DUVAL COUNTY-IT'S OFFICIAL!!!!!!!

We signed a lease and are now residents of Downtown Jacksonville. Moving was the most horrible thing I had to go through in a while. Thank goodness I was so excited about our place, because if not, I probably would've just set a match to our storage unit. All of our belongings were in Pensacola at Uncle Bob's storage. We moved our stuff out on April 11th and had to pay for a full month ($130) even though they only had our stuff for 11 days! Once we loaded the truck I began to look at our stuff and wonder why we even sent some of it to storage instead of to the dumpster. It was hot & my allergies were in full force. Our goal was to have the truck loaded and be out of Pensacola atleast by noon. We didn't make it on the interstate out of Pensacola until 3:30pm. Marcus Sr did not want me to drive our 22 foot moving truck from Penske and since I usually have to drive the entire trip when we come home to Pensacola, I did not argue with him eventhough I am a far better driver than he is. After a quick stop in Milton to get Marcus Jr some lunch we were in full travel mode. Lil Marcus was sick so I was on snot duty. I made sure to keep Lil Marcus as comfortable as possible and out of Marcus Sr's hair so he could focus on the road. After about 80 miles (almost in Panama City) I could tell that Marcus Sr was sleepy. His fear of me driving could not compete with his heavy eyes, so he pulled over and we switched. I must admit that I was a bit nervous. It was a big, rigid, diesel truck, with little visibility-only the side view mirrors. I had the clench of death on the steering wheel!
Marcus Sr went to sleep right away and eventhough I was driving, the same duties I held with Lil Marcus continued: still on snot duty, handing him his juice, talking to him about the cars, and trying to stop him from rubbing his itchy allergy eyes; all the things I was doing so Marcus Sr could focus on the road. I drove from around exit 80 something all the way to exit 256. We stopped to get gas.

The truck was on a quarter tank of gas, so we put $50 in it. If you know anything about big diesel trucks then you are probably laughing at us because $50 didn't do jack for the tank, only raised it another quarter. Marcus decided that after sleeping for almost 200 miles that he could handle the last hundred. The last 100 miles went rather smooth until we got into Jacksonville city limits. The only way to get our furniture in was to use a freight elevator from the parking garage. You can only sign up for certain times and our time started from 5pm-10pm, but our concierge told us that we could keep it until 11pm if we needed it. By the time we got in the city limits of Jacksonville it was 9:50 pm (eastern) and there was construction going on and many signs stated that the interstate would be closed on April 11th from 10pm to 5pm. Murphy's Law-it was April 11th and it was 10 minutes until 10pm with only one lane opened on the interstate and 55 mph allowed. We needed to get to our apartment before the concierge left for the evening and avoid getting rerouted, for we wouldn't even began to know which way to go-especially because the GPS battery was dead. Luckily we made it off the interstate exactly at 10pm and rushed in only to find out that the concierge didn't leave until 11pm. She was very understanding and allowed us to use the freight elevator until midnight. So here we are after a long rough ride to Jacksonville, in a moving truck that drove no faster than 70 mph, had to move our stuff alone, with Lil Marcus in our way. We got the big items off the truck like the couch, mattresses, Lil Marcus' bed, and the washer and dryer. At midnight the parking garage closed and we had to park and secure our truck, but we didn't have a lock for the back(correction: we did have a lock, it just didn't fit-Murphy's Law). I don't know if you've paid attention to the national news, but a lot of the stories are right out of Jacksonville; the lady caught beating the baby on the nanny cam-Jacksonville; Little Haliegh Cummings and Sommer Thompson-Jacksonville, did you hear about the guy who robbed the bank in broad daylight, ran across the street to a Wendy's to carjack a mom with her two kids in the drive thru, only to have the Jacksonville police kill him and shoot 42 rounds in the car and shoot the mom and her two year old son and land him in critical condition-well that happened here. I even heard, but haven't yet confirmed that some guy cut his mom's head off last night(I confirmed it (5/01/2010-he did cut he head off and went to church to play the drums).Anyway, needless to say we needed to get a lock for our remaining belongings, which means we had to drive all the way to Wal Mart, we didn't get back home until after 1am. The next day we unloaded the rest of the truck and bought a storage room next door for some of our things that would not fit. We are coming from a 3 bedroom house to a two bedroom loft, so there was a lot of things that just would not fit. Below are some pictures I took the second night after we moved in. The pictures was taken with my smaller lens that was broken about a year ago. I was playing around with it and got it to kinda work, but the pictures are blurry. I will add new pictures once we get everything decorated in properly set. Be nice, we were still unpacking!!!!

                                                                      

I fell in love with this place for its unique design and location . Our apartment has exposed pipes and ducts with vaulted ceilings. We have the cutest little kitchen and the biggest bathrooms. Our master bath has a garden tub and a ceiling that stretches to the sky. Even our toilets are flushed by pushing a button (one side labeled with one wave for when you do "number one" and the other side with two waves for a stronger flush for when you do "number two) on the wall. I am almost done decorating Lil Marcus' bathroom (the frog pics) and we are almost done with the living room. We are in walking distance to many shops, cafes, and venues. I am enjoying living in downtown Jacksonville so far and so excited discovering my surroundings.