Couldn't Be Sweeter

This beautiful lady turned 16 this month. What a tough time to move! I think moving has been harder on her than anyone else, but she has been so strong (she's so much stronger than I think she gives herself credit for), and tried not to complain or mope. I have seen her change in so many wonderful ways in the past year - I mean she's growing up right before my eyes! She's beautiful, and kind, and independent, and brave. For her birthday she wanted to get her ears double pierced, and her hair professionaly colored. Well, the ears went off without a hitch, but the hair.....not so much. It took 7 hours to get her hair done. SEVEN! Sheesh, I almost died. But I think she loved every minute of it. Her hair is SOOOOOO thick. That's a big reason why it took so long. Also, we went to a cosmotology school, so "professional" is a relative term. But it still turned out great. I couldn't believe how fantastic she looked with blond hair after they stripped the color out! She could totally go blond. But it's purple for now, and in a few months she might go lighter purple - like lilac.

Sixteen things to know about Madelyn. 1) She loves Cruella DeVil, even way before the new movie came out. 2) She just got her braces off! 3) After years of being my most adventurous eater, she's lost her palat for spicy food. 4) She's starting to go by May (her middle name), istead of Madelyn or Maddie. 5) She is SO close to getting her driver's license - she'd already have it if we hadn't moved. 6) She has a very big heart, and is often heard defending whoever she feels is being slighted. 7) She is driven, and will accomplish anything she sets her mind to. 8) She loves our dogs so much, and will sleep with them every night, given the chance. 9) Her favorite color is green. 10) Her current words of choice are chicken and potato. If you know, you kow. 11) She loves her some Coca Cola. No ice please. 12) I've lost track of how many times she's dyed her hair now, but she's done red, black, blue, green, and purple. 13) She wants to eat at McDonald's All. The. Time. 14) If it was up to her, we would have stayed in Nebraska. 15) She's still considering being a cosmotologist, but isn't 100% sure. 16) She's a very loyal friend.

What's For Dinner?

Just a quick update. Man, I hate talking on the phone, and it seems like I've been on the phone more in the last week than I have in the last several years - realtors, lendors, title company, insurance agents, contractors, etc. Anyway, I drove to Las Vegas to spend a few days with Joe, sans kids. We both needed it. We need each other. As I was driving, I got a very reasurring phone call from the contractor, saying that they would be able to do the work (up until then we weren't sure if they could, or if we were going to have to call around to a bunch more contractors). It felt like such a huge weight lifted off my shoulders in that moment, even though we still have hurdles to cross. As soon as I hung up I started crying. Actually I was going back and forth between crying and laughing. Laughing because, as my last post was titled, it just seems like this move has been a comedy of errors. One thing after another. And you just get to thinking, what's next?! But also crying because I was overcome with a feeling of gratitude for my Heavenly Father, who is literally carrying me through this. I know He's there. I know He loves me. I am having a mortal experience in an unperfect world, and He doesn't just take it all away, but He gives me moments that sustain me. I kept thinking of my grandma and one of the stories in her autobiography. There house burned down, and I don't think they had local firemen or any resources to help put the fire out, so their only recourse was to get the neighbors to help them carry as much stuff out of the house as fast as they could before it burned to the ground. At the time the fire started, they had been cooking some beans on the stove for dinner. In the aftermath, as they surveyed the damage, they realized that the stove had been carried out of the house, and the beans, still sitting in the pot on the stove, hadn't spilled at all - so they had their beans for dinner that night, all together, safe and sound. They got a good laugh about that for years and years after. Their house burnt to the ground, but they had beans for dinner. I thought about that story, and I thought about how I have SO much more than just beans for dinner. So even if my house is burning down around me, which it's NOT, I will count my many blessings, and be greatful for what I have. Also, this painting below is called "Fallen Monarchs" by William Bliss Baker. It hangs in the BYU art museum, and I look for it every time I go. I was able to go last week while I was waiting for Madelyn to get her hair done (more on that later). Despite the fallen trees and changing season, there is more life than death in this forest. It shows "the resilience of the trees that withstand the elements to be reborn with every passing year." Gets me every time. This move is going to be akin to a rebirth for us. I am resilient. Life will go on, and it will be full, and rich, and beautiful.

