I’ve been asked to write a guest blog post that will be posted tomorrow so Flashback Friday has become “Flashback Thursday” for this week only 😉 I will still have the link-up open until Sunday at midnight…you can come back to this post even though my other one will go up tomorrow!
When I first thought up the idea of Flashback Friday this was actually the first post I made about it…this draft has been sitting in my blogger for over 2 years. Haha!
Zach and I were very blessed to become home owners at a young age…we bought our first home when we were engaged. I plant to do a flashback post just about this house. It was a GREAT house in a lot of ways. But a nightmare in others (had to have a new roof…new subflooring…had a drug dealer neighbor…straight up it wasn’t a safe enough area for me to even walk to the mail box by myself…). Needless to say, we KNEW it wasn’t a forever home. Heck. It wasn’t a home I was even willing to consider conceiving a baby in haha. By the grace of God alone we were able to sell it!!!
We had been married close to a year when we sold our first home and were able to purchase our second one. During that time in our lives we had SUCH amazing friendships. Katie and Ashley were my hardcore bffs. I often recall those days with such joy. How wonderful it was to be able to hang out 24/7. I wasn’t in school anymore yet I also didn’t have a job (Zach felt strongly that it was best for us to ALWAYS live off one income). Pretty sweet deal 😉
The title of this facebook album is “True Friends Help You Move” And it’s SO TRUE. This was a CRAZY weekend and I love that my best friends were there with us through it all. We have such funny memories from all the craziness and I know they will be laughing reading this as much as I have been laughing myself while writing it 😉
Ash and I loadin up the food into boxes!
The insanity that was our home prior to the move!
Making it official!
When we got married we TOTALLY forgot to have Zach carry me over the threshold so he did it the first time we stepped foot into our NEW home 🙂
He went around the whole house and took measurements of EVERYTHING for our big shopping trip. Ashley had to follow him and write it all down haha
We had saved up and had a LOT of money to spend and had the genius plan to close on our new house on Thur, drive to Atlanta for one night (Friday), rent a uhaul Saturday, buy ALL our furniture for the new house, bring it all back. THEN unload it in the new house that night and the next day use the same uhaul to move ALL our stuff from the other house to the new house, then unpack it all before returning to uhaul Monday morning. Just the four of us. I’m telling you…TRUE FRIENDS haha! To top it all off we had a MASSIVE garage sale that following weekend and they came to help with that too 😉
Taco Bell stop on our way to ATL!
This made me laugh out loud. We thought this sign on the bathroom door was SO STRANGE. What did it mean? And who the heck would tie down their kid like that?!?! Hahaha. Now as a Mom it’s like duh you idiots it’s a sign for a baby changing station (although, to be honest, I don’t ever strap my kid in it…)
We stopped at a Rooms To Go Outlet on the way up..it was horrible. So our next stop was IKEA. We joked that we were going to spend the rest of our lives there. It did feel like it! We planned to go through the entire store and price out everything we wanted then shop other places. Then when we were ready to head back to Valdosta we planned to go back to Ikea to actually buy everything. I wanted to have a mix of Ikea stuff and some more expensive looking pieces as too much Ikea can look cheap cheap, ya know?
Something we always loved about Ashley was how easy she was to read. Girl HAS to eat. Like on the reg or else it’s OVER. I love this picture. It’s an Ashley moment where she needs food and she needs it NOW 😉
FINALLY getting to grub…and we did it up right at Maggiano’s 🙂
Our fair share of free mints!
Y’all KNOW how cheap we are. This isn’t a new trait we’ve developed with time…it’s ALWAYS been how we roll. We stayed in one of those extended stay hotels. Oh. My. Goodness. I’m surprised Katie didn’t wanna make a Walmart run for new sheets…it wouldn’t have been the first time 😉 We stayed up laughing and laughing and this cracked us up. The room had SUPER high ceilings and a sprinkler hanging from it and they felt the need to post this sign beside the sprinkler? Who the heck would bring a LADDER tall enough into that room so they could put their hanger on the sprinkler head?? Or maybe this is just another example of a sign I simply don’t understand yet haha
The room did have a full kitchen…Zach made us a yummy pancake breakfast to start our day off right!
Our truck!
We spent Saturday shopping at all the furniture stores we could find in and around Atlanta. It was a LOT of shopping. Turns out most places don’t actually have furniture available for you to buy and take with you…you have to have it delivered and we lived too far away from any of the places they would deliver to. Great planning Em 😉 We ended up buying a couple things that had their stock warehouses in Atlanta and Zach drove the uhaul to their warehouse to pick them up himself (our mattress and I think our dining room furniture too!). We also lucked out and found a couple places that let us buy the stuff we wanted from their showroom. We saved money by Zach going to the warehouses (no delivery fee!) and got discounts for buying off the showroom. Score 😉
We found our buffet table and foyer table (which the buffet is actually a dresser…and the foyer table is actually made as an entertainment center…) at one store and our dining room table set at another. The dining room store let us borrow one of the chairs from the set to take to the other store to make sure the wood stain colors matched okay since all the pieces would be in the same room.
Zach acting like he was stealing the chair 😉
Thankfully the stores were SUPER close to each other but Ashley straight up rode like this to get there hahahaha. I still crack up at how the Bubba Keg is a lot more comfortable than she was 😉
Had to take a break for some 5 dollar foot longs (we went through a stage where we were OBSESSED with them!)
