Houston, this is Tranquility Base...

...the Eagle has landed.

OK, we made it to Cleveland. It's been a hectic, crazy, sometimes ridiculous week, but we made it.

Wednesday morning we picked up the moving truck, a 24-foot U-Haul. At first, I thought "this truck is huge. too big." But by the time I rolled that door back down (Thursday evening), it was packed front to rear. The front half was neatly packed on Wednesday, thanks to help from Larry and Paul. By the time Thursday evening rolled around, as we were racing to get everything in, I was tossing stuff randomly into the truck like we were the Beverly Hillbillies. But the door finally closed, the lock locked, and it was time to hit the road.

We set out Friday morning, with me driving the truck along with Wacko (think Snowman and Fred from "Smokey and the Bandit"), Brenna and the girls packed in her car, and Jan (thanks, Jan!) and Tango (who moved briefly back to Wisconsin) in my car. I kept yelling "Watch that Bandit runnnn!" to Wacko, who would just look confusedly at me. But he perked up once we got past Chicago, when I revealed to him that I had HOTDOGS AND CHEESESTICKS in the cooler. After that we both settled down and listened to NPR the rest of the way.

The weather was fine, no snow at all, even though it was predicted that Cleveland would be getting bombed by snow. In an amazing feat of timing, we all managed to simultaneously arrive at my/our house, even though I had left 45 minutes earlier than they did, and we all had taken different routes through Chicago. I parked the van on the street, and we were done.

So all was well, the drive had gone without a hitch. Which of course means its time to do something stupid. So I did. I said "I can pull that van into the driveway, no problem!". Two hours and three huge ruts (Sorry, Molly and Jon!) later, I was paying the tow truck to pull me out of the yard and back onto the street. Sigh.

Move-in day dawned, and miraculously the snow had held off. With help from Paul, Craig, Stacy, and Anne, we got the truck unloaded and into the house. And Heather minded Wacko so that we didnt have to worry about him making a run. Thanks to all of you. The house now looks stuffed to the gills, furniture and boxes everywhere.

Oh, and I know everyone wants to know how the animals are getting along. I'll update that in a post soon...