Almost House!

We are heading to sign the rest of our lease and then get the keys!

Fun Business Names We See in KS and OK

Toot! Toot! Cafe
Enchanted Frog Antiques
Alfredo's Mexican Grill
Jimmy Eggs (and the sign was a smiling egg wearing a chef hat holding a knife and fork)

I have a dirt-y passenger

About to leave wichita, and this is the dirtiest passenger I have ever had. Given all of the dirt Baby Ugly is potted in. Austin or bust.

Safely in Wichita

Made it to Wichita, the humans, the cats and the plants all safely caravanned 1/2 of our road trip to our new home. Motel 6 is nice enough to let the furballs stay for free. And it's relatively inexpensive for us to use as a place to sleep. We got Beanie a bluetooth headset so she would safer talking on the phone while driving, that's been a boon. Especially when one of us doesn't make one of our turns, we were both guilty of that once each today. My next update will likely come from a break mid-day or early afternoon tomorrow.

On a personal note it does feel weird that a company was hired to take all of our stuff away, and now I am technically jobless and homeless while in transit. ;)

And the road trip begins

Both cars packed and passengers of kitties and plants loaded and situated. Off towards Des Moines our first stop for lunch after a little later start than planned.

I would like to thank…

Dow Scrubbing bubbles, the fine folks behind CLR and Bar Keepers Friend, the entire Swiffer line of products, Clorox for their bleach and natural cleaners, citrus grill cleaner for cutting through almost any grease we could throw at it. And last but certainly not least Mr. Clean and his cancer causing Magic Erasers that I truly believe came from space, similar to Happy Fun Ball(tm). We had a nice dinner and are now wrapping things up here preparing for the great egress tomorrow.

What People Say About Austin

When we tell people where we are moving they say...

"Whoa Austin is coooool!"
"Austin is like the best place ever!"
"You'll like it because there is a lot of music!"
"Oh it is so warm in Austin! I'm jealous!"
"Yuck it is so hot there, you're going to miss the snow!"
"I want to move there! Lucky!"
"I'll trade you places and I will move there!"
"Houses are so cheap there"

But after awhile it starts to sound like
"Austin is amazing! Geckos dance around little bonfires making s'mores and there is magical music dust flying through the air and artist is the highest paying profession there and you are going to melt into a puddle of goo in July!" :)

Don't get us wrong we are excited about moving to Austin but we had some really great times in Iowa and we'll miss our family and friend. Everywhere is what you make of it :)

And for the most part people are being nice about where we'll be going but some people act like we're moving to sparkle awesome town extreme!!! And others insult it to make us feel bad about leaving maybe? All in all we are excited and I look forward to geckos dancing around.

Cleaning Day 2

I'm estimating only about 6 hours of hard core cleaning left. This coincides with our last full day in Iowa as residents. Pictures of the empty oldplace after breakfast, completing wake up and some cleaning.

Mostly Empty House Now

Almost all of our belongings are in the moving truck somewhere in St. Louis. The movers were driving there last night after they finished our house around 7.

I took the kitties to our motel room and they investigated everything and Tater Tot came up on the bed for a bit. Both of the kitties were under the bed before I left. They needed to be out of the house because a carpet cleaner come in and make interesting swirly patterns on the carpet :)

All of our stuff will be in there

I am sitting in the house watching it empty out into that truck. It's kind of surreal. I feel mostly in the way but I have to be here because of the pets. At least I can give them hints about our stuff that they likely don't need, since they are the pros.

The house looks so odd

I found a home for us in Texas a few weeks ago and we found a subletor for our home in Iowa so everything is a go for the move! We'll be Longhorns soon enough (but I think Josh will insist he is forever a Hawkeye).

The moving company hired for Josh's relocation package was here yesterday packing up our house. It was kind of hard to just sit and let them do things after years of moving everything ourselves. I do really appreciate that they are packing things for the long drive down and we don't have to pilot a gigantic U-Haul across country!

Everything looks so strange with boxes stacked three or four high in groupings all around rooms. Like cardboard totem poles. The cats were sequestered away in a room yesterday and when we let them out after the movers left they were completely confused. We let them sleep with us in the bedroom as a treat and Neo was cuddly and purring. Tater Tot managed to find multiple crinkly things to bring in the room and loudly chew on them with extreme crunchy annoying loudness. Little boogerhead!

Now the movers are back today to load the truck :)