Comedy of Errors

And now we will finally catch up to present day. Warning, this is going to be a long saga. This move has been.....eventful. To say the least. Our realtor got some great pictures of our house, and we were ready to go.

We started to show our house after it was listed, but the feedback we were getting was all about how our bathrooms were outdated. Okay, that was an easy fix. Paint and new fixtures make a world of difference. Plus the upstairs bathroom had old, ugly lenolium. It's a small bathroom, so we knew we could knock that out pretty easy. Or so we thought. When we ripped up the linoleum, we realized that the sub floor around the toilet was moldy and rotted. Ugh! But we got someone in to replace that, and we were back on track. But seriously, THREE bathrooms in FOUR days! As you can imagine, it was non-stop work, and we were exhausted. But they turned out great.

One funny thing we discovered after we were done is that we had bought an LED faucet for one of the bathrooms without realizing it. It was pretty cool, and Alex said that if anything was going to sell the house, that faucet would.

We started showing the house again, and were getting great feedback, but no offers. In the meantime, we were packing. Every move we have had has been done by the military. Really, we didn't have much of a choice since most of our moves were overseas or back. They come in and pack up everything for you, so you don't have to worry about it. Not this time. Even though the military was paying for this move (because it was less than a year since Joe retired, and they'll move you one last time within a year), it was too short notice for them to get us movers, so we had to do it all ourselves. Never. Again. I had no idea how much work it would be! I know people do this all the time in the military, because you can potentially make money on a move you do yourself, but I do NOT think it is worth it. I'd rather pay someone. Three days before we moved we got an offer on the house. Finally!

That was such a huge weight off our shoulders, partly because it was stopping us from finding a house in Vegas. We had tried to put in a couple of offers, but nobody even wanted to look at us when we didn't have our house in Nebraska under contract yet. So yay! We continued packing, and purging. So many trips to the dump and Goodwill. That's one good thing about moving so much - it's kept us from being pack rats. The day before the move we picked up the moving truck, and we had a few lovely people from the ward help pack up the truck and clean the house. The garage, though, that was our nemisis. We had left it to the last, and that was a mistake. Lesson learned. We didn't know if we would be able to fit everything. We ended up giving away more than we had intended, but it was crunch time. We needed to leave the next day, but I KNEW we weren't going to get out of there first thing in the morning like we had intended. The stress of the last few weeks had been building up, and that night I had a emotional breakdown. I just needed a good ugly cry (boy, was it ugly). But also got inspiration during my word vomit, I mean prayer that night to send Cora ahead of us the next morning, in the van with Alex and the dogs. She was having a hard time too, and was sick, and she needed to get back to Utah as soon as possible. That turned out to be a very important decision. Next day, sent Cora off, and finished loading the truck and cleaning - had to leave behind (Goodwill, give away, or dump) more than expected because it wouldn't all fit. Finally got out of Papillion at 4:30 freaking PM! But at least we were done with the house.

