Journey to the Farm (Part 8) - Smooth Move

Part 8: Smooth Move

I must have made at least a dozen trips to the liquor store for boxes. Each time I would gather up anywhere from 6-10 (sometimes more). Moving a family is a lot different than moving by yourself. When I came to Victoria, I packed the essentials in my car and just went. Another load of things came up with my parents the next year. Done. We were starting fresh and I didn't have a lot of furniture.

Moving a family requires a bit more thought. As adults, we can get by while we unpack. The kids may need that special toy or blanket at any given moment. Now moving three families into one house. This is the beginnings of madness.

As I mentioned, we met several times over the months leading up. We all would hang out quite regularly, but we had two types of special meetings. Farm meetings to nail down any details of the paperwork for the lawyers and accountants, and farm family (which later abbreviated to our moniker of "The Farmily") meetings to discuss living together and the process and timeline for moving in.

We had decided to each contribute furniture to the common areas. Each family also had some storage. I proposed that we label all of our boxes with two bits of information: Family name and location. This would allow the small army of people helping us to accurately place items. It worked pretty good.

I was busy packing every evening. I was using wine boxes. Any larger boxes, I hid away or used to house blankets, clothing, or stuffed animals. I caught Laura loading a big computer box up with books and I wanted to make sure I would still be able to walk upright after lifting things. Every box was labelled and marked with our name and where it would go. I also labelled the contents and tried to keep boxes to specific types of items.

We had a near catastrophe one night as we were sitting in the kitchen while the oldest three were taking a shower upstairs. Apparently they were creating waterfalls, which was done by filling a cup and sloshing it up the side of the shower. Unbeknownst to the kids, this water was also flowing over and slowly filling the floor with a large pool of water.

I walked downstairs to get another box and heared water pouring down (not dripping, pouring...). I looked up and watched the ceiling light, now turned into an upside down fountain. I ran upstairs and stopped the kids, then called for Laura to round them up while I did damage control.

I moved our entire pile of packed boxes up into our kitchen (yes, everything we had packed was under the waterfall). I then spent the rest of the night unpacking and performing triage. We lost a few books, which is fortunate considering the amount of water that came down.

I was able to repack everything and place it in our playroom. Fortunately, this did not set me back too far as the move-in date was quickly approaching.

Part 1: An Unexpected Conversation
Part 2: Gathering Community
Part 3: End of the Line
Part 4: The Fifth Element
Part 5: Intermission
Part 6: Timing is Everything
Part 7: Planning Community
Part 9: Come to the Land of the Ice and Snow