The insanity of moving during finals week

It rarely becomes so difficult to write in my journal that I miss a day. But I’ve missed the last two days! Let me see if I can explain why.

Tuesday morning, I got to the Animal Science building on campus around 8:30 am so that I could study before grading finals. Grading finals went from 9:30 am to 6:00 pm. At that time I left the grading crew so that I could go home and help load the moving van. When I was about to leave, I turned around and smiled at everyone. They wished me luck on my internship and said goodbye. The last thing Dave said to me: “Don’t get hired!” One of the best compliments ever.

I gathered some things around the house while Karen and her mom and Rich went to Little Caesar’s to get some pizzas for the movers. Around 6:45, members of the ward started showing up to help. I thought it would go really fast, but the 14-foot truck was a tighter fit for everything than I initially thought. After putting things in and taking them out and adjusting how things fit together, we had it all ready to go around 9:00 or 9:30. The plan was to keep the mattresses in the apartment so we could sleep for the night, but that seemed like less and less of a good idea, so we grabbed a hotel in town.

By the time we were situated and Rich was in bed, it was about 11:00 pm. I studied for my finals until about 11:50 pm, at which point I went to bed. But Rich cried all night! So I got about three hours of sleep. And wouldn’t you know it—we looked out the window Wednesday morning to find thick snow coming down! Karen took me to campus and I, somehow with enough energy to be there, took my two finals. Karen’s mom picked me up from campus so we could check out of our hotel and then check out of our apartment and then hit the road.

We stopped in Ontario for the night, which was great. Unfortunately, Rich refused to sleep unless he was on top of me, so I held him until about 7:00 am, at which point he noticed he was near his mom as well, so he was okay with sleeping between us (not what he normally does). We hit the road again this morning and finally arrived in Portland around 6:00 pm. We are relieved.