Stress alert: We were about 6 hours into our drive when we got a call from our renter, Jeff. They had moved into our house three days before. Jeff called to tell us that he'd just lost his job. Talk about stress!!!! I tried to not totally freak out. He said they still planned on staying in our house. Relief. Kind of. From that point on Jeff and his family and Jeff finding a job became part of my regular prayers.
We drove to Oklahoma City the first day and went to the Oklahoma City Memorial the next morning - July 4th. There is an amazing spirit there and it was quite an emotional experience for me.
Zach, Parker and John looking at the memorial wall
This wall above has 9:03 etched into it (the minute after the bomb exploded).There is an identical wall to this one at the other end of the reflecting pool that has 9:01 etched into it (the minute before the bomb exploded). In the span of 2 minutes the lives of these people and this city were changed. Forever.
There is a chair for every person that was killed on this day. The smaller chairs represent the children that were killed. That really got to me. I'm so thankful we took the time to stop and take advantage of this opportunity.
We arrived in Georgia late that night. We were so glad to finally be here!
The next day, Monday, we took the kids to see our new house and to get our keys.
Our new house
Our moving truck was supposed to be here the next day, and since I hadn't heard from them, I called them. They still hadn't been able to find a driver (they loaded 1 week earlier) but hoped our stuff would be in Georgia by Friday. So we decided to make good use of this delay and do some painting. The people we bought the house from had two little girls. We have quite a different kid mix than that and so we needed to repaint some little girls' rooms to be better suited for teenage boys and girls. And for some reason our sellers really liked blue paint. In all shades of blue. Now, blue is my favorite color, but not on lots of walls. So we started painting. And we painted. And we painted.... you get the picture. And I really do not like to paint. At all.
We painted 7 rooms in all that week, and that's before we started working on the basement. Which is another story for another time.
Kailen and Parker stayed at the hotel with the girls while John, Zach Kam and I painted. The cute little girls' rooms had cute little girl-type sticky things on all the walls and on all the ceilings and cute little girls' wallpaper borders. Zach became an expert at removing cute little girls' sticky things and wallpaper borders and patching them so we could paint. I'm so thankful we have big kids who were willing to help with all of this! :o)
Thursday we got a call from the movers and they had finally found a driver, but he wouldn't be arriving at our house until..... Monday. But, since they had missed their delivery window they would be paying us some money. We thought that was awesome until we realized we had no clothes for church on Sunday. So we went shopping that Saturday. Which, in theory, sounds like a fabulous thing. But in reality, not so fabulous. We had to buy everything....belts, shoes, socks, white shirts, pants, ties, skirts, tops, slips, and accessories (of course). And it's hard to find things when you really, really need them. We put that money from the movers to good use. :o)
Our first Sunday in our new ward went really well. We already knew our realtor and her husband and it was awesome to already have friends your first day in a new ward. Our ward was really friendly and very welcoming. It was a huge blessing!
Stress alert: The moving truck did show up on Monday. Our driver didn't help with the actual moving-in-of-stuff much because he said he'd recently hurt his arm (clue #1). The moving guys were great. They were very willing to put things where we wanted them and had a pretty good attitude. They rolled my piano in first and set it in it's room. Then they moved everything else in. From time to time the driver and I would joke about my "baby" (piano) and how anyone who hurt it would probably receive some bodily injury.
After everything was moved in they started to unpack my piano. Let me give some background on this piano. I have dreamt of having a baby grand piano since I was a little girl. For our 20th anniversary we found a steal of a deal on a 1916 Mahogany Chickering parlor grand piano. Back in the day Chickering was THE piano. It's absolutely gorgeous and has the most beautiful sound. The man we bought it from had owned it for 40 years and he almost started to cry when we went to pick it up, but he was thankful it was going to a good home where it would be very well loved. He was only in AZ part of the year and hated for it to be sitting there unused.
So, I'm in the kitchen starting to unpack kitchen stuff when the driver comes to me and says (cue music: "dun dun dun dun") "You're going to need to file a damage claim on your piano." "What?" At first I thought he was kidding because we'd been joking about my "baby" throughout the day. I actually asked him if he was joking. He said "no." Then my heart really fell. Clear through to the basement. It got really quiet in our house. I went to look at it and this is what I saw (these pictures are not for the musically weak of stomach):
(See the long crack?)
And these pictures really don't do the damage justice and don't show the damage to the insides. Some bolts were actually sheared right off.
I asked the driver what had happened and he told me that the mover guys who were moving our stuff from the warehouse onto his truck in Phoenix had dropped it. Thankfully Phoenix is 3 hours behind us so I immediately called the moving company, told them who I was, and was immediately transferred to the General Manager (not a good sign). Before I could even tell him why I was calling he said, "Mrs. Kelley, your driver dropped your piano." I told him that my driver had just told me, to my face, that the mover guys had dropped it. He said, "No, they came to me and told me that the driver was trying to move it by himself, dropped it, and hurt his arm." (Remember the clue from above?) The General Manager assured me that they had already been in contact with a piano repair guy here in Atlanta and that he would be calling me the next day. He also assured me that they would make things right.
I hung up the phone and was Aaaannnngggggrrrryyyyy. I went to the driver and told him I had just talked to the office in Phoenix and they had told me what really happened. That driver had lied right to my face! That made me angrier than anything. I understand that things can happen, and I would've been upset if he'd told me the truth, but not as upset as I was. I started to cry and went outside. And started pacing up and down the driveway. Kam came out to check on me and paced with me for a bit. I got myself back together and went back into the house. The driver was getting ready to leave, because I think he knew his goose was pretty well cooked, until I reminded him that, per our contract, he was to put all our beds together before he left. He got really nice and put our beds together in record time. He apologized and I told him what bothered me the most was that he lied to me. Then he left.
All the kids were so sympathetic and loving after he left. They chipped in and did above and beyond that night to get things ready so we could go to bed. They kept telling me things would be okay. They were awesome! Kam took this almost as hard as I did because she loves to play the piano too, and we love to hear her play.
The piano repair guy came the next day and took our piano. It took 6 long weeks to make all the repairs and it came back in beautiful condition and still with it's beautiful sound. I was so thankful for an awesome repair guy and an equally awesome tuner who spent many hours putting it back together and getting it just right. You can only see the damage if you know it's there, and even then it's hard to see it.
And even though this was a very stressful couple of weeks, I can still see the blessings we received during this time. Which makes me feel very, very grateful. :o)
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