Meanwhile, Cora was having a horrible time - she got really sick (REALLY bad head cold), more so than she had been before, one of the dogs vomited in the car, a road closer with no marked detour, the heavens opening up and dumping the entire contents of all water that ever existed in the sky (visibility = zero), etc. They finally stopped in Eagle, CO because they couldn't go any further that night. So I made them a hotel reservation, but realized I had made it for the WRONG day, but it was a non-refundable/non-changeable reservation, so I went to make a new one for that night, only to discover that the prices were $800 a night MORE expensive for that particular night (I kid you not - they must have had some kind of big event going on, and I checked every hotel reservation sight, and they were all the same). So they ended up sleeping in the car. Meanwhile, we got as far as Ogallala, NE and figured we'd better start looking for a place to stay. The ONLY room I could find (and there was only one left), was in Sydney, which wasn't the way we were going, since we were going down into Colorado, but we took it anyway. If Cora had followed along with us, we wouldn't have been able to find a room for all of us. Anyway, we all got going the next morning. Cora and Alex got to Manti around noon, where Cora crashed, instead of doing homework, in which she was behind because she'd been helping us, and needed to drop one of her classes. Our drive was uneventful until we got to a tiny little town called Dotsero. This is where we were directed to exit off the freeway, because I-70 was completely shut down because of a mud slide!!! All that rain that Cora had experienced the night before. It literally shut down like 30 minutes before we got there. Cora had driven through just that morning. Fun side note, when we exited the freeway, there was an officer directing people down a certain road. Turns out, that road was a dead end about a mile down. I don't know if he knew this, but it was really annoying, and nobody was happy. This was also a fun spot to stop because there was no gas, food, or internet coverage, and spotty phone service. We finally got in touch with Joe's dad, who let us know about the mudslide. They had no idea how long the clean up was going to take. we also talked to Marie and Antione, and they helped us figure out a route we could take. There were no other major roads out of there that we could take to detour, so we backtracked for a ways, before heading north, and then west again. This was a VERY long and slow detour (long line of cars in front of and behind us, windy roads, and low speed limits), but it's was really beautiful too.

We also went through one of the coolest towns I've ever seen, Steamboat Springs. Didn't get any pictures, but someday I definitely need to get back there. We finally got to Vernal, UT at 11pm and got a hotel for Saturday night. I don't even remember what time we got to Manti on Sunday, but we barely had time to rest a little before we drove on to Vegas.

So our original plan was to get to Vegas early on Sunday, and my Marie and Antione were going to meet us there to help unload the truck into a storage unit. That plan went out the window because we didn't get to Vegas until late Sunday night. I tried calling several moving companies, but of course nobody had availability with that late of notice. Joe went to work on Monday, while me and the boys stayed in the hotel (Cora stayed home sick, and Madelyn stayed in Manti to take care of the dogs). Joe got off work at about 2:30, and went and checked into the dinky apartment that he'll be staying in for the next month (right on the strip, and smells suspicious, but was recommended by a co-worker, and is really cheap). Anyway, we didn't get over to the storage unit until 5:30, and the 4 of us started unloading. Before this we had contacted Joe's brother, John, who lives in St. George to see if they could come help unload after work - they said they could come the next day, but we figured we'd do a much as we could Monday night. Anyway, you guys, I'm NEVER packing up my own stuff or loading up my own truck again! There is SO much broken stuff. So. Much. I haven't freaked out about it yet, because I just keep telling myself, "it's only stuff". I don't know. For now, it's just going in the storage unit, I'm putting it to the back of my mind, and I'll deal with it when we finally get into a house and bring it there. Anyway, Joe and I ended up doing most of the work all by ourselves because Joseph got sick to his stomach (he has a really sensitive stomach, and we hadn't been eating well on our road trip), so his head was in a bag for a couple of hours, and then Alex got overheated, so we had him sit in front of a fan. We got almost half the truck unloaded though, so we felt good about that. As we were riding the elevator down for the last time, the doors took a few moments longer than normal to open, and I said, "wouldn't that be the perfect ending to our story? They got stuck in an elevator and died." Two minutes later, Joe couldn't find the keys to the moving truck!!! We finally found them 10 minutes later, but boy, that about gave us a heart attack. Also, while I was stuck in the hotel, I was browsing for homes in Vegas, but all of the wind wass out of my sails. It just felt like one more awful thing I had to do, because the market in Vegas is crazy, just like in a lot of other places in the country. Anyway, the next day John and Joanna came to the rescue and we got that truck completely unpacked.

