”Really!?” I leap into his arms. He drops the screwdriver to the floor and holds me tightly as my legs wrap around his waist.
I don’t care how long it takes to rebuild the other house now. We’ll just sell it and use the profits to keep fixing up this house. Maybe we’ll even get a pool one day. We have the back yard space for it. I know Harper would love a pool and I bet Arko would, too.
I pull back and Jett sets me down gently on the floor. With my arms still around his neck, I can’t stop smiling as I say, “I love this journey for us.”
He kisses my forehead. “Told you it would all be okay.”
It’s the easiest moving day ever. My parents watch Arko while we take Harper to a nearby furniture store. We let her pick out whatever she wants for her bedroom and she chooses an adorable light pink furniture set. The bed has a fabric canopy that drapes across it, making her feel like a princess. There’s a matching dresser and night stand, and the best part? They can deliver it tonight.
Normally I’d want to spend all day perusing a furniture store, ambling slowly through every single inch of the place in search of the absolute perfect furniture for our style and space. Normally I’d want to go to several furniture stores, maybe more than once, before making a choice.
But this isn’t a normal day.
”What can be delivered today?” Jett asks the sales guy.
He motions to the left side of the store. “Everything on this side of the aisle is in stock in our in house warehouse and we can deliver by five. Everything on this other side needs to be ordered and takes about five days to get to you.”
Jett and I pick out a king-sized bedroom set in about three minutes. It’s a distressed wood style, painted white, and has kind of a farmhouse vibe to it which seems perfect for the style of our home.
While Harper bounces on every single couch, looking for the perfect “bounciness” to satisfy a four-year-old, we all decide on a living room set in about twenty minutes. Shopping on a time limit is fun and kind of thrilling. I thought I was excited to move into my first home, but I’m even more excited about this one.
“What else do we need immediately?” Jett asks as our sales guy rings up the stuff we’ve picked out already.
”We’ll eventually want furniture for the guest room, but that can wait…” I glance around the huge showroom floor. “Oh crap! A kitchen table!”
I can’t believe we almost forgot that. “The dining room table can wait—let’s pick out a cute little table for the kitchen area today.”
Once the sales guy hears our story about losing everything in a house fire, he talks to the manager and they tell us they’ll be delivering the furniture in an hour, and they give us a discount, which is so kind it brings me to tears. I absolutely love small towns, where everyone feels like family.
Our appliances are another story. The house came with appliances in the kitchen but they’re all dated and on their last legs. The fridge works, so we’ve got a few groceries in there for now but I don’t want to fill it up with food until our new fridge arrives next week.
As for the moving? We’ve bought a few clothes and toiletry items to get by over the last few weeks, and that all gets loaded up in the car with only a few garbage bags. Like I said, easiest move ever!
We stop to buy a new TV at Walmart and unpack it on the living room floor. With no internet installed yet, it’s kind of useless, but Jett streams his phone to the TV so Harper can be entertained while we figure out where we want the new furniture to go. It was delivered just as quickly as promised, and once we’ve situated everything where we want it to be in each room, my stomach growls.
”Babe, I’m starving,” I say, touching my stomach.
Harper had breakfast and lunch at my parent’s house but I’m starting to think we haven’t eaten at all today. I’ve been so busy I didn’t even stop to think about food.
I’m regretting that now.
”Pizza?” Jett says.
”Perfect.”
And it is perfect, until we sit down at our brand new kitchen table and realize one silly little thing: we forgot to buy dishes and paper towels.
”Mommy!” Harper says, eyes wide as she stares at the open box of pizza in front of her. “How do we eat with no plates?”
”Like this,” I say, grabbing a slice and taking a bite. I do a silly little dance while holding my pizza slice in the air. “We don’t need no stinkin’ plates.”
This makes her laugh. We eat our pizza and make a slight mess, but who cares? We’re making the best out of a wild situation.
Yep, we’re making the best out of it.
And that is exactly what I tell myself when I wake up at two in the morning to a cold shock on my face. I dreamed I was being hit with something, like a water blaster in a swimming pool. I blink awake, rolling over in a bed that feels weird because it’s brand new and I’m still getting used to it.
Cold hits my neck. I startle, fully awake now. What the heck is happening?
