Reassembling in our new house

About 10 days ago we signed our names 57,843 times.

Then, at the end of the day, we got the keys to our new house.

I am one of those people where all the hype and anticipation can sometimes kill the excitement I think. Everyone kept asking me, “Aren’t you excited about your new house?”

And yes, I was horribly excited. I was just tired of all the hoops we had jumped through, tired of the stress to that point and weary of what lied ahead of us the following couple of days — moving with two small children. Would they sleep in their new rooms? What if they hate the new house?

We hired the Help-U-Move guys upon recommendations from a few of our friends. They get a thumbs-up from us. We scheduled them, canceled them, rescheduled, canceled, and finally gave them a day's notice when we found out we were actually closing and sure enough, they arrived on time the next morning. They moved our stuff the.entire.time (no slacking at all) and so far (knock on wood) we haven’t found anything damaged.

Paying someone to help you move isn’t an inexpensive proposition. But when we stepped back and realized that in six hours our family of four was out of our three-bedroom, two-bath house and into a new house — and none of our friends felt obligated to surrender their weekend to us. It was money well spent. (Our friends agree.)

And nobody complained about sore backs the next day. Well, the movers might have, but they weren’t in my house.

When we bought our first house nearly seven years ago, we were unpacked in a day or so. A few differences — I was so excited to be in a house and not an apartment. I suppose I wanted to be unpacked and officially in so that no one could come and take it away and send us back to an apartment.

Then the amount of stuff. Back then, the stuff we moved into our three-bedroom, two-bath house left it still feeling very empty and large. And then last — our sole companion was one dog, not two children, a cat and two dogs (one being a newly adopted, attention-starved dog who may be more needy than my 2-year-old daughter).

We are staring down two weeks in our new house, and I am a touch shocked how many boxes are still sitting around. Full. Truth be told we have been forgoing setting up our new house in favor of getting the old house ready to sell since the thought of two mortgage payments makes me a little ill.

Speaking of which, anyone want to buy a three-bedroom, two-bath house?!