Don’t worry, that’s not a pregnancy reference – the Bean did not make an early appearance this past weekend.

No, I’m referring to the other kind of labor: manual.

Justin and I offically moved into our new place on Friday (!) and not without the help of some very selfless and generous family members who are probably never going to speak to us again after all of the work that we made them do this weekend.

Justin and I ended up pre-signing our closing documents on Thursday (due to a busy Friday schedule for the lawyers) and then we did our walk-through on Thursday evening (our lawyer held onto the signed papers until he got the go-ahead from us that the walk-through had gone well). As expected, the house looked like it was in great shape and the previous owners hadn’t, say, thrown the fridge through the kitchen window since we had been there last. In fact, the very, very sweet couple who lived there before us couldn’t have been nicer – she even crocheted a baby blanket for the Bean and they picked up a welcome mat with our initial for the front door. I mean, come on.

So Friday morning came and Justin and I were up at the crack of dawn, ready to roll. Since we knew that we would be waiting around for a while until we heard from the lawyer that everything had gone through and that we could get the keys to the house, we went out for a leisurely breakfast before powering through any last-minute organizing and picking up the moving truck.

The rest of the day is kind of a blur – there was a lot of cleaning and organizing (which I was able to take part in) and even more lifting heavy boxes and heaving furniture up stairs (which I was unable to take part in). Our families were great, great sports and didn’t even complain when they would drag a rogue unlabeled box into the house, ask where it was supposed to go, and then have to turn right around when I would shamefully answer “the garage.” If I had been on the other end of that transaction, I probably would have hurled the box into the street and driven off, but we have luckily been blessed with very patient (and strong!) family members.

That being said, I don’t have any pictures of moving day, because something tells me that snapping photos of said patient family members as they sweated and dragged boxes out of a hot moving truck would have pushed one or all of them over the edge.

The rest of the weekend was spent going through boxes, finding places for everything, and wondering how we had accumulated so much stuff. There were a few trips to Home Depot and Bed, Bath & Beyond, a fridge re-stocking trip to Trader Joe’s (which is now just 10 minutes down the road!!), a trip back to our old place to clean up, and one or two trips to a frozen yogurt spot that is so close to our house that I’m both thrilled and horrified.

We’re definitely still getting settled, but we’ve pretty much passed through the “moving” phase and entered the “see which setup works best” phase, which we like much better. And I’m happy to report that Brody seems to be adapting to his new place beautifully. He made himself right at home and loves that he has about 10 times his previous number of windows to creep through.

We are currently without internet, though, so I can’t say for sure that regular blog posts will be back up just yet. Hopefully someday soon we’ll be back with regularly scheduled programming and recipes, pregnancy updates, and Brody’s mug will start making more frequent appearances. Fingers crossed!