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.
