THERE'S A LIZZARD OVER MY DOOR!!!! .... and other changes of the last two weeks

So I knew this move was coming but honestly expected it to be more organized, relaxed, like I planned it... who was I kidding???

We were planning on moving Monday, June 7th, my parents were going to hopefully help, although Dad wasn't a guarantee since recent rain had him really behind.  During planning Dad decided he really wanted to help us move, which meant we would save a ton b/c a U-Haul was going to be much more expensive than planned... but that also meant we would be moving on his schedule, or the weather's schedule which determines his schedule.  So after some frantic packing Thursday and Friday we were on the road early Saturday.  Amazingly enough all of our stuff fit into my Dad's big stock trailer.  It was weird to see all of our worldly belongings going down the road in the trailer!  Even better, nothing was broken!

14 hours, lots of breaks and 1 sick cat later we made it to my Granddaddy's house to crash for the evening.  Dan and Hannah came with us this trip and the other two will come to visit later!   When we came to move in Sunday morning I was kind of disappointed.  We could smell smoke from the former tenant when we walked in, wallpaper was still up that we requested be taken down and there seemed to be dirt everywhere.  Chris and I were able to swim with the kids after everything was unloaded into the apartment and we decided it would be best to stay at Granddaddy's again that night with the family.  Dad left for Indiana Monday morning and Mom stayed with us a few more days to help us clean and unpack.  We were planning on both kids staying with us the whole time Mom was down but Hannah decided that she had swam and seen where we were going to live and she was ready to go home!  so she went back with Dad Monday morning.

While Mom was here we were able to visit the natural museum and butterfly exhibit on campus and take Dan to the Springs.  The Springs are still one of my favorite places to go in Florida.  There aren't too many people, the water is crystal clear (and way colder than I remember), and you are surrounded by peaceful nature.

With Mom's help we got the kitchen and our bedroom scrubbed down so that I felt comfortable putting away clothes and dishes.  It was really hard to see her and Dan pull out Wed. morning... yeah I cried.  Even though I have Chris it was really hard not to feel alone.  We were in a strange town hundreds of miles from anyone we knew and I had been used to being surrounded (almost smothered at times) by family for the last couple months.  

We didn't have much time to dwell on their departure though.  The morning after they left maintenance guys came to take down the wallpaper and another guy came to install out internet.  Chris was busy with school and setting up our insurance, and I was trying to set up house and continue to unpack.  During this we found out that the wallpaper people were going to need to repaint after removing the wallpaper and they offered to paint whatever color we wanted!  I was really set on yellow (one of my friends has a happy yellow kitchen and I wanted to copy-cat), but it looked really awful next to our dirty white cabinets :(.  The red we were going to use on the living room wall however looked really good and we decided that would work well to tie the rooms together... we didn't know we would still have painting people in our house though....

Thursday was our four year anniversary and even though we are pretty close to broke we had some money put aside to go to a sushi restaurant we found last time we were in Gainesville.  We had fun trying some new sushi and vegging out for the evening!

During the course of the week and weekend we have been changing addresses, checking on loan stuff, trying to get licenses and car transferred, and all the little things we tend to forget about when moving!

In reference to the title of this post, my major 'we're not in Kansas anymore' moment happened two nights ago when returning from a walk around the complex.  It was dark out and in the light outside our door I saw something scuttling very quickly over and around our door!  My first fear was that we had a mutant spider living in our door, but Chris pointed out that it didn't move right for a spider.  On closer inspection we discovered it was actually TWO lizards crawling around on the walls outside our apartment!  GAH!  Not sure why I'm so weirded out by them but I am...

Sorry this is ridiculously long post but I wanted to catch you up!  I may do some 'back posting' on things that happened before we moved but I'm sure your eyes are tired by this point!