We made it! It was probably the worst move ever, but we all arrived in Mesa Arizona alive. The original plan was to pack up the truck Wednesday night, leave Thursday morning, drive 11 hours and stop in El Paso for the night. Then Friday they were supposed to drive the last 7 hour to arrive in Mesa by 3 pm and meet up with the realtor to check in and have the ward help move us in Saturday morning at 7:00 am and pick us up from the airport at 5:00 Saturday night.
Well.... none of that happened the way it was supposed to.
Mike's dad arrived on Wednesday afternoon just in time to help us pack up the 24 foot moving truck with the help from some awesome friends until about 8 pm and then we cleaned (I cleaned while they cooled off from being out in the humidity) so we were totally ready to go the next morning.
Morning came and the girls and I watched them drive off into the Houston traffic around 8 am with nothing but our suitcase worth of things left in the house. Thanks to the Tingeys, who fed, entertained and shuttled us around, we stayed content and entertained. Mike on the other hand..... had the moving trip from you know where......
Things were going smoothly until they were in between San Antonio and El Paso i.e. THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE. Once you get west of San Antonio, there really is not anything until you reach El Paso. Then the truck started overheating so they had to drive with the HEATER on, in the middle of Texas, to keep the car from exploding, while driving slower to keep the car cool. So around 11 pm, they arrived and scheduled to have the mechanic come at 7 am. By 9:30, the mechanic figured out that the cool fan was broken and they could not get them a part until Monday.
Many hours, phone calls and unreturned phone calls later with awful customer service, they figure out a plan of moving everything from our truck into another truck. Thankfully Mike and his dad did not have to do this part, but it didn't start until 9 pm and they were not on the road until 11pm. To be able to make it to meet the moving helpers, they had to drive through the night to arrive in Mesa.
Well, about 40 min out of El Paso the truck TOTALLY STOPS! Mike calls the customer service line again and they send out a mechanic... an hour and a half later. A couple of bottles of water later into the radiator, they were back on the road again, in the middle of the night, on no sleep, in their second truck that broke down.
They were able to make it only 15 min late (after I changed the time to 8:00 am). The problem now was that the power was not on. I had signed up for mesa utilities thinking that the power was included, but little know to me was the in my little area they were not the company that provided power, so we had water and gas, but not power = no AC. They spent the entire day in a house in Mesa with no AC after having had no sleep the night before. A few calls to the company hours after the power should have been turned on and they had turned on the wrong apartment's power.
In the end, we all arrived, alive and things are much better now. We just now also know that the next time we move, we will pay someone else to do it!
Mike's Dad's flight did not leave until Monday, so on Sunday night we headed over to see the Temple and visit the grounds there. It is BEAUTIFUL and we loved it there. The air might be hotter, but it is not quite as humid. The shade seems to be cool enough for us and for the most part, we like the weather here better than Houston. We really miss our friends though, and have had to adjust to no Madison and Angie every day, but we are getting better day by day.
Thanks Dad, for taking time out of your schedule to help Mike in the truck, it would have been awful to have done it alone! I am also glad that we had planned on the girls and I to fly out, oh how grateful we really are for that!
