Carlton Landing: Moving Weekend

Our House

May_25__2014_at_0813AM (1)

The greatly anticipated day of moving into our lake house at Carlton Landing finally arrived last week. Allow me to regale you with tales of flat tires, flat air mattresses, quickly hastened curse words, muttered death threats under one’s breath, and glorious shining moments of beauty amongst an an otherwise stressful moving weekend.

The highlights are as follows (if you’re here only for the photos):

  1. Flat tires and flat air mattresses.
  2. Big delivery of furniture and goodies from the Land of Nod followed by a big delivery of furniture from our house.
  3. A glorious night on the lake with friends and lots of community fun.
  4. Super fantastic neighbors that are willing to do anything for you at the drop of a hat.

Now here is the longwinded version for my own personal record-keeping.May_22__2014_at_0613PM

After an incredibly stressful week of the last few days of school, Jude and I headed down to Carlton Landing on Thursday afternoon. Simon stayed behind in OKC because of a closing on Friday morning he had to attend, and he and his handyman packed a Uhaul with all the furniture we’d acquired to take down to the lake so he could come down on Friday.

May_25__2014_at_0707PM

That makes it sound like a relatively simple proposition. Let me be clear: there was nothing simple about this. A comedy of errors ensued starting with the air mattress.

Since Jude and I would be arriving before Simon, it meant we would need an air mattress to sleep on, so I asked my mom if I could borrow hers. She said yes, but suggested I go buy a new one since she wasn’t sure if it had a hole in it or not from the grandkids jumping on it. I scoffed at this and decided to ask my sister. They said sure, but maybe they had holes in them too. I scoffed at this as well. (Internet, this is what is known as foreshadowing.)

2014-05-22 16.14.39

So Jude and i packed the car to the absolute brim, including the dogs. We were like a chihuahua gypsy caravan. And in my overeagerness to get into the house, we arrived to a house that was not quite ready – still needed to be cleaned, windows covered with manufacturing labels, half the electricity not entirely working. But they graciously accommodated us and by 6:00pm, I was exhausted and sweaty with a house full of nothing except air mattresses, linens, lamps, a loaf of bread, peanut butter, a bag of Fritos, a Keurig, and an iced tea maker.

That night after a quick glorious swim that was totally well-deserved, Jude and I tumbled into the queen size air mattress and promptly fell to sleep. It was probably about midnight when I woke up to go to the bathroom and realized that at this point, we were sleeping in a giant air mattress taco. It was sloooooowly deflating. By morning, we were both on the floor, and wide awake with the sun streaming through the windows at the perky hour of 6:30am. (The moral of this story is this: my mother is ALWAYS RIGHT. ALWAYS BUY THE NEW AIR MATTRESS.)

Ahhh! But I brought the Keurig! WE! HAVE! COFFEE! There is hope! We stumble downstairs into the glorious white living room and kitchen (again: no window coverings yet) blinded by the light. I fill the Keurig and push ‘start.’ The neighbors are already stirring. I look and feel like a hag since I have not showered in 24 hours. We are like a fish in a fishbowl with nothing on the windows.And I realize after starting and restarting the Keurig that it is totally dead. There will be no coffee. I stifle a sob. AHHH! I think. THE ICED TEA MAKER! THERE IS STILL HOPE FOR CAFFEINE!

A few hours later the cleaning crew arrives, the electrician stops by, the window coverings lady comes in to give a consultation, and then I receive the call I’d been waiting for. FedEx was coming within the hour in a semitrailer truck to deliver a pallet of 16 boxes from the Land of Nod (can’t WAIT to show you all the good stuff!).

Internet, this is what a semitrailer truck looks like coming through our tiny town.

2014-05-23 12.08.54

This is what it looks like when they deliver a shrink wrapped pallet gets pulled off the truck by a very cranky delivery man.2014-05-23 12.13.34

And this is what it looks like when he leaves that pallet on your front stoop. Luckily our town founder was passing by a few minutes later and sent a team of burly men to unload the pallet and put every single heavy box in the room it was going to. I nearly cried with relief.

2014-05-23 12.17.08

Three hours later, I had everything unpacked just in time for Simon to pull up in the UHaul and we grunted, groaned and nearly cried with getting everything unloaded and placed in the house. By this point I was exhausted and delirious and hangry (angry with hunger). So I got the car and drove up to the pool to pick up Jude and Simon, who promptly told me that my rear tire was flat as could be.

This was the second time of the day that I said some rather unsavory words (the first time was when I dropped the couch as we came out of the Uhaul). And then our gracious, lovely new neighbor kindly offered me the use of her car so I could run into town to get some food for us. Jude proclaimed, “Everybody here is SO NICE!” Yes, honey. Beyond nice. Good neighbors in the truest sense.May_25__2014_at_1010AM

So that was the hard part. In the end, the tire got fixed, the fridge got stocked with good stuff, and we got settled into the house safe and sound. We sat on the porch one evening and kept saying, “I  can’t believe we’re doing this. It’s really happening.”

May_25__2014_at_1241PMMay_22__2014_at_0420PMMay_25__2014_at_0846PM

I can’t wait to share more of our beautiful little town with you. A big huge thanks to the Corbins and Humphreys for helping out with Jude and letting him play with your kiddos while we managed the craziness of moving. I owe you guys BIG TIME.

Stay tuned for more pics and a full tour coming later!  And snaps to you if you made it this far through the post.

with love,
Rachel

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *