Still alive, but up to the gills

Wow, a whole month since I've posted. I didn't realize it had been quite that long. I've missed it. We moved into our house two weeks ago and things are still just crazy. I hope I'll feel settled by Christmas. The boxes and cleaning and trying to potty-train Jared are all bad enough, but I haven't even had the Internet to give me a break when I just need to sit down and escape for a few minutes. First we were debating where exactly to put the computer. Then when we finally decided to put it in the family room in the basement, we realized that only three of the seven phone jacks in our house are working, and they are all upstairs. I have DSL ordered, but we're going to have to call in a service tech to fix the jacks next week. I hope I'll be back online by a week from today so I can catch up on my e-mail and blogging and the outside world in general. It's been nice to just hide in my house for a couple weeks and try to get it clean and organized, but it's getting old fast. I'm feeling a little isolated from my "old" friends and feeling the need to get out and make some new ones too. Enrichment Meeting in our new ward is this coming week, so that ought to be a good opportunity. The house will just have to come together eventually. Jeff's new job is going well and keeping him plenty busy. The kids all seem to be adjusting well to their new circumstances also. We really like our neighborhood and they are making friends. More later when I'm connected again!

The House Hunt

So we arrived at Jeff's parents' house in Kaysville on Monday the 16th. Tuesday the 17th we stayed home and recovered a bit from the traveling and move-related stress. Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday we dove back into stress--the house hunt. Jeff's parents made it significantly easier by taking care of the big boys, thank goodness. We had done some legwork ahead of time on the Internet and driving through neighborhoods, which helped narrow things down a little. Of course our price range narrowed things quite a bit to begin with, since homes cost just about double what they were in Texas. Luckily Jeff and I also have mostly similar ideas about what we want in a house, so our criteria haven't been too difficult to determine. There are several towns in Utah County that we could live in, but it's important to both of us to live within 10 miles of Jeff's job so he can continue to commute on his bike, weather permitting. Considering the roads he'd have to ride on, we decided to start looking in Pleasant Grove, Orem, and west Provo.


Day 1
On Wednesday we drove to Provo (65 miles) with the baby to meet with our real estate agent. We spent the whole day looking at homes in Pleasant Grove and Orem--probably 15 of them. The one that had looked best to us on paper was a disappointment--foundation problems to the point where the floors literally sloped. Jeff dropped a round cat toy in the kitchen and it rolled to the sliding glass door to the backyard. I would've felt worse about it if we hadn't seen some other good possibilities. It was a long day before we made it back to Kaysville.

Day 2
Thursday morning found us headed back down to look at a few homes in West Provo. As I was putting Dallin into the agent's car, he accidently put it in gear and rolled onto my foot with the rear tire. I had tire marks on my foot all day, but luckily the pain was minimal and went away quickly. He felt really bad and made sure I knew he had insurance in case I needed to get it taken care of. I would have had it x-rayed if the pain hadn't gone away, but I haven't had a bit of trouble with it since. Anyway, after freeing me from beneath the tire, we continued on and saw 4 or 5 homes before we had to call it quits. The evening was reserved for unloading our belongings from the moving truck into a storage unit in Orem in 100 degree heat. It took almost five hours, but would have taken much longer without the help of my aunt and three willing cousins and Jeff's brother. Thank goodness for them. We treated them to pizza afterward and made it home just before midnight.

Day 3
By Friday I was really tired of looking at homes. We caught a few that we hadn't seen earlier, then went back through the three that we had liked the most that we thought we could realistically afford. (The ones we couldn't afford were the ones we really liked the best, of course.) We decided to spend the weekend calling on "for sale by owners," just to make sure we didn't miss out on "our" house because it wasn't listed. However, as Jeff and I talked about it on the drive home, I realized he was anxious to just make a decision and get on with the buying process before he had to start worrying about work. I wasn't quite so anxious, but I had also reached saturation point and was willing to stop looking.

Day 4 and beyond
We called our agent Saturday morning to let him know we wanted to make an offer on one of the homes we had looked at in Pleasant Grove. Thus began the negotiation process--ugh--my least favorite part. Jeff and I proceeded to demonstrate our complete lack of bargaining skills. To put a positive spin on it, I guess we are just nice. We'd rather play it straight and fair. In the end, we probably didn't get as many concessions from the seller as we could have, and we didn't get the high-efficiency furnace I really wanted, but we do have a new furnace in a decent house in what we think is going to be a good place to raise our kids (that's the part I've really been praying for). The haggling is over, the loan is locked, the homeowner's insurance is all but set up. We close on the 22nd and hope to move in the following weekend. And best of all, I think I'm mostly done making phone calls. I think we used almost twice the number of minutes on our cell phone than we do in a normal month.

