The Adventures of Love and Happiness: An Overview of Our Move to Montana

A lot has happened in the last month. It's actually pretty amazing what we've accomplished in such a short amount time and have still managed to settle in quite well in our new home.

It all started back on November 23rd. Paul got a call from his soon-to-be new boss offering him a job. He accepted the offer, of course, and there were lots of smiles, hugs and tears. We immediately hopped in the car and went and parked down by the river to discuss our plans. We decided to drive out to Montana to find a place to rent. We left on on Saturday, the 24th. After stopping at Paul's grandparent's house on Saturday night we drove the next two and half days to Helena. We stayed in a hotel that week and found our new place. We left my car in the new garage and flew home on Sunday, December 2nd.

Our original plan was to leave again on Friday, in a U-haul, for the official move. My mom was going to be out of town that week, making it so we couldn't say a proper goodbye. Paul, my sweet husband, changed our plans so we could see her before we left. :) After spending some time with my mom, we headed out on Sunday afternoon. Again, we stopped at Paul's grandparent's house for the night. On Monday morning, December 10th, we hit the road again.

The ride went as smoothly as possible considering we were in a huge U-haul and hauling Paul's Jeep behind it. I had every intention to help Paul drive but needless to say I never did. He drove the entire trip by himself! All in all we drove in 9 states, over 2,000 miles and 37 hours of driving. The U-haul got approximately 7 miles to the gallon, sometimes worse. This move wasn't cheap.

On Wednesday, December 12th, we made it to our new place! We spent the afternoon unpacking as much as we could. Poor Paul had to listen to me complain about my tired arms after I helped move in all our big furniture. One of the downfalls of moving somewhere that you don't know a soul is not having help on moving day. On Thursday we finished unpacking the U-haul and began to unpack our boxes. It felt so good to see our things again, lie on our couch and make up our bed. I hadn't see any of our things since the end of August! By Friday, most of our things were unpacked and our house (condo) started to look like a home! We even had time to go lease our snow skis for the season and buy a snow shovel. There's a first time for everything! On Saturday we got a Christmas tree and spent our first date night in Helena decorating our tree, listening to Christmas music and eating hot bowls of homemade chili.

And that's about it for the "move" part of the adventure. We spent the next week exploring Helena, setting up insurance, cable and getting ready for Christmas. It really has been a busy month but things are really starting to fall into place and our chaotic life is starting to calm down!

Here are some pictures from our trips. Most are from our first trip out in our car. We tried to get pictures of the state signs but most didn't turn out too good!