Sunday, August 12, 2018

July 2017

Mom really wanted us to come to Utah but we didn't know when we would be moving so we didn't know when would be the best time to go.  We FINALLY found a house that we loved and we knew the second we pulled up that this was the right place for our family.  It took looking at a LOT of houses before we found this one but we knew it was right and it felt like a huge miracle.  Because of the timing of when we could move in, we decided it would be better to go to Utah before we moved but that would give us a very short amount of time to pack up, take our trip to Utah, come home and move two days later.  It was a whirlwind and it was pretty hard on Brooklyn especially.  I for one was very glad to say goodbye to our town home and move into a real house with a garage and yard.  
As usual, the girls were great travelers but we had to get up super early for our flight so we were all pretty tired. The girls loved the train that went between terminals and rode it many times during our two+ hour layover.  
We had a fantastic time in Utah but Brooklyn had a hard time adjusting to the time change. We didn't get much sleep the whole time and she was pretty closed off to everyone so I was sad they didn't get to know the real Brooklyn, especially since that was the first time most of the family had met her. We were lucky enough to be able to visit Grandma Joye a few times and it was so good to see her but also sad to see how much she had wasted away and how much pain she was in. 
We went hiking (to Silver Lake which was GORGEOUS and also up Bridal Veil). Went to Scheel's, got to try Fiiz and Swig, had a girl's day where we went to lunch and played games at Julie's house, went bowling, went to see Wonder Woman, went to Trafalga, and had lots and lots of cousin and Grandma time!  

I hated the family pictures we had gotten in the fall so I begged Jen to take a new one for us and they turned out great. 
Jen also took pics of the girls in my old wedding dress and I thought they turned out so stinking cute!  
We came home and had two days until we moved.  Luckily, I knew that we were going to be moving, I just didn't know where or when, so I had done a lot of packing earlier in the summer and we got most of it done right before we left for Utah.  We had just started moving things into the moving truck when it started POURING rain.  We waited a little bit to see if it would let up but we also knew we only had the truck for a limited time so we just did the best we could and tried not to get everything soaked.  We thought we could fit it all into one load but between hurrying to get out of the rain and nobody staying in the van to coordinate, I don't think it got packed very well. We also didn't have a ton of help as a ton of our friends were out of town.  We knew we might not have a lot of help from the new ward since we were doing it on a Friday so we asked if anyone could come help us at the new house.  We had four amazing guys who rode out to the new house with us and were helping us move for about 6 hours.  We even had to come back to the house and do a second load and they were so amazing to stick with it.  We didn't have one person show up from the new ward except Kelsey Lawrence, who we had known from a previous ward. It was a long frustrating day and we were exhausted.  We had thrown most of the stuff from the second load, and a bunch of stuff from the first load, into the garage because we had to get the truck back. And nothing had been taken down to the basement because we were all so tired and just basically throwing everything into the house at the point and so it was very unorganized and would probably have taken us weeks to get into the right spots. Luckily, the Solanos (from our new ward who lived just down the street from us) come over later that night and offered to help.  We had them move everything down to the basement that we needed and they helped clear out most of the garage too. It would have been so hard without their help!

A few days after we moved in, we got the call that Grandma Joye had passed away.  We knew it was going to happen soon but it was still really hard to process.  I didn't know if I would be able to make it since we had just gotten back from Utah but Scott and Jen were so kind and used their miles to get me a plane ticket and let me stay with them so Mom didn't have to stress about having a guest. Richard was able to stay with the kids and I was so glad I went.  It was incredibly hard to say goodbye to someone who was such a big part of my life but I'm really glad I got that closure. She was an amazing woman!
I am pretty sure the kids didn't miss me at all when I was gone.  Besides cleaning up and organizing the basement, which was a HUGE project, Richard took the kids to a trampoline park, a splash pad, the park and did all kinds of fun things with them. 

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