we are idiots. IDIOTS

Wednesday should have taken up 3 days, at least, for all that has happened.

It started just fine... movers said they would arrive between 8-10am and I was at the house promptly at 8:10am.  Terry sort of forgot one step of the directions when he took Garmin from me, so I had to pull out the map and figure how to get to the house from the hotel, or I would have been more timely. I kept busy until the movers arrived. They were bringing the stuff from ELSO storage, so it was a teeny weeny 850lb.

Unpacking and putting things away took til lunch. Then we did some yardwork and Terry started getting the sandbox together that my mom bought as a housewarming present for the kids. It had a roof/cover that cranks up and down, pretty cool, hopefully Terry will deign to edit the photos of it soon so I can post it.

When he ran off to Home Depot for various necessities, the crew from Home Depot arrived to install our new washer and dryer. I do love them (w/d, not Home Depot or the crew although both impressed me today), but note that they were delivered only TODAY. It figures into the story later.

Then the waiting began. The movers with the big load - almost 4000lb from 7 years ago storage, weren't to arrive until between 3-5pm. At 4:30pm I called the person at the shipping company assigned to us. She didn't answer the phone so I left a message. Then she replied by calling Terry instead of me. Can you tell she's my new best friend? The movers arrived just barely shy of 5pm so I was pretty freaked out about how late we'd be working on unpacking. Shouldn't have bothered to worry, these guys were fast.

First off the bad news: Our dining room table is broken as well as the table Terry's dad built for our table saw. I guess it could have been worse, but having to buy a new dining room table will suck. It looks like it may be fix-able so keep your fingers crossed! Oh, and 3-4 items were missing and between the warehouse and the moving company everyone is playing a game of "not it" so I don't think they will ever be recovered
:-(

But on to the story. The moving crew was like lightening. Of course, there were few boxes of stuff, and the stuff was 90% tools, gardening supplies, and home renovation supplies (we were almost done with our 2 year renovation project of our Philly home when Terry got The Call). What did make up 3000lb and more was the furniture....

and ...

the washer and dryer that we put into storage. That we were sure we had left in the house when we sold it. That had we been just a tiny bit less stupid, we would have checked our inventory in preparation for the delivery and noted that we already owned a washer and dryer.  Here's the thing: not only did we already own a set, but we didn't have Home Depot carry away the set that was here because we planned to bring them to the cabin some day soon, as I am getting tired of the laundromat and hoarding quarters as laundry tokens when we go up there.

So now we have THREE washing machines, and THREE dryers, in our very too small home.

On a similar and much less dramatic vein, we had pretty much the same experience with a vacuum cleaner. We remembered bringing our vacuum to the cabin when we left. In fact, at the cabin we frequently use the old vacuum. Apparently, though, we brought the vacuum to the cabin some time before we left, and it was enough of a gap in time that we decided to buy a new vacuum cleaner. So now we have 2 perfectly new cleaners in our very small house.

But no coffee mugs or drinking glasses. We rock.

Wordless Wednesday

Receiving HHE from storage

A big, big day today week - receiving our stuff from storage!  What an experience, to look for the first time in 7 years at the stuff we thought was important enough to save even though we didn't know when we'd ever see it again :-)

Here's an interesting tidbit:  storage in Hagerstown and storage from ELSO are both, physically, in Hagerstown. BUT they have different delivery schedules and different companies delivering!!!  This means that we get our 850lb from Malta between 8-10am, and our 3500lb from storage between ... wait for it ... 3-5pm.  Yeah.  With Home Depot delivering our new washer & dryer between 12:45-4:45.

I think there may be some downtime today. The good news? I can use that down time to take a bike ride, courtesy of the bikes we brought to Malta and never used. Assuming the bike pump is in there too.

Kids' rooms

Way, way overdue.

Here's Terry edging Alex's room.

And the finished product ...

 

... seen here with what will be the bunk bed's top bunk but for now is set up for pre-furniture-arrival naps [edited to add: the room is now complete with its adorable wood and white furniture and sweet pink floral bedding, courtesy of an off-to-college cousin].

