The Big Move

(Warning this is a long post, feel free to skim)

Where to begin. Well, I guess I'll start with this, we bought a house.

Yes, we are now home owners, well not really, I more feel like someone owns me, or my soul for that matter. J and I were trying to put an estimate on how many times we signed our name in the past month, and how little we actually read what we were signing. How could you? Does anyone read all of those papers you sign? It would take another life on earth to read all of those papers, and even another life to understand what you were reading. I should speak for myself here, because I have learned to never underestimate my husband's intellect. Needless to say, as far as I'm concerned, I may have actually sold my soul in the process, but for all practical purposes we did in fact buy a house.

I feel as though we have just finished mountaineering a massive mountain of cardboard boxes, saw dust, paint, and not to mention, two transitioning kids, but are just now getting to the peak where we can actually see the sun rise over the vast landscape. It's wonderful. It's been a lot of work, but we are very happy. The saddest part of the move was leaving our ward, and especially the young women I served with . I loved being in Young Womens. I had a great group of girls, who I really love dearly. I will miss them, but hopefully I will remain friends with them forever.

The greatest part about the move? My mom flying out. Hands down. She is an angel. And we were able to get so much done with her here. It was so fun to see her. Olivia was a little sassy with her in the airport and refused to give her a hug goodbye, but I think she was just in denial, because she misses her and Jen dearly.

When my mom was here we mostly worked her to death. However, we did manage to get out one day and go to a park. We didn't stay long because it was a cold, windy day, but we did manage to take a few cute pictures to document it.

Olivia and Warner were so happy to get out, and Liv had fun giving Warner a few underdogs. I'm not sure how Warner felt about them, but she sure enjoyed herself.

The kids really did well during the move, bless their hearts. What a gift. Not to mention all of the people in my ward that helped us by babysitting, bringing dinners, and helping us to clean and paint. The Wednesday before we moved into our new home, the young women came and cleaned our new home. It was such a huge help, and they did a really good job. I was impressed with their cleaning skills. What sweethearts.

I was so happy to see Jenny. She was so helpful. She really was my own personal slave, and she never complained once. She cracked me up many times, as she usually does. My favorite memory from this trip was how excited she was for her upcoming surgery. She has a pace-maker and she was scheduled to have the battery replaced in it a few days after she was to return home from visiting me. We would be standing in the kitchen eating, or driving in the car somewhere and she would spontaneously burst out in glee "I'm so excited for my surgery"!! I've never met any one before that was excited to go in for surgery, let alone blissfully gleeful in anticipation for it. That's just Jen for you. What a doll.


Another favorite moment was one night just after my mom had tucked Jen in for the night, I snuck into her room to say goodnight to her. And this is what I found.

Yup. She wears a mask every night to bed. Ah ha ha ha.

I love this girl.

One of the funnest parts about unpacking was finding the little jewels (also known as junk by some ), but certainly not to Olivia. Oh, it was like Christmas morning when we opened the box labeled "Jess's Sentimental stuff". This is a box that has been un-opened and moved from Provo, to hobble creek, back to Provo, to Washington. It has made it through every move and has existed since I was eight years old. In it, contained all of the things I deemed priceless and worthy of saving as a kid. As funny as some of the stuff was, like those hideous glasses, I gotta say, it was worth saving it for Liv.

I don't know how we did it, but somehow amidst the packing and chaos of moving we managed to do a little re-model on the kitchen we moved into. Actually ,I do know how we did it, we didn't get much sleep, and we got a lot of help from two of Jaron's good friends. Bless their hearts!

My sister warned me before we started re-doing our kitchen cabinets to take "before" pictures, because said she, "once your done your going to want to remember what it looked like before". I could have sworn I listened to her, but somehow this is the only picture I managed to take of what the kitchen used to look like. So, sorry.

But we did manage to take some pictures of the process:


I like red, I do, but

I like blue better.


Its amazing what a little paint can do. And a little sanding, actually a whole lot of sanding. And more sanding. And new hardware. Ok, so there is way more to it than just paint. Either way, its so fun to have a place we finally can call our own. Well I guess its really not our own for thirty years or so, but you know what I mean.


Happy Thursday!