WE'RE DONE!

The movers are done that is!

This was officially the fastest pack/load we've ever had. And can I say Hallelujah to that?!?

Packers showed up at 0930 yesterday and left around 1700.

The loaders were here bright and early this morning (read: 0745) and were driving away with all of our HHG (household goods for all you civilians out there) at 1145! WAHOO!

I'm sitting here on our couch with my feet propped on the ottoman waiting for 1430 to roll around so I can leave to make it to D's graduation on time! AJ and the dog are both napping and life is good!

Wait.

You thought I said that all of our stuff was gone, right? Well, I think I mentioned before that my little (24 year old) brother moved about 2 hours away from us right? Since this is his first apartment he is going to be inheriting our couch, loveseat, and ottoman when we leave and we're getting new ones at our next duty station.

Considering the fact that we have to hang around this hell hole place for another 5 days our plan to have the brother get the couches early next week could not have worked out any better. We have somewhere to sit for the next 5 days!

After our last move I could not be happier with the way things went over the past 2 days. To give you an idea of how bad that move was, I'll attempt to explain what happened when the moving truck finally pulled up to our house (14 days after we got here).

Side door of the truck opens.

Driver pulls several random objects off the top and starts holding things up in the air asking, "Is this yours?"

One of the things he held up was a pillow.

I'm not kidding.

It wasn't our pillow. Thank the sweet baby Jesus.

If you've never had the military move you before (or just professionals in general) then let me explain a little something real quick. When you move the packers and loaders (usually two separate crews) go through everything you own and tag it with little numbered tags. The tags are a specific color and they write down what each and every item is on an inventory as they go through.

There is no reason that the driver should ever pull something off the truck and ask if its yours. He should know that your shipment is everything with the yellow tags (or blue, or green, or whatever) and as the crew brings the boxes and furniture into your house, they call out the number on the tag. 47! 189! 2! etc. As you hear the numbers, you quickly scan the 8 (or more) sheets of inventory and check off the number.

At the end, you should know exactly what you're missing.

Needless to say, we had a few missing items last time, not to mention a few broken items. Couple that with the fact that it took 14 days for the truck to arrive after we got here, and well, you could imagine that I was less than pleased. We didn't get here super fast or anything. We had a 3 month old baby at the time.

Anyway, there's your little lesson on how to move when you hire a professional moving company. I consider myself to be somewhat of an expert considering that this is the fourth time we're moving in three years (fifth if you count when I moved from Hometown, USA to GA to join D at BOLC).

Alright folks, I'm signing off for now. I'm going to relax for an hour until our neighbor gets here to watch AJ for the graduation.