Alright. Here it is: the tell-all post about our big move. Moving to New Zealand was no small task. In fact, it was so exhausting that the day of moving I was physically drained and extremely weak. More on that later; let’s start on the Friday before the move (our move took place on Sunday, July 28th). I pick Friday because that was Matt’s last day of work and our first day of getting ready to move out of the Brooksville house. Keep in mind – up until that point, we had been working on selling almost all of our possessions. So things had been disappearing, one item at a time, from the house. It already had that weird echo to it by the time Friday arrived. Also, no furniture meant that we were sleeping on air mattresses, sitting on the floor, etc. Bare-bones type living. We took minimalism to the max – hah!
Friday:
Matt got home from work that day at his usual time, 5:30 pm. The kids slept over Matt’s parents’ house that night, so we were able to get a ton done being kid-free. We ended up working on sorting things to donate and dump. At 2:30 am, we finally came to a decent stopping point and went to bed.
Saturday:
Ryan and Toria arrived earlier in the day and spent the afternoon with us. We spent most of the day taking things to the dump and to the thrift store to donate. Our couch was the last thing to sell, and it sold in the nick of time – total Jesus moment, because He knew that having a couch until the very end was extremely important to me. Matt delivered it to its new owners that morning. A little later around 2:00 pm, an offer-up buyer showed up to the house and picked up the double stroller we sold her. When she arrived, I realized that we had forgotten one box that was supposed to be donated – it was filled with kids toys. I also realized that there were many items we didn’t even think to donate that were still in the house – things I definitely didn’t want to throw away. She happened to ask if we had anything else for sale, so I told Matt to let her in so she could look around. She ended up taking bags full of stuff off our hands. She even took Ellie’s high chair, the kids’ bath toys, the large ducky toy holder, and all our baby hangers (we had hundreds). We gave it all to her because she was just starting out and needed stuff, and we weren’t planning on selling any of it anyway. Plus she was majorly helping us out, so it was a thank-you-for-saving-us-a-trip gift. At around 2:30 pm, I left on a Walmart run and picked up the kids from my in-laws.
That night, Morgan (my sister-in-law) came over and helped us pack our suitcases. She taught me how to roll my clothes into tight sushi rolls – genius! I was able to fit so much more that way. About an hour into packing, JT and Sarah showed up to help as well. We had some dinner around 9:00 pm, and once we were done, Morgan brought the kids to Matt’s parents’ house so they could get to sleep (we later joined them). And let’s be real, I wasn’t getting a ton done with them there, getting into everything. At that point, our house was no longer childproof so I had to watch their every move. As soon as they were gone and in bed, that’s when the real work started. Around midnight, JT and Sarah left and it was just me and Matt and a house that wasn’t even close to being empty. We had a lot of work ahead of us and to make matters worse, our flight was the next day. We had to somehow get all this done, find time to sleep, and then have the energy to move across the world (a 30-hour trip) with two toddlers.
Three hours later, at 3:30 am, we finally came to a stopping point. Those three hours about broke me. I was exhausted to the point where I didn’t think I could do anything else productive, yet I knew I had to keep going. We had no choice. We were leaving the next day and we didn’t have any other time to clear out the house. Honestly, trying to remember the night is a blur because I was running off fumes. I couldn’t fill in the blanks, even if I tried. All I know is I was a mess, we were both exhausted, and at 3:30 pm the house was finally in a state that we were happy with. Before we left, we took a shower so we wouldn’t disturb everyone who was sleeping back at my in-laws’. We took one last look at the house we had called home for the past 5 months (and that Matt grew up in), then we sat in Morgan’s car (we switched with her when she took the kids to Matt’s parents’ house), looked at each other, and breathed a sigh of relief. We were done, and there was nothing between us and our trip to New Zealand except for sleep.
Click for Part 2:
The Cullums Immigrate 