Hello from our Nation’s Capitol!
Matt and I made it here safe and sound from North Carolina and have been busy settling in to our new apartment. It has been quite the exhausting whirlwind but things are finally starting to come together! For the move, we rented a U-Haul and did our own packing/moving to save money. A BIG thank you to Matt’s brother Chris who came over to our place in Chapel Hill on Wednesday night and helped Matt load a bunch of our bigger/heavier furniture items onto the U-Haul!
Thursday was spent packing alllll day long in Chapel Hill. You know how you think you’re almost ready to go and should be pushing off within an hour? And then it takes 6 more hours instead? That was our Thursday. We spent the morning packing, got some help from Elle and her fiance Rob loading a few more of the heavier items onto the truck, and then took a break for one last lunch in Chapel Hill.
Obviously we went to Sandwhich. 🙂
A delicious last lunch, if I do say so myself. Egg BLT = my fave. I also love these cute little notes they put on your trays. 🙂
And after lunch, we decided we needed one last trip to Maple View Farm for ice cream, too. I couldn’t leave Chapel Hill without saying goodbye to my favorite spot, after all!
I was so jealous of that biker… love biking that area. But eating ice cream while watching the bikers was pretty sweet, too. 🙂 It was SO hot in Chapel Hill on Wednesday and Thursday while we were trying to move — 95 degrees and very humid/sunny. Not exactly ideal moving weather, but definitely ideal ice cream weather.
When we got back from lunch we seriously thought we were almost done and should be heading out of Chapel Hill by around 3 or 4… but packing always takes way longer than you think it will. We ran out of boxes and ended up having to put a bunch of the last random items into bags, so that meant a ton of trips back and forth to the U-Haul, and then we totally forgot to pack the front coat closet until the last minute… and then of course we had to clean the place once it was empty. Whew! Finally — ready to go.
We said goodbye to our Chapel Hill home and finally hit the road around 6:30 p.m., exhausted. I drove my car and Matt drove the U-Haul with his car hitched onto the back — he hooked it up himself, too!
We were both terrified he would start moving and the car would fall off, or that he would take out a million other cars since the U-Haul plus the towed car was so large (and you couldn’t reverse at all or the car would jack knife, so rest stops involved finding massive spots to park in that didn’t involve backing up), but it worked. He did an awesome job with it. 🙂
The drive was pretty uneventful except for about half way through when one of the chains under Matt’s car came a little loose and sparks started flying from under it. Um, yeah. I called Matt (I was driving right behind him the whole way) and was like “we need to pull over ASAP!”
The drive took ages since we had to go slower due to the U-Haul/car hitch situation, so we didn’t end up rolling into DC and arriving at my parent’s house (where we stayed that night) until about 1 a.m. on Friday. We were SO tired, as you can imagine.
Friday morning at 7 a.m. we were up and going again — we offloaded a couple things at my parent’s house and then headed over to our new place to start unloading! A big thank you to our friend Shane who came to help us move — total lifesaver. Getting everything off the truck was way easier than it was getting everything on in Chapel Hill. On this end, we had the use of an elevator instead of dealing with stairs, and we also had a random shopping cart that was in the apartment loading dock area that was perfect for a bunch of our smaller random items — that saved us a million trips. By noon, we had everything inside!
We treated Shane to lunch and then went back to my parent’s house to offload two more big furniture items, put the hitch back on the now empty U-Haul, and take it to the store to return it. We got back to my parent’s house to pick up Matt’s car around 4 p.m. and we were so exhausted that Matt and I fell asleep on my parents couch by accident… 45 minutes later we woke up to the doorbell, thoroughly confused. I think if that person hadn’t come to deliver a package we might still have been there sleeping when my mom got home from work at 6!
The rest of Friday and Saturday were spent unpacking as quickly as we could!
Lol I love Matt’s sad face in this picture
Matt and I were a good team — he worked on getting all the furniture put together and in place and then started unpacking the living room and all of our knick knacks/books/office stuff, while I worked on the bathroom and getting our bedroom/my closet under control. Yesterday’s efforts were Matt’s closet (for him) and the kitchen (for me). We also hung a bunch of pictures just to get them out of the way. Things are looking a lot better over here!
Time to get back after it — we need to finish organizing/unpacking the living room/dining room/office area (which is all one space). I’ll be back tomorrow to share some photos of our new place!
Happy Sunday, friends!
