Packing and Upside down Pickup

It's been a crazy week.  Above is a picture of the Scratch Gravel Hills fire that was burning much of the week.  Luckily, not too close to us but 4 homes were lost and a lot of people were evacuated.  We are moving into the new house (yes, finally!) tomorrow so have been busy packing.  Jan was nice enough to come down for a few days and has been busy cleaning the new house in preparation for move-in.  We can't thank her enough!  Everything is done although we don't yet have cabinet doors/drawer fronts for our island.  After we installed the island cabinets we noticed the stain color didn't look quite right.  Turns out, it wasn't.  They stained them the wrong color, a reddish brown, when we had requested a chocolate-brown walnut stain.  We debated what to do but ultimately decided we would be annoyed if we didn't get it right.  However, we didn't want to wait 6 weeks for new cabinets (which would have delayed our move in).  So...a local cabinet company took them out, sanded them and restained the bases.  Those have been reinstalled so we could get the countertops installed.  They are getting us new doors/drawer fronts with the right stain color as well but those aren't ready yet.  So...we're close.  Counters are in, glass tile backsplash is in, lights are hung...but the cabinets will remain open for a few more days (hopefully only days).

CK also had a rough start to the week.  Tuesday he was trying to move the manlift onto a rented trailer and the weight shifted unexpectedly.  This lifted the back of the pickup (which the trailer was attached to) which disengaged the breaks.  That started the whole thing sliding downhill, the pickup then slid up the embankment  on the right side of the road and flipped over.  CK got to watch the whole thing while standing in the manlift (on the trailer) looking for a good place to jump (which, luckily, wasn't necessary).  Thankfully no one was injured but the pickup has been towed to a Missoula salvage yard and likely isn't coming back :(  Despite CK's hinting at his desire for a new pickup lately, even this was beyond what I thought he was capable of. ;)

So we are down a pickup for the time being but are making due.  The insurance adjuster was a bit skeptical when I told her "We flipped our pickup.  No, no one was driving it at the time."  The pictures above tell the story better than I can.  Of course, the backhoe has come in handier than we imagined.  Apparently it can be used to remove a trailer from a flipped over pickup truck (see below) and also to flip said pickup back over to save $$ on towing (my husband, always the resourceful one).