After years of planning, months of grueling labor and two days of even more grueling labor, we have arrived in Vermont. Our old house is empty and the settlement for it is on Tuesday and our house-in-progress is a lot of half-finished major projects - electrical, cladding, dry-wall, concrete-pouring, etc. We have ended up in a small apartment about three minutes away from the build so we will be able to render our opinions and gaze upon its beauty several times a day if necessary.

We rented a 22’ Penske truck for the journey and paid Mambo Movers to load the truck for us. Because of our slightly-crazy levels of organization and consolidation, the load took only two hours. We locked the truck up for the night and slept on some inflatable beds before the trip.

We woke to heavy Pennsylvania rains and still had a lot of boxes to load onto the end of the truck gate and lots of last minute clean-up to do inside the old house. We ended the process with the car heavily loaded with gear as well as a cat, a dog and a three year old boy. I drove the moving truck and my wife drove the car and after a long, 10 hours worth of driving, we all made it to sunny Vermont safely and soundly.

Exhausted after the stressful drives, we locked up the truck and headed to our apartment. We wanted to order from our favorite take-out Asian restaurant Umami, but they were CLOSED (at 8pm?!) so we ordered some delicious burritos from Ranch Camp, sipped on our first Focal Bangers as locals and fell asleep not long after.

The rest of Memorial Day weekend is going to be taken up with unloading the truck, excavating the most-needed items and getting things ready for the work week ahead. I think we may try again to get a few snacks from Umami tonight, but we did a lot of farm-stand and grocery shopping today so we are going to start cooking and settling in here. I am sure that will help make it feel real because right now it still feels a bit like a vacation.