apartment living is NOT for us

Well, it is about time for an update on here, wouldn't you say?

We loaded the truck.
It took weeks of packing a few boxes a day and days of packing boxes nonstop, but in a few short hours on a Saturday morning, all of our belongings were loaded into 14 feet of a moving truck. We so appreciated family and friends who lent their muscles, kid watching skills, packing strategy and time to help us get everything packed! We used ABF U-Pack and I was so happy with our experience: they dropped off the truck, we loaded it, they drove it and dropped it off at our new apartment, we unloaded it and they picked it back up. It was not much more than it would have cost us to rent a truck that we would have had to drive and less than half of what a full service move would have cost. I think we will use them again for future long distance moves. It was weird and a little unsettling to see our house so empty. Memories of bringing home babies and puppies, home improvement projects, gardening, parties, holidays, tea parties and family home evenings, movie nights, first days of school, graduation days, heartache, trials and so many blessings just flooded over us as we sat in the only real "home" our family has ever known and the reality of leaving it behind sunk in. I had no idea just how hard it would be to say goodbye to our little house!

We stayed at Grandma's.
After our truck left, we stayed at my Mom's house for a few days before we actually made the drive ourselves. Luckily those days and nights were so filled with activities, that I didn't really have time to think about the reality of what was happening. Last chance playdates and dinners and visits followed by tucking kids in bed and leaving them with Grandma while we went back to the house to finish packing the stuff that would be going with us in our cars, organize the remaining garage sale items, touch up paint and do some deep cleaning. Again, I was clueless about how much work would be involved in getting all the "last minute" stuff done. During that time of cleaning, we also realized that our house had quite a bit more square footage than we had thought. We were thrilled to be able to adjust it on our listing, but frustrated that we hadn't realized it sooner. Seth left on Thursday morning and again a flood of tender emotions swept over me as we said our last family prayer in our own home. I am still overwhelmed as I look back on all the blessings we received during our time in that house. At times I was frustrated with where we were...such a little space and the quirks of living in an older house...but looking back, I can see how it was all for our good. We were especially blessed to know the people we met there and I can't imagine my life without our "Springview" friends. I am not sure I will ever forget the feeling of backing out of my driveway for the very last time...

We drove.
Friday morning at 6:30, my mom and I loaded the kids into the car and started a very long day of driving. I am a terrible long distance driver, but I am trying to get better at it since I will be logging many miles between Utah and Oregon in the next few years, so I tried to drive most of the way to see how I would do. The kids did great...they watched movies, read books and colored and hardly complained at all. We stopped often to feed Ellie, take potty breaks and stretch our legs (about every 2 hours) so we didn't pull in to our apartment building until after dark (by that point I had completely lost track of what time it was). With exhaustion and anticipation, we stepped inside this temporary home we had leased sight-unseen and I just wanted to burst into tears. The pictures did not accurately represent the apartment, it smelled funny, there was no air conditioning and 1100 square feet was smaller than I had imagined. I felt so out of place. This certainly didn't feel like home. My mom and Seth reassured me that it would all be ok and that it was only temporary. Seth had gotten our mattresses out of the truck, so despite our disappointment, we decided to just get some rest (and look for a new place to live in the morning - ha ha).

We woke up, but it was still a nightmare.
We had been trying to reach our new elders quorum to get some help unloading our truck for about 2 weeks before the move, but got no response from them. So Saturday morning I called professional movers to see if we could get unloading help, but nobody could be there same day. I had a move in shopping list prepared, so since we didn't have unloading help, we decided to head out and get that taken care of first. The first happy moment since arriving in Oregon was when I realized that Target and Costco were right next to each other and only 5 minutes from the apartment. :) We brought home our food and packed it in the fridge only to find that the fridge wasn't working. Great. So we filled a cooler with ice and put our milk and cheese and lunchmeat and a few drinks in there to keep cold until maintenance finally came on Monday. We discovered water damage above the water heater and also let maintenance know about that, but they did not respond until water started dripping through our ceiling on Monday morning. Turns out they had to replace the water heater/floor in the apartment above us and told us it needed to dry before they could replace our ceiling...it is still not done.

We went to church.
We went to church at 9 am...but it was the wrong ward. We were semi-happy that it was the wrong ward, though, because not a single person said a word to us. Morgan was almost in tears during sacrament meeting because he felt so worried and nervous about going to class on his own and meeting new people. "I want to go back to our apartment," he kept saying. It broke my heart and brought me to tears to see him so anxious and unsettled. We all felt very out of place and left after sacrament meeting. We went to our actual ward for classes. Our actual ward was so nice and felt much more like home. The kids were excited to have lots of people in their primary classes and Brynn won the nursery leaders over in approximately 15 seconds! Morgan got gum in his class and felt much better about life. Between church #1 and church #2 the elders quorum got back to us about helping us move in and scheduled to come the next day.

Seth started his job, hated his commute and we unpacked.
We had lots of guys from the elders quorum show up Monday night to unload the truck and spent the whole day Tuesday unpacking. With my mom's help, we were pretty close to unpacked (strategically unpacking only the necessary items and saving all the good boxes for the next move) by Wednesday morning.

We got the stomach flu.
In honor of being almost unpacked, grandma leaving for home that night, and knowing nobody, Chloe and Brynn got the stomach flu Wednesday morning.