FYI, we HAD to have the truck unpacked and into storage before the 30th, or the military wouldn't pay for it. That was our deadline, so we really got it done at the last minute. After that I took the boys back to Utah, and Joe stayed in Vegas. I hit the housing market hard, and we put in another....well, I lost track of how many offers we put in. On a couple of houses we were offering 30 thousand over asking price, even over appraisal, closing costs, and free 1 month lease-back, and we STILL weren't getting anything. As luck would have it, we finally got an offer accepted on a house that we only offered listing price, and nothing over appraisel. I will say that this house needs a LOT of work cosmetically, but the bones are good (inspection has already been done), it is in the perfect area, has a good sized back yard (is a pool in our future?), and a 3 car garage (which is a must at this point with all our driving teenagers). I will not be posting any pictures of this house until we have done work on it and I can show before and after pictures. I don't want to scare anyone. Anyway, things were looking up, and it seemed like we could finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. And then disaster struck once more. Last Friday night we got a text alert for the Omaha area - "TORNADO WARNING! Alert others and seek shelter." The next day our realtor called and said that our house had taken a hit. As far as I know, no actual tornado touched down, but there were 95mph winds, so that was enough. We have a gas fireplace, and the chimney and frame around it had been completely torn off.

We also had some HUGE branches that had come down from our trees.

I mean, can the universe please stop conspiring against us now?! We freaked out because we didn't know how this would affect the sell of our house. We have since been reassured that it's going to be okay, but still. We had help from the ward to clean up the branches, and we're still working on the chimney thing with the insurance. As much as has gone wrong with this move, I still know that it was the right thing, and I have seen God's hand in many ways. Just because it's right, doesn't mean that it's all going to be moonlight and roses. For now, we play the waiting came. Waiting for both houses to close. Waiting to get back to Joe. Waiting to get settled into our new home, new school, new ward, new everything. Just waiting....and hoping that from here on out things will be very UNeventful.

Saying Goodbye to the Midwest

Madelyn's birthday is in July, but since we were moving before that, she needed a good birthday party with all her friends. She is so funny and playful - she decided to have a dinosaur-themed party. Dinosaur chicken nuggets, dinosaur cake, and all the dinosaur decorations she could find at Dollar Tree. Nothing fancy, but they had a good time. Madelyn has had a lot of drama with some of her "friends" in Nebraska, but she still has a good group of girls that care about her, and she will miss them very much.

Alex said goodbye to his friends too. He's been in the choir this year and really loved it. He tried out for the show choir in high school (which I've mentioned before is a BIG deal here) and made it, so he will be sad to miss out on that opportunity.

Cora flew home to help us with the packing and the move, and it was so nice to have her here. She got to see a couple of her good friends too. I had JUST renewed our zoo passes before we found out we were moving, so we had to take advantage of those one last time. Best. Zoo. Ever. They had a new octopus, so that was awesome too. I will miss it terribly, especially the jelly fish. Do they have jelly fish in Vegas?

I had to say goodbye to my friends too. It's hard enough to FIND yoru people, let alone LEAVE them. I left one lunch with friends feeling a little emotional, and maybe a little (irrationally) mad that their lives were going to go on without me (how dare they!). I can't believe I didn't get any pictures with them those last few days. I'm super bummed about that. I will miss them terribly. We tried to get around to a few "last times" at our favorite restaurants too. One thing I can thank Nebraska for is introducing me to the combination of cinnamon rolls and chili. I thought this was the weirdest thing before I tried it, but now I'm a fan. Nebraska's number one fast food restaurant is Runza, which is a regional chain. That's where I first tried cinnamon rolls and chili (although it's such a common thing here that it's even in the lunch rotation at the schools). But what Runza ia really known for is the runza sandwich, which was created by German immigrants, and is a bread pocket filled with beef, cabbage, onions, and seasonings. It's pretty good, but I don't know if I will miss it.

And so, the sun sets on our time here in Nebraska. I don't think the Midwest was ever meant for us. That's okay. It's still a great place....just not for us. So now we move on. Will Vegas be our place? Good grief, I hope so, because I don't ever want to move again. But who knows. Life is so unpredictable.