We're Here!

Wow, I finally have a chance to blog about the past couple of weeks. So much has happened that I hardly know where to start. . . so I will go with the whole chronological order and hope that I don't forget anything!

ThE MoVE
Packing was going really smoothly. A few sisters from R.S. had come over to help pack up the kitchen etc. and everything was going as I had planned. . . da da dum.... So of course Friday, the day we are supposed to load the truck we drive over to the Uhaul place and give them our reservation number for the truck and car trailer. The lady is acting all confused and says, "I show that you have a reservation for 2 dozen furniture pads, are you sure you are supposed to get a truck?" AHHHH!!!! The lady who did our reservation over the phone had only reserved furniture pads for us and we were on a tight schedule. After about an hour and a half of scrambling, Uhaul found us a truck in Tooele which is about 45 minutes from Fruit Heights. Jaron got a ride out to Tooele while I waited at home to tell all of the Elder's Quorum who were showing up to load boxes that we didn't have a truck to put them in. They also didn't have a single car trailer anywhere in the state for us. I told them we would be driving through Wyoming and to see if there were any trailers along our driving route that we could pick up. The closest one was in Cheyenne, WY. Thank goodness my brother Cody was coming to drive with us, or else we wouldn't have had enough drivers for the truck, van and car. Finally we got the truck and the Elders were awesome to stay late to help us get everything loaded. We all slept on the floor that night and the next morning we picked up Cody (who was dropping his truck off at the airport) and got on the road.

It rained the ENTIRE way to PA. Other than that, it really wasn't too bad. The 2,000 mile drive took us 4 days and we made it safe and sound to our new home in PA. I had to take Cody to an airport in Harrisburg, so we swung by the Hershey factory and toured that, it was really cool. Thanks Cody for all of your help!

ThE NeW HoME
Good thing we got rid of some stuff before we moved! This house is alright, but man it is small! We have 3 bedrooms, if you can call them that, and 1 bathroom, which is probably our biggest challenge (as anyone who has ever lived with Jaron would know). There is no storage here and barely any cupboard space in the kitchen. Jaron had a few days off before he started back to work and I have spent the last few weeks trying to get our house in order. The most challenging thing has just been finding places for all of our stuff.

Our new neighbor is a sweet heart. She is a widow who's daughter lives with her and she loves kids (thank goodness). Her name is Judy and already our kids sneak over to her house to "play" with her (it's actually all the toys she keeps around for her grandkids).

Catawissa is a beautiful little borough. It is old, but I am finding almost everything out here is old. It is very small, boasting about a thousand residents is all, and the average age of the resident here is 67. It is located right on the Susquehana river and surrounded by creeks (which are the size of our "rivers" out west). We live in the mountains here, and we had to laugh when we saw a sign boasting the highest elevation east of the Mississippi as 2,252 feet.

Our ward here is small, about 300 members and about half of them are active. Our ward boundaries take in an entire county and then some. We all live in different towns, although there is a widow that lives in Catawissa too.

PaLMyRa, NY
Before we moved out here, I had purchased some air conditioners off of craigslist, and the town I got them from ended up being farther away than I had thought it would be. Also, I had told the kids we would think about getting rabbits once we moved here, and I found some dwarf rabbits, but they were in Elmira, NY, which is only an hour away from Palmyra. Since I had to pick up the ac units and we wanted the rabbits, we decided to just go all the way and visit Grandma and Grandpa Hamblin. It was a beautiful drive and it might have been fun if Lilly hadn't been throwing up the entire way there, poor thing. Emmy was on bucket duty and everytime Lilly started crying, it was her job to try to catch the puke in the bucket. Lilly kept pushing it away at the last minute and by the time we got to Palmyra our car reeked of puke and Lilly was just absolutely miserable. Despite her crankiness and not sleeping so well, we had a fun visit where we got to see the sights and even got to visit with Linda and Gary. We didn't make it into the Sacred Grove because of a massive thunder storm that decided to hit right when we were on the tour of the Joseph Smith Frame House. It's alright though, we will go next time when Jaron can come with us and see it all too. Grandpa took us to a great little ice cream place that serves great big ice cream servings! The kids loved it. Emmy was so glad to get to see them. We will probably go back in June when her grandma and grandpa Simonson (Brent and Kristi) will be visiting.

For the last week we have all been battling the stomach flu and working on unpacking. Once I get the house done I will post some pictures.

Video of LIlly

Emmy was giving Lilly some sour spray and she would cringe and then ask for more.

MOre FuN

Ashton made a pirates hat at reading time at the library. He wore it all day and kept telling me he was going to pirate school.

Family Weekend

I was on an awesome roll getting packed for our move, and then it was time to take a break and head to Pocatello to say our goodbyes to our family before we head 2,000 miles across the country. We are on the final countdown with only 4 days to go before we pull out.

We got to visit with family as well as some close friends and it made the weekend wonderful. We started off by leaving Friday after Jaron got off of work and pulling into Pocatello rather late. We stayed at Brent and Kristi's house that night. Saturday we went to visit with Angie and Truman Lackey. Our kids are super close and they loved the chance to visit. That evening Jaron went to the symphony while the kids and I went to my parents house to visit. Grandpa Eldon rented "Bed Time Stories" and the kids loved it. That night we spent the night at Kristi's again. At about 2 in the morning Carter woke up unable to breathe (he is allergic to my moms dog and it really aggrevates his asthma) so I had to take him to the E.R. where he received some breathing treatments and prescription for steroids. He is doing much better now.