I did laundry.

We took Grandma Becky to the airport Wednesday night (my thoughts on that in the previous post) and then we were all alone.
I cried, I was impatient with the kids, I did more laundry, I comforted little girls who were throwing up. A few interested buyers came back through our house, but none made an offer. I missed my friends, I missed my family, I felt sorry for myself, I wondered why me. I wanted to move home, I wondered what in the world we were thinking moving here, and my faith in our decision wavered. I wondered if we had made the wrong choice and misinterpreted the promptings of the spirit. Life felt hopeless. I am an optimist, so these thoughts were foreign to me. While I have encountered trials, I have always been able to see the silver lining or have hope that things would get better. But this was supposed to be the silver lining time. This was supposed to be the light at the end of the tunnel. And here I was wishing for those hard years back. I have never felt quite so hopeless before. And even surrounded by my sweet little children and husband, I felt very alone.

Something changed.
Saturday morning, the sun was shining when I woke up, but I woke up crying, missing the big beautiful windows in my master bedroom that would have filled my room with sunshine on a morning like this. But at some point something changed. I decided that this wasn't who I was or how I wanted to take on this trial. And somewhere in there, I had the thought that we should just plan on the worst case scenario and go from there. So we started to look for a better rental that we could afford if we didn't sell our house. And when we couldn't find something that we could make work for at least a year, we started to explore other options. We decided to rent our house to Seth's brother, and find a long-term rental. I scoured craigslist, emailed, called and viewed dozens of properties. We found one that we thought would work and applied only to find out that someone else had applied just before us. Again things weren't looking good, but it didn't seem hopeless.

We got an offer on our house.
Late Friday night as I was scouring craigslist for the umpteenth time looking for any rentals that I might have missed and calling on ones I had skipped over on first sight because they didn't look very cute, we got word that we had received an offer on our home! We had to counter, but are now under contract and hoping that everything will go smoothly. The next morning, we went through a house that I had originally skipped over because it didn't look very cute on the inside and I remember feeling like this was the house the minute I walked in the door, even though the inside was outdated and needed a bit of work. We went through one other home that morning that was absolutely gorgeous inside, but even though it was like a dream home for me, I felt so strongly that the other home was "the one", so we called and told them we would move in September 9.

We are moving...again.
This time feels less terrible, though. Morgan will start school at the new school (they start after Labor day here). We have movers lined up to do the whole move. We have the new house planned out for furniture placement already. We will attend the new ward this Sunday. It will cut Seth's commute in half and he may even be able to ride his bike some days. The neighborhood is darling and filled with young kids. The yard is fenced and the house is big enough for us to live comfortably. But most importantly, we have plenty of space to host any of you when you vacation to the pacific northwest (and I mean that very seriously)!

Mom

Today is my Mom's birthday, and since I am not there to spend the evening singing happy birthday, eating ice cream cake or watching the opening of presents, a blog tribute is the next best thing. Wednesday was the saddest day of my life. After 6 days of my mom staying at my house, helping me unpack, running to the store, playing with the kids, rocking a crying baby, giving hugs to a very worried little boy, giving baths to kids who had been throwing up and assuring me that even though my world seemed to be completely falling apart everything was going to be ok (more on that story to come); I had to drive to the airport and leave my very best friend there at the curb to catch a flight back home. I cried the whole way home (this isn't sounding much like a birthday tribute, is it? Don't worry it's coming).

The thing is, my mom is my best friend. I love meeting her for lunch and chatting with her on the phone. I love taking her shopping with us and getting her opinion on decorations for the house or outfits we should wear for pictures. I love sitting in the big cushy chair in her office and chatting with her. I love that she makes a big deal of holidays and birthdays. I love Sunday dinners and the way she makes them care free for me by doing all the work so I can have a break and making it seem like no big deal. I love how much my babies love their Grandma Becky, how they ask me 10 times a day if we can go play at Grandma Becky's house, and how they never want to leave once we are there. I love that no matter what I need, I can call my mom and she will do everything she can to help...even if that means picking something up for me at Costco on a Saturday! Frankly, I am not sure how I am going to live without my mom close by. Sure I can handle the day to day stuff on my own, and I am certain I will make friends who will help me out in a pinch, but there is just no way to replace a mom and a best friend.

Happy Birthday Mom! Thanks for being amazing in every way: for your example, for your support, for your listening ear, for your style (and for passing along all of your adorable clothes when you get sick of them - truly, if you see me wearing something cute it is probably from my mom's closet), for being super-grandma, for establishing treat bags so that my car can be littered with zip-loc baggies and melted m&ms (oh how I will miss cleaning those up!), for the way you love everyone, for your testimony of the gospel, for your integrity, for your love of sports...even baseball, for being involved in my life (yes, even for locking me in the car with my high school boyfriend until we worked out whatever petty thing we were in a fight about), for your commitment to all things exercise (even though I think you are crazy...it is still inspiring), for working hard and teaching me to do the same, and for so many other things I couldn't list them all! I hope I can be the kind of mother to my kids that you have been to me. Hope your day was wonderful and that you come and visit us again soon! Love you!

Preparation

I think that this crazy tropical weather in our Utah desert is just preparing us for what is in store for us in Portland! The kids are loving it, though! Brynn was so cute watching the storm from my Mom's doorway, she couldn't wait to get out there and jump in the puddles!