Love is all you need

We had a great weekend with all four of our parents here to help us out. It was a proper work party and one of those moments when something you've slogged away at for a long time suddenly comes together with a click, or a whoosh, depending where you stand.

Thursday John's parents flew in from Florida and my mom drove down from Pennsy--we ate a great dinner Mom brought with her, outside on our picnic table, and packed and got stuff ready as much as we could. My dad arrived late, after the rest of us were asleep, since he'd had a long bus trip earlier in the day before the 6-hour drive to Virginia. (And he's the bus driver! No sleeping!)

Nonetheless he was up before we were, already coffeed and climbing around on his trailer by the time I emerged Friday morning. All 6 of us went to work loading stuff onto his trailer and truck, my mom's big conversion van, and my minivan. (The amount of stuff we could have put in the Rabbit, much to John's chagrin, was deemed not worth the gas.) Once all the vehicles were full we headed out to Nellysford, bound for the self-storage units just behind the IGA (we need to keep our house sort of empty while we keep working on it, so we're storing a lot of our stuff). Just before we started out John's dad asked if we were sure they had an open unit. "I think so" was the best I could do, so I then spent the half-hour drive thinking about how stupid I'd feel if they didn't.


As it turned out, we got the LAST open storage unit! How's that for luck. If that hadn't worked out, we would have been headed for Charlottesville, 35 minutes in the wrong direction.

Put our stuff in, locked it up tight, and proceeded to the house. There was a big dramatic moment as all our parents walked into the bathroom and applauded. Then we got right down to testing the plumbing. John turned on the valves in the basement and heard the water splooshing away toward the kitchen and bathroom; then we let water into the toilet, sink and tub and watched for leaks. There was a leak under the sink and another under the tub. But oh, the feeling of seeing water run in that bathroom!

Our moms got down to work mopping our dusty floors so we could bring everything inside. We decided that we'd sleep in Esmont for one more night to give more time to deal with the leaks, fix the water heater and finish up caulking the tub before needing to shower here. After we were all unloaded we got some lunch and headed back to Esmont for a second load of stuff.

Packed and packed...it's all a blur...caravaning back to Nellysford with another full load...storage unit, then house...up and down the stairs. At some point John discovered that a compression fitting under the kitchen sink had burst and was flooding the crawlspace for hours, since we'd first turned on the water. One more thing for tomorrow's list. And another surprise, this one much happier: an excellent housewarming present waiting on the porch from Rachael and Rodrigo! Aw!

At last we started trickling back toward Esmont just before dark. John and were last to leave, stopped in Nellysford to get some pizza for everybody, and realized we needed some info about the water heater for the next morning. Ran back to the house and looked it up. Went home. Ate pizza sitting on the living room floor. Where is home, anyway? Now our Esmont place was nearly empty. Goodnight, little white house.

- Erika