Coming Up Roses

I've had some people in my life (cough EM cough) who have been dying for some updates. As you can imagine, she doesn't want updates on my life, or our latest adventures, but on the Judebug. Go fig.

Sorry to leave you all hangin. We've been getting adjusted to life down in the Lou and blogging took the backseat. I'll try my best to get you all caught up.

So we loaded up a Uhaul on Tuesday, June 26 (our 2 year anniversary, and let me tell you, nothing's more romantic than loading a uhaul on your anniversary. Mostly because it's reality all rolled into one. You honestly think, if we can make it through this, we can make it through anything!) And we barely made it. We started loading things on the lawn and slowly realized there was no way we were going to get all of it on one truck. I nearly died. DIED I tell you! We had no back up plan and the stress level went from stressed to I literally have no idea what to do. So I did what I always do, and turned to Christopher for all the answers. This is the one time when he didn't have them. So we freaked for like 5 minutes and decided we'd need to get another truck and load it quickly the next morning. We were supposed to leave at 8am the next day, but now that wasn't going to happen.

Wednesday morning was nuts. I called Uhaul at 7am to see if they had another truck for us. Luckily they did and at 8 Chris and I drove to get it. We met Chris's parents, his sister Jenny and my brother Alex over at our house and started to load it up. Thankfully, my mom was watching Jude. But of course, as life would have it, I noticed 2 huge bumps on Jude's lower stomach earlier that morning when I was changing his diaper. I'd never noticed them before, so that was bugging me the whole morning, especially since I was away from him and couldn't see how he was acting. I knew I had to call the doctor about it. So I did, and the nurse's response was, "Well, we should probably see him immediately." I responded with something along the lines of, "Is it an emergency? We are literally loading up a uhaul to move to St. Louis and plan to leave at noon." I felt like a terrible mother when the nurse's response was, "Well, I don't know if it's an emergency, but I would suggest if you don't come and see us then you should see someone down there sooner than later. I'll make a note that we suggested that you come in but you were moving to St. Louis." Oh great, make a note saying mom was too busy. Ugh. So I called my mom and she said she would take him. I ended up meeting her there and they were able to squeeze us in fairly quickly. Even more quickly, the doctor (not our regular one, because of course it was her day off) walked in, felt the bumps, and immediately explained they were lymph nodes. I've never seen such huge lymph nodes, but I cried, cause at least he was ok (and let's be honest, it was a good excuse to 'let it all out' if you know what I mean).

My mom, thank God for her, was so good at telling me everything would be ok and that moving is always stressful and never goes how you plan (not to mention, they've had their fair share of ER visits while moving...not to name names but their second child ended up splitting her chin open en route to Baltimore...they weren't even sure they had insurance at the time. For crying, kids are stressful!) So I took a breath and headed home, where, to my surprise, the truck was almost loaded. We were able to leave at noon and I swear I cried until like 2, if not later. Our caravan was led by Christopher driving the biggest truck with Mary riding shotgun, Mike driving the other truck solo, Jenny driving their family's car, then Jude and I in my car, followed by my brother Alex driving Chris's car. It was one of those times when my 'caravan' flag invention from years past would've really come in handy. We arrived in St. Louis around 8 and wasted no time unloading the smaller truck (which wasn't so small). People slept good that night.

The next morning I did something that will go down in history as one of the best decisions I have ever made. I hired professional movers to help us unload the other truck. Did you know you can do that the day of? 150 bucks for 2 guys for 2 hours. BEST. IDEA. EVER. They knew what they were doing, and tackled the whole truck: 5 piece master bedroom furniture, sectional couch, washer and dryer just to name a few. They were monsters! And we were all happier because of it.

My stress level since that week has gone down significantly. I really don't think I have ever been that stressed in my life. My mom said it best when she said she'd rather have another baby than move a whole family out of town. It's just that stressful, and now I can agree with her. I turned to her at one point and told her I'd rather have a baby without an epidural than move, but now I've decided to take that back. Must've been my stress talking.

Needless to say, we've had our major bumps along the way, but all in all, it has been such a great transition. Christopher and I are obsessed with our house, love our neighborhood, and are really enjoying all that St. Louis has to offer. Not to mention, Chris is LOVING his job as a Radiologist. He never loved internal medicine so last year it was tough for him to go to work everyday when he knew it wasn't what he wanted to do. Now he's heading into work so much happier, sitting in a nice cool room reading Xrays and coming home at a decent hour. It's still stressful for him since he's learning so much everyday, but I can tell the difference in his mood. Yay!

Besides the move, Caitlin and Jonny came to visit us for 2 weeks and it was the best and fastest 2 weeks ever. More about that next time because I haven't uploaded those pics yet. But we already miss them!

Here are some pics from the move. Just looking at them stresses me out. I swear our house has made some progress since!

Before we left Omaha