Moving + American Girl Doll Store

 

While many families were taking it easy and relaxing over Memorial weekend, we were doing the exact opposite. Mom, Mrs. Dot, Ava, and myself headed up to Atlanta to move Aunt Ro Ro back to Jacksonville. We, being the girls that we are, stopped just south of Atlanta to visit the outlet malls and then continued on our way. We made it to Aunt Ro Ro’s about 11:00 and seeing how much was still left to be done got started packing. We eventually quit about 2:00 and went to bed.

 

Ava “baking cookies” with her Melissa & Doug cookie set that she got use in her little kitchen

Ava was such a trooper the entire trip. We woke up the next morning and started packing again. Fortunately, a guy from a local charity came by to pick up some things Aunt Robin was giving him and offered to help us. We were so grateful because we were beginning to wonder how we were going to do it all. The guys (my dad and Adam) drove up Friday evening, but even with their help factored in we were concerned.

Ava wearing her Uncle Jim’s Atlanta Braves hat.

We ended up getting quite a bit done with Mr. Jones’ help and decided to take a break that evening and take Ava over to the American Girl doll store. There aren’t many AG stores and the closest one to us is in Atlanta, so I was excited to take her. If you are or ever have been an AG doll fan, this is a must do. It had everything you could think of in this store, all the dolls and accessories. Ava was a little overwhelmed at first (being exhausted from all the packing and moving didn’t help) and she had a breakdown because I told her she couldn’t get a stroller that she wanted. She and mommy had a little cool down moment outside where she received the “If you EVER do that again….” speech and she wiped her tears and we went back in. I tried to cut her a little slack since I know she was tired.

We walked through and saw everything. They even have a doll salon where you can take your doll  and pay to have the ‘stylists’ style their hair. Most of the 18” dolls were in cases with all of their accessories, but the Bitty Baby items were placed at kid level and kept telling Ava, becareful, becareful… and one of the sweet workers came up to me and said to let her play with them, that’s why they leave them out at their level, which is how we came to fall in love with the stroller- she pushed it all over the store with a baby in it.

Taking a picture with Kanani, the 2011 AG of the year.

They have this cute bistro in the back of the store where you can dine with your girl and her girl ;)  I can’t wait to be able to take Ava.

Ava got to pick out a new doll to bring home with her. She picked out Kit which is good since has short hair and Ava has really gotten into doing her dolls hair, but the longer hair on the other dolls she has is a little too much to manager for her. Plus, she and I can watch the Kit movie together and she will have the doll :)

She also got a guitar for her dolls to play, a puppy, and a dress (complete with a headband) for herself and a matching one for her baby.

I’m a little partial to AG since I had the dolls growing up and now I have passed them down to Ava. Between the 2 of us, she now has Kit, Felicity, Kirsten, Look-alike Ava, Look-alike Stef, and the Bitty Baby. Her collection is growing quite a bit. I actually found out while we were at the store, Mattel bought out the American Girl company and now manages it.

I’m excited to take her back again of course my wallet has to recoup first ;)

Adam and Dad made it to the house about 30 minutes after we made it back home and we all went to bed shortly after that. We knew the next day was going to be fierce. The next morning Dad and Aunt Robin left to pick up the moving truck and came back and we started to load the truck. Our new friend, Mr. Jones came to help us again and brought his son. He and his son were a gift from God. I don’t know how we would have ever made it if they hadn’t been there to help. While they were loading the truck, Ava and I headed down to the playground in Aunt Ro Ro’s neighborhood to play. I thought it would give Ava a chance to run around and play before we had to drive back and it would keep her out of the way while they were moving a lot of the heavy stuff. The neighborhood has the coolest park, complete with a playground, pool (and kiddie water park), community garden, basketball courts, tennis courts, and clubhouse. Its really a nice area. We didn’t spend a lot of time there because we had some errands to run and had to get back to helping, but Ava did enjoy playing around for a little while.

We ended up needed to get two 27’ trucks, plus piling stuff in her car that we were pulling and everyone else’s vehicles. We put Aunt Robin on restriction from buying anything else –haha! After working all day packing and loading, we were finally on our way around 7:00 that evening. We drove all night and pulled into our driveway at 4:00 in the morning on Sunday morning. We all agreed, we didn’t think we could make it another hour if our lives depended on it. Plus, all the stuff was still on the trucks! Aunt Robin is staying at my grandparents house until she decides what she wants to do, so fortunately all that was left (except for the things she was taking to my grandparents) was to unload the trucks into storage. At least we didn’t have to unload AND unpack :)

Sunday morning, a group of people met to unload the trucks. Ava and I stayed home since there wouldn’t be a whole lot for us to do and Ava would have been in the way of all the moving. Adam went and helped so she and I slept and played until he made it back home.

To say we were exhausted would be an understatement- Moving is hard work, moving when you aren’t able to go back for another load- unbelievably hard! Aunt Robin said the next time she moved it would be 1. cooler and 2. with a lot less stuff! :)