Moving In

We owe a big thanks to Janie (Jeff's mom) for documenting the move-in yesterday.

Living on the second floor means less bugs (I pray) but it also meant we had to haul the furniture up the stairs. The Hamaker's have a moving curse. When Ali and Justin moved, their moped fell on top of Justin. This move we got close to another terrible accident. You see, the very top step of the stairs is about 5 inches taller than the other steps (seriously, how do you mess up that badly when building stairs??). So we kept stumbling on that stupid step, and when Jeff, Bruce (Jeff's dad), and Eric were bringing the armoir up the stairs, that step got in the way, and the armoir almost fell on Jeff's dad! The boys worked together and kept it stable for Bruce to get out under the armoir and he was not hurt. Luckliy I was in the moving truck at this time and did not witness it myself, or else I would have had a panic attack, it could have broken his leg!

Zack was a great helper! He used the dust buster to clean the whole apartment and then swept the entry way.When we had finally hauled everything up to our apartment, we were all exhausted. Houston is SOOOOO HOT and HUMID! I won't describe how much I sweat that day, but needless to say, it was more than I have ever sweated in my life. GROSS! I fear however, it is only going to get more hot, and more humid. Oh dear.

Day 5

Today was the last day of the big move, I was so excited when I woke up this morning. We started off in Kingwood and drove to Houston. This 30 minute drive was nothing to the hours we have spent on the road.
Kingwood is called the livable forest, the roads are lined with so many trees you feel that you are deep inside a forest.

Is it just me, or are Houston roads scary? I am terrified to learn how to navigate the zillions of highways.

Downtown Houston, here we come!

About a block away from our apartment, we see flashing lights behind us. Uh-oh. We pull over to the side of the road and the cop starts to walk toward our car... Jeff and I are racking our brains: maybe it's illegal to turn left there? What speed were we driving at? Jeff, did you use your turning signal??? Then the cop is there at our window... Our car's registration is expired! We had been in the city for less than an hour, and they had already noticed?! We explained to the cop that we just moved from Utah and we explained that we had gotten the car inspected in Utah and had the certificate to prove it. But Jeff has a Texas driver's license and that made our story suspicious. He took Jeff's license and went back to his car to look him up in the system. He came back and said there is no record of him living in Utah. We quickly pulled out my Utah's driver's license and our check book with Jeff's name on it next to our Provo address to prove that we weren't lying!!! Luckily, he decided to let us off. No ticket, just a warning to get our car inspected immediately. We were both releived, but a little annoyed too. You'd think the enormous moving truck who pulled off to the side with us would be proof enough that we weren't lying about moving.

After the run-in with the police we pulled into our apartment complex and got all set up with paperwork. Then we started moving in everything. We owe a BIG thanks to Eric, Sandy, and Zack; Janie and Bruce; and the Hamaker's neighbor who let us use their dolly. THANK YOU guys!!!!

Day 4

Day 4 began in San Antonio. We spent the night at Mark's house (thanks again Mark!).Mark had to go to work early in the morning, and Dana, who works 24-hour shifts, didn't get home until right before we were leaving. But, we HAD to document that we were at Mark's house for the blog, so we took a picture of his beautiful kitchen while we were eating breakfast.

I forgot to mention in yesterday's blog how our plans deviated due to traffic and a missing penskie location. We had planned to drop off the trailer we were towing the car on at a Penskie place so we could load up the furniture from Mark's condo. However we got lost and called Penskie for directions and they told us that the location we were looking for had closed down! Jeff and I were so frustrated! We had traveled forever in terrible traffic to go to a place that doesn't exist! So we decided to just go straight over to Mark's house. So after spending the night at Mark's we drove over to a different Penskie location and unloaded our car and un-hooked the trailer. This turned out to be a big pain and took a LOT of time so we decided it would just be easier to return the trailer there and drive the Camry the remaining 4 hours. (This turned out to be a GREAT decision). So after we were trailer-less we drove to Mark's Condo, where we met up with Jeff's parents, and picked up some great furniture Mark was getting rid of (Mark, you could not have picked a better time to get married!). Picking up furniture took a long time and really wore us all out, so we decided instead of going straight to Houston, we would stop off in Kingwood.

Jeff's dad was a hero and drove the truck (no worries, we checked with Penskie, who told us immediate family can drive the truck). It was awesome to drive to Camry in the awful traffic, especially after we were so used to driving the moving truck. What is with the cows you ask? (For those of you who know Brian Regan) Jeff I were trying to figure out if these were "show cows" or just "dumb ol' cows." Actually, I saw my first Texan long horns along the way, and we passed them too quickly to get a picture, so when I saw these happy guys, I took a picture. Sadly Jeff told me they were just cows, not longhorns.

At this point in the trip, the scenery started to get better. I'll take trees over flat plains any day. We drove for 5 hours to Kingwood, and spent the night at Jeff's parents. One of the first things we did was jump in the pool!

Update

I don't have enough time to put up pictures of yesterday's adventures yet, but I wanted to let everyone know that we made it to Houston safe and sound!

Day 3

Today we spent the morning at Ali and Justin's house. We loved playing with Elle. Ali is an amazing chef and fed us delicious food. Elle cooked us her famous boiled plastic doughnuts on her play kitchen.

After a fun morning, we hopped back into the moving truck and headed towards San Antonio. Along the ride I noticed there are Texas flags EVERYWHERE! Alongside every American flag is a Texas flag! Has anyone ever seen a Utah flag on a flag pole?

I was SO excited when I saw this sign. Did you know there is a Sea World in San Antonio? I didn't. I can't believe that I am going to be living 4 hours away from a Sea World! I know where I going for my birthday this summer!!

According to Mapquest, our trip today should have been 2 hours long, but Mapquest doesn't take into account traffic. Traffic was AWFUL! it was 2 in the afternoon, I have no idea why all these cars were on the road, don't people work?

We made it to Mark's house in San Antonio and enjoyed watching a new Brian Regan DVD.