Zach left before we did to battle out Atlanta traffic and make it to the warehouses to pick up everything we couldn’t buy from the showrooms. The three of us drove to Ikea. We hit some intense traffic on the way there. Ashley was asleep while Katie and I were FREAKING OUT. I was completely out of gas. We were stuck in the traffic on 75 and rode with the ac off to try to conserve all the gas we could. We made it to Ikea with the miles left to go on ZERO. I’m impressed that we made it to a gas station after our shopping spree!
We were all pretty ready to just get it OVER WITH by the time we made it to Ikea. So we just bought everything we had on our list from the night before. It was the MOST giving Zach has EVER been. He didn’t question anything. We just bought it all haha. It took us 3-4 Ikea trips to get all the stuff returned that we didn’t actually need.
ALL of our stuff
We had cash to pay for everything but decided to open an Ikea credit card b/c they offered 5% back. Um that’s LEGIT! I’m def not one to be against opening up a store credit card if it’s worth it…and I just turn around and pay it off 🙂 I spent like an hour on the phone setting it all up though (so annoying) You can see Zach in the background just ringing junk up 😉
FINALLY finishing all the approval for the card!
The workers said it was the single largest Ikea purchase placed at one time in the actual store from a customer. I’m telling y’all…we LOVE Ikea!
By the time we were done the store had been closed for over an HOUR. A ton of the staff walked us out and helped us load the Uhaul. You know they just were ready to go HOME!
Loading it all up!
When we first rented the uhaul we debated on what size to get…SO thankful we rented the big one!!! We filled that thing FULL!!! We were VERY blessed with a lot of hand-me-down furniture for our first home together. A lot of stuff from our childhoods or stuff people gave us. It was all RANDOM but it was our starter home. We were in college. I think we made it work and I did truly love that house and how we had it set up and decorated. However, we were moving into a new home and knew we’d be trying for a baby in a couple of months. We were ready to grow up and basically sold ALL of our stuff at a garage sale (like, no joke, we made $3000 at that garage sale!!!) and started completely over. We were SO blessed to have the savings we did to be able to invest in furniture and accessories for our new home. We literally still own every single thing we bought furniture-wise. People can hate on Ikea but our furniture has held up AWESOME. This trip was in May of 2008 and it’s now Nov of 2012. It all made it fine through our move to our current home and I don’t see us getting rid of any of it anytime soon! So everything we bought that weekend was a worthwhile investment for sure 😉
It was after 11 but we were STARVING! We hit up IHop for some late dinner 🙂 We enjoyed seeing all the random kids in their prom attire eating there too?!?!
We got home at 4 am. Katie and Ashley took turns riding with Zach and I to keep us awake. We stopped about 1/2 way through the drive and switched driving partners 😉 If I remember correctly Zach was in a super silly mood and I’m pretty sure they had more fun in the Uhaul with him than they did when it was their turn to ride with me 😉 Better to have a uhaul filled with Ikea stuff than an open-bed trailer full of it all in the rain, right Katie? haha
We went to our current home to spend the night since we were getting up in less than 6 hours to MOVE anyways haha. I don’t know HOW we had enough energy for all of that!!! Katie and Ashley were SO awesome to help us. Three girls and one guy did the majority of the moving. Mr. Rusty did come by and help a little, but that was pretty much it. Zach was a beast. He CARRIED our washer and dryer. No wonder he had to have back surgery last year!!!
We took lots and lots of random breaks throughout the day. One of the breaks we set up our new couch (it’s still the current one we have too).
At about 1:30 Monday morning we were DONE!!!!
We were BEAT but still wanted to spend our first night in our new home. We slept on our new mattress (on the floor) and Zach hung up the shower curtain in our bathroom so he could take a quick shower then we were OUT 😉
Not only were Ashley and Katie A-MAZING that entire weekend but they also came by on and off to help us unpack everything. The neighborhood we moved into was all new construction so we thought it’d be a super smart idea to throw all of our moving boxes into one of the dumpsters. I mean no harm done, right? WRONG. A police officer shows up at our door wanting to talk to ME. All the boxes were ones that had MY NAME on them from online shopping..turns out it’s a crime to do that. We went back and fished them all out of the dumpster 😉 Learn something new everyday, right? 🙂
I really enjoyed the chance to remember back to that crazy, yet fun, weekend. We have so many wonderful memories and I’m thankful for those times! Being parents we just don’t get to have a lot of “friend time” anymore. I can’t remember the last time we had a game night. It’s just tough b/c most of our friends now also have kids so we can’t ever stay up late. And when we try to I end up falling asleep on the couch anyway 😉 I guess we’re just old farts now haha. At least we have so many fun memories so we can relive the “good ‘ole days” whenever we want to!
Happy to have our 2nd home together and ready to start a family!
Remember you can share ANY story you wish! Can’t wait to read about all of your stories 🙂
PS: This post was in my draft section before I even had my “Emily” signature! I’m telling you…I’ve been sitting on this whole Flashback Friday thing forever!!!
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You guys do look so young. I totally remember your 5$ footlong obsession. Haha. I can not believe you did that. We are to old for that kinda crap anymore. Haha