the cost of most everything we own so we could get all new things :) Anyway, it all got labeled and put away into the truck in about 3 hours and we were left with the things that we were going to put in our car for traveling and cleaning supplies. They asked us to write down a date that we needed our things by and we put August 4th, thinking that would be ample time for them to drive it to our new place.
Lyndi and I flew to Des Moines the next afternoon. Lyndi was so excited to fly on an airplane! Not just one airplane, but two! I was really worried about the flight with a two-year old, but she did great. She talked about the apple juice on the plane for days afterward. On the descension she yelled "The sky is moving!" because the plane was tiltng to turn and land :) We had back-to-back flights, so I didn't even have to worry about entertaining her during the layover. She slept the entire second flight and when she woke up I told her we were going to see Aunt Sarah and she replied (because it was dark out) "Aunt Sarah's sleeping. She's not coming." We stayed in Des Moines for a few days while Tyler drove with his brother to Minnesota to drop him off at his other brother's house. Sarah drove us up to Ames on the 25th and Tyler drove down to Ames on the 27th and we went to see old friends and family. Our journey was going according to plan. We THOUGHT we had it perfectly set up.
We left on July 30th and drove 12 hours to my mom's house in Greensburg, PA. We arrived pretty late, but Lyndi again was phenomenal the whole trip. I think we got lucky with this girl, she's quite a good little traveler! We got a phone call the next morning (the 31st) from the moving company saying they would be 5-7 days, so we guesstimated about August 5th for the arrival in Elkins Park. We waited around a few more days with my family. We got some crafting done, much needed rearrangement of the garage and basement, and Lyndi was (very much to my surprise) excited to take out a spider web on one of the plants in the front yard. We got another call on Thursday (now the 2nd) from the moving company saying it would be 5-7 days. So I'm thinking Wednesday probably. Monday morning (the 6th) we received yet again ANOTHER call from the moving company saying 5-7 days, only this time they said it would be Saturday the 11th. So we end up staying at my mom's a little longer than planned. We had hoped to have from August 4th until the 13th to set up the house while Tyler was still available to move things for me and get acquainted with the town a few days before he got into school.
We ended up leaving Thursday August 9th and met our landlord. I was excited because he told us we'd need to buy 2 A/C units to keep cool, but there were already 2 when we got here, so that saved us a lot of money. We set up the few things we had with us and slept on air mattresses for what I thought would be 2 days. After the first night, my pregnant body was pretty irritated with the air mattress and having to eat meals on the floor. Friday we went and checked out the school and found a delicious pizza place and thought we were doing pretty well, until we got to Walmart that night. It was the single most ghetto walmart I've ever been to. But since Tyler was with me, we got through the store cautiously and bought some food and necessities to get us through until "Saturday". The next day we tested out a different walmart, and to my disappointment there were 4 cop cars parked outside with their lights on. We didn't even get out of the car... We were done with Walmart's, so we tried Target next. To my relief, it was a good part of town and a nice store. We got rugs and cleaning supplies since we don't have an inch of carpet in the apartment. We found a park on Saturday and just stayed at home and watched movies on the laptop. Saturday night we get a call from the moving company saying they wouldn't be there until Wednesday at 5. (I know, ridiculous right?!?!) We had no internet, no phone book, no where to sit, nothing to entertain Lyndi with except movies, and no cooking equipment, I mean NOTHING. We all shared one towel for a week, wore dirty clothes, and washed but didn't sanitize dishes (I wasn't going to go buy new towels, detergent and dish soap when I knew it was coming in the truck). So for the next SEVERAL days, while Tyler was at orientation all day, I tried to get me and Lyndi out of the house as much as possible, because literally EVERYWHERE else had somewhere to sit.