Zoltan's room got similar treatment

He also, however, has received most of the furniture that will fit in his room. Yes, that's TWO pieces. Hey, at least he has a closet - better than he had in Russia!

Back in civilization

One more wonderful week at the cabin. Should mention though, we had never before spent time there during actual summer. It was HOT and of course there's no a/c in a cabin. Thanks goodness for the beach club, where we spent a lot of time in the water to cool off. Thanks goodness too for decent sunblock because although Zoltan now looks like a total surfer dude with his sunstreaked hair and a bit of sunburn across the bridge of his nose, nobody got any real burn.

We got to snack on red and black raspberries and blackberries from the property! Of course, there were single digit numbers of each of them, but they exist and that's what matters. We also got a few photos of a really funky looking bug. We checked out the Lands at Hillside Farms and ate ice cream from the cows we petted. We got lunch at Grottos for their a/c one particularly miserable day and ate lots of frosty treats. The kids played and fought, laughed and cried, and begged me every day to watch shows. Alex tried and decided she liked couscous, and Zoltan continued his love affair with green veggies (yay!)

As much as I love exotic adventures and cultural excursions, there really is nothing like a week at the CABIN.

Wordless Wednesday

Because that couldn't be the end of the story

I approached tonight's dinner a bit hesitantly. I made sure everyone was awake and on the potty and all essentials were in my bag before turning the burner on low to melt the butter and begin the risotto. Sigh. A few minutes into the warming, the burner starts smoking. Of course I turn it off and call the hotel, which sends up an engineer. She and I seem to have a major miscommunication as she's all focused on the disconnected burner from yesterday's debacle and ignores the more recently smoking burner. At one point when she's testing things and something starts to smoke gently, Zoltan proactively puts his hands over his ears. Poor guy.

In the end, she cleans the burners and it's all fine but too late to make risotto as that takes an hour. So, tonight's adventure was the Afghan Kabob house where we tried to entice the kids to eat by repeating over and over that "it's just like shashlik."  Worked on Zoltan, the budding carnivore. Alex ate bread and rice.

Wordless Wednesday

An exciting day

Following the amazing list of recommendations of things to do with the kids while in NoVA, today we took advantage of the cloud cover and headed to Clemyjantri Park in McLean. It was everything everyone promised it would be and more, we will definitely be back.

As a testament of the morning, the kids took lovely 3 hour naps. After Alex woke, I decided to start on dinner, so I got the pan warming on setting 5-6 as I took out the chicken and other ingredients. When it seemed warm enough I poured some olive oil into the pan. It started smoking immediately, which was unusual, and then ...

the pan caught on fire.

Cue up Zoltan being awakened by the sound of the fire alarm and handling it much better than I would have predicted; my attempt to contain the fire by turning the pan over on the stove (which did contain it but I guess I peeked too soon as it flared back up when I lifted it to check); and the front desk reacting not quite as fast as I would have thought, although it certainly may have been no more than 1-2 minutes. Oh yeah and I had a horribly delayed out-in-the-heat headache.

So I guess we're going out to eat tonight.

* Edited to add: We did go out for dinner, and serendipitously wandered into the Nepalese Momo Restaurant in the strip mall across the street from the hotel. Today was its very first day of business! Their official opening is Friday and we may very well be be back it.

UAB delivery, sort of

A mere 7 weeks after packing out, we received our UAB. Oh, wait, no we didn't as 2 of 5 boxes were missing. I know some posts in remote parts of the world this is a normal turnaround. For where we're coming from, 2-3 weeks is the norm. When the deliveryman showed up at 11:30am we discovered the problem. He kept suggesting that maybe the 5 boxes were consolidated into 3. I kept saying this isn't 700lb. Yes, apparently I DO know what 700lb of stuff looks like. By 5pm the moving company insisted the missing boxes were in the warehouse but nobody had physically verified this yet.

More to come (hopefully, soon!!)...