Jaron's two sisters (one who lives in Florida and the other in Lewiston, Idaho) came to town with their kids, so all of the grandkids were together and they had a ball. If you ask all of the adults who were there it was a little noisy (ok, a lot noisy). We got some really cute pictures of the kids, so enjoy the show!

Easter

Alrighty then. I know it's a little past Easter, but better late than never right? The Easter Bunny came on Saturday like he does for us every year. The kids had a great time finding their baskets and then some eggs. Grandma Kristi made some adorable dresses for the girls, so on Sunday they got to wear them. Daddy took a few pictures for us. My fun was trying out a new hairstyle on Emmy. There is a really cute website that Kristi pointed out to me that has step by step instructions on how to do some awesome hairstyles. http://hair4myprincess.blogspot.com/
Check it out, it's great! p.s. Gramma Kristi. . . the girls had tons of compliments on their dresses at church!

Old Friends!

One of the best parts of my trip was that I got to hang out with Teresa for 3 days straight. Her kids were really good in the car and we had a fun time driving through the PA mountains!

House Search

I have spent the last week in PA looking for a house for our family. WOW. First off, I need to thank my awesome friend Teresa and her husband Glen and their two adorable kids for picking me up at the airport in Philly and then letting me crash on their couch on Monday night. Tuesday morning, me, Teresa and her two kids took off in their car to the Bloomsburg area to find us a new home.

I went with a few places to check out that I had found on Craigslist. I had 2 1/2 days to find a place, so we started out by driving around to get familiar with the place and check out neighborhoods that looked appealing. There was NOTHING. Everything we saw was scary or stinky or too small or just plain disqusting. I pulled up to a house that had a for rent sign on it at the same time another girl did. She was meeting the landlord there in the next few minutes and said I could look with her. The place was nasty, but he told me he had a friend that had something I might be more interested in. I called his friend and he gave me the address for the house he had. We drove out to the place which was in the middle of nowhere and I loved it! I made an appointment with the guy to see it the next day and when I talked to him I told him I definitely wanted it. I filled out the application, took some pictures and then left. He sounded really positive and told me he would have an answer for me by that evening. We had already spent one night in a hotel and if he said yes, then we would drive back to Philly that night. If he said no, then we would stay because I would only have one more day to find something. He called that night and said he and his wife were still deciding. Great. So we went ahead and got another hotel room, just in case. The next morning we went through the motions of looking, again not seeing ANYTHING worth living in. We had stayed the night in Frackville, which is about 45 minutes from the Bloomsburg area. We decided that we would pick up a local paper that day since we hadn't checked the paper yet. There was n0thing in the Frackville area, which was ok since that would have meant a 2 hour commute for me both ways every day. We drove back to Bloomsburg and decided to get a local newpaper from there as well. I circled a few of the places and then saw one that said "New today". I circled that one and then called to see if I could come see the place. The landlord told me he could meet me there in about 20 minutes, so off we went. It was actually nice compared to everything else we saw, and while I was talking to him the other guy called. He was going to rent the home (an actual home, the only one we saw the entire time) to some tenants that he had rented to for the last two years. They had found out he was leasing this place out and called him to get it. I tried really hard not to cry because I had really had my heart set on this place. Meanwhile, I told the new landlord that I wanted a 6 month lease instead of 1 year and to go ahead and process my application. I had one more place to go look at and then he could let me know if it was a yes or no. If it was yes, then I would let him know based on this last place I had to look at. Teresa and I went to this last apartment which sounded really nice. 3 spacious bedrooms, new carpet, new paint, a nice back yard, a park down the street, washer/dryer hookups (I love my washer and dryer and the other place already has some installed that are stacked to fit in a small closet), and so on. When we got there it was horrible. Unfortunately new carpet can't cover up nasty smells and uneven floors. The house was bad anyway, but the absolute deal killer was when the lady told me the washer/dryer hookups were in the basement. The stairs going down were rotting and it was a dirt and cobblestone floor. I would never do my laundry again if I had to go down there to do it.

The other guy called me back and said they would love to rent to me, even with a 6 month lease. So we finally have a house, and even though it is small (3 bedrooms, 1 bathroom and a small kitchen, but it also has a basement(scary), an attic and a detached two car garage) it is clean and smells good with new paint, new carpet and even new construction in one room, and the landlord is someone I could totally see us becoming friends with. He is the same age as me and Jaron and has 2 kids, both boys ages 8 and 4, and his 4 year old is named Ashton! After we signed some papers and did the deposit I told him how glad I was I picked up a newspaper that day, since the ad was new and if I had gotten one earlier I wouldn't have gotten a new one. He told me he never remembers to place the ad in the paper, but 5 minutes to 5 (the deadline) the night before, something told him to place the ad, so he did it, and I am so grateful he did! Here are some pictures of our new place.

The bathroom is on the second floor and has a balcony right outside of it. This is looking out from that balcony to the garage.