On Friday, the movers showed up bright and early to finish packing and loading the truck. They quoted that they would be out by 2:00. Ha! Clint and I have striven to be minimalist, but somehow (mainly as a result of procreation) we have acquired a lot of stuff. We had to sign the papers on our Bartlesville house Friday afternoon, I still needed to clean the house from top to bottom for the new homeowner's final walk-though, the news about my mother kept getting worse, we suddenly got a phone call from the new home owners that they would not be able to close because their mortgage was tied up, and our bank could not get us a cashiers check in time to make the down payment on our new house. We needed the money to close. Because of the holiday weekend there was going to be consequences on every end if things did not go smoothly. AGH!!!!
Everyone grossly underestimated how much stuff we had. Our moving truck did not finish until 6:00 in the afternoon and was completely full. Then the truck battery died because they had been running it in the 100 + degree weather. The poor guys were stranded at our house until 8:00 that night. We did get a room at the Price Tower for our last night in Bartlesville. We took the boys to the hotel room and Clint picked up Midway cafe takeout.
Sawyer was thrilled to jump between the two beds over and over. He had a blast. Beau was content to watch with his blankie and paci. I think he was sensing some of Mommy and Daddy's stress. From our room at The Inn of the Price Tower we could see some significant Bartlesville land marks.
The research center off in the distance. Dad spent many enjoyable hours there.
Kids First playground which was Sawyer's day care our first year in Bartlesville. Fortunately for us it was such a bad experience I had no regrets about quitting. I cringe thinking about it all.
One of our many buffaloes. The boys loved driving around town and pointing them out. In fact, "Bufflo" was one of Beau's first words and he would point them out whenever he would see them from a very young age.
After the boys were settled in for the night I headed home to clean up the house. It was late and I was very exhausted from being pregnant and having another hellish day. I got into the house to discover that there was lots of mice mess to clean up. I hate mice and we had an aggressive pest control plan (due to the spiders) that included mice. How could this have been missed? I scrubbed and cleaned and finally finished by mopping the kitchen floor. As I was mopping, Clint's arch nemesis appeared. The wood transistion piece between the kitchen and the sunroom popped up. Clint had been battling this for a while and it was a total nightmare. I was freaking out because it was almost midnight and the new homeowners would be doing their final walk through in the morning. I ran into the garage to search the one small box of random garage "chemicals" left in the empty house. God must have known that I was at my breaking point. In the small box I found one old bottle of gorilla wood glue. I broke the top off and rubbed it all over the wood. I then set paint cans that were being left with the house on top to let it dry. I finally left around midnight and vowed not to tell Clint about the wood floor until the closing was official. Later we learned from a wood floor installer that the gorilla glue was the best to use and that was the one adhesive product Clint had not tried. Coincidence or divine intervention?
On Saturday morning we went back over to pick up Heidi, the last of the chemicals, and alcohol (it only made it to Stillwater because I was pregnant.) We also wanted to say goodbye. I quickly ran in before Clint to check the wood piece and remove all evidence so he wouldn't have to deal with the stress. It worked! It was very sad to walk through one last time. Because this house had sooo many happy memories for us I think we will always remember it with rose colored glasses (despite all the spiders and elbow grease).
This is one of the last pictures of Meme before she was 15 pounds lighter and had no hair.
Dana's and my birthday celebration. You can tell who really blew out the candles. Sunday morning was my 31st birthday, but I don't think anyone remembered, not even myself. I decided that I just would have to celebrate the other 364 days of the year. On Sunday we started our pilgrimage to our final destination, Stillwater. We dropped my mom and Julie off at the airport on our way through Tulsa to head to Houston. Their plan was to camp out at MD Anderson until they were seen (and it actually worked within 48 hours). We were received with open arms by Clint's parents. They had a birthday meal and cake waiting for me.
On Monday, July 2nd we officially closed on both houses. That same day, Clint had to start what quickly would become his hardest job, hopefully ever, as an assistant professor of chemical engineering at Oklahoma State University. Miraculously, Wells Fargo decided to give the new Bartlesville home owners their loan (possibly due to all the hysterical phone calls from all parties involved.) My parents loaned us a cashiers check for the closing cost that we were able to repay immediately so we were able to close on our Stillwater house. After closing in Stillwater on Monday afternoon, Clint and I were so exhausted we went back to his parents and went to bed early without even stopping at our new home. On Tuesday, July 3rd I got up early to clean up our new house before our stuff arrived in Stillwater. Clint had to work, but I was able to leave the kids with Grammy and Grandpa so unloading was not near as stressful as loading. We spent our first night in our new home that night. The weekend from hell was over.
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