So... Wednesday at 5 rolls around, then 6, then 7, and we get ANOTHER call! 2 more hours turned into 4, and the Russian moving guy shows up at our door at 11:00 and he wouldn't accept a personal check. So we're stuck with our things in the moving truck 100 feet away and no way to get them until we show up with CASH. So he slept in the truck that night and Tyler got up at 6:30 and drove around everywhere until orientation started again trying to figure out a way to get this money. Everything was closed of course, so I dropped him off at school and went to the bank when it opened. We had a check from State Bank of Southern Utah all ready to be cashed. I explained what I needed and the teller said I'd have to set up an account before I cashed the check, since it's from out of state. So I figure, simple solution right?? I go to try and set up an account, but while talking with the guy setting it up, he tells me that I can only get $200 out of the $1200 I needed because they would have to verify the funds in the account first, and of course since it's out of state, it would take 5-6 days. Not exactly what I wanted to hear. He was very nice about the whole thing and was on the phone for an hour calling just about every place in the Philly area to try and get this money out for us....but no to avail. He recommended calling State Bank to get a temporary raise on our ATM limit, but it was only 7:30 there, so I'd have to wait 1.5 hours at least until they opened. I left frustrated, all the while the movers were sitting outside the apartment waiting for this cash. I called Tyler, he called the bank, I called the bank back, Tyler called me, etc. etc. SO FRUSTRATING, because we had the funds, just NO WAY to get it out! A few minutes later, I texted my mom jokingly asking her to send us
$1200 magically so we could get this taken care of. I knelt down and
said a prayer pleading to have this work out in our favor. I closed the
prayer and not 30 seconds later did my mom call me with a solution! She said she talked to a guy at her bank and figured out a way she could somehow wire the money to me and I could get it out through some company that deals strictly with wiring money to people. So she wired it and I went to go pick it up, BUT the store I went to didn't carry that much cash on hand, so they recommended a cash checking place (which charges 10% of the whole check to cash it...ouch) or trying another store. By this point I'd been at this for 4 hours with no success, so I picked Tyler up on his lunch break and I was so frustrated I couldn't even drive. He drove to the Post Office to try and get a money order, but they were closed for lunch... the LAST place we tried was a much bigger store and I was finally able to get our money out. I took Tyler back to school, gave the cash to the movers, and they unloaded our stuff in about 45 minutes. Oh but it doesn't end there... :)
My mom drove over and helped set everything up while Tyler was at school (what a blessing that woman was through this whole thing!). As we opened boxes, we found several things that we broken and several boxes and plastic bins that were damaged and about 10 boxes had some kind of sticky gunk on it. We got most of the rooms set up when Tyler asked me where our Wii was. It had our surge protector/power strip thing in the box that we needed for Lyndi to watch a movie. I said I hadn't seen it. He said he packed it with the Wii in it's original box and put it on the moving truck. We looked everywhere but couldn't find it. It was a Saturday, so the office for the moving company was closed. He left them a message and they called back on Monday and said they would check the warehouse and see if it got left in there and call him back Friday. He didn't get a call Friday, so he called Monday night and asked if they had checked. The manager said it wasn't in the warehouse or the truck, so they were going to call the movers and see if they had given it to someone else they had unloaded that day. I'm thinking in my head "one of the mover's just took it". Weeks have now gone by and after filing a complaint we have yet to hear from the company. When we talked to our insurance company to see what they could do, they said if we paid a hefty deductible they would cover the damages and loss. So now we're out a Wii and a lot of broken or damaged items.
In the mean time,
- I had a freak accident involving out microwave and a bowl of scalding oatmeal and ending up burning 3 of my toes and ankle. It ended up so infected and swollen I was bed-ridden for 3 weeks. Thank goodness I have a brother-in-law who called in a prescription for me and saved my poor foot.
- We found out we didn't receive as much student-loan money as we applied for, so somehow we have to make up for what we don't have for the next 2 semesters.
- We found out the school that we're paying boatloads of money to doesn't pay for anything extra. So we're also out that money that we thought we'd have for emergency's or extra food or new tires, because we had to pay for all the expensive equipment he needs for classes.
- We found mice in our apartment, which to this day are still around.
- We heard a gunshot a few weeks after arriving just down the street.
- Medicaid was nearly impossible to apply and qualify for in time for Emerie's arrival.
Things felt like they were getting worse and worse, and then when I thought nothing more could go wrong, we had our little Emerie. Safe. Sound. Beautiful. Healthy. That's when things FINALLY started to look up!