I've spared a lot of the gory details of the hunt that I was going to write, but I decided I didn't want to relive them all, and you probably didn't want to hear them anyway.

As for the house itself, it's a 5-bedroom rambler with a basement. There are three bedrooms, a bathroom, and the kitchen and living room upstairs. In the basement are a family room, two bedrooms, a bathroom, two unfinished storage rooms, and a laundry room. One storage room has shelves built in for food storage. The other could be finished as another small bedroom. It's on a quarter acre lot with mature landscaping including two apple trees, grape vines, and a place to put a garden. I won't have any more excuses for not exercising my green...er, brown...thumb. The biggest negative is no garage or carport. We'll feel that this winter, but there is room to build one on at some point. I'm not really fond of the floorplan of the house itself--it feels small, even though it's actually a little bigger than our home in Texas. But I think the location will make up for the things I don't like. It's on a cul-de-sac at the end of a dead-end street, within walking distance of the elementary school, the high school, a park, the community swimming pool, and a new city rec center that is being built. As we drove through the neighborhood we had half a dozen people or so wave to us. Actually wave! Our church building is less than a mile away, and shopping isn't too far either. And it's about 6 1/2 miles on good roads for Jeff to bike to work--just what he was looking for. It's not our dream house, but we're happy with it so far and we're looking forward to making it our home.

I Knew This Would Happen

I knew that once we got into the nitty-gritty part of the move, I would get behind on my blog. I was right. I really don't know where to start catching up, so I guess I'll just jump in. Jeff's parents flew to Texas to help us pack up and make the drive to Utah. Every major move we've made since we left Provo in 1999, either Jeff's parents or my parents have helped us out, and what a blessing it's been. This time I told Jeff's parents that we could probably handle it on our own, that they didn't need to come to hot west Texas in July to help us make this move. Luckily, they insisted and we didn't turn them down, because once again it was a huge blessing. Moving is just hard and stressful, no matter how prepared you think you are, or how early you have started the whole packing and cleaning process (May, in my case). They, along with several wonderful elders and Relief Society sisters from our San Angelo ward, helped us get everything done so we could drive out on Wednesday the 11th.

We used U-Pack (ABF) again, which worked pretty well. They drop off a semi trailer, we pack and load it, they pick it up and drive it to our destination, then we unload it. More than once in the last couple of weeks I've said to Jeff, "There has to be an easier way to do this whole moving thing." There is, if you have tons of money or a company who will pay to move you professionally. We've never had that luxury, but we think U-Pack is a relatively nice way to do it yourself. It's a bit more expensive than renting a U-Haul truck, paying for gas, and driving it yourself, but it's really worth it not to have to drive the big truck. This is especially true as our family gets bigger and we accumulate more stuff and need a bigger truck.

I planned our route to be different than any other trip we've made to Utah so we could catch a few more counties. :-) We avoided the Interstate until we got to northern Arizona, but it was a more direct route on good roads, so I don't think it was any slower, unless our unintended detour made it that way. We left San Angelo around noon on the 11th and made it as far as Roswell, New Mexico that evening. Thursday we headed straight west across New Mexico. There was one town, Hondo I think, where we could have headed south and gotten a county near Ruidoso that wasn't directly on our route. With four kids and my in-laws along, I wasn't planning to stretch the trip out just for the sake of getting counties, but we ended up making that turnoff by accident. When I realized the mistake we were only about two miles from the county line--definitely worth it. So we trundled over the line, made a quick turnaround in a casino parking lot, then headed back up to our original route. It probably cost us an hour. Oh well. :-)

We stayed the second night in Flagstaff, Arizona, where we enjoyed the fresh scent of pine trees and the thoughts of living in the shadow of real mountains again. On Friday we let Jeff's parents take his Eclipse and head home, while we made our way in the minivan to my parents' house in Cedar City, where we had planned to spend the weekend. Conveniently, my nephew Isaac was being baptized on Saturday over the mountain from Cedar in Orderville. We were happy we could make it to that fun family event, and look forward to being able to participate in many more family events now that we are living closer to most of our relatives.

After a nice weekend with my family, we headed north again, ultimately to Jeff's parents' basement where we are living until we buy a home in Utah County. On the way we took a few hours to drive past some of the homes we'd been looking at on the Internet. We were able to eliminate a few of them that way, but also determined that there were some good possibilities as well.

There is more to tell, but I think I'll divide up the story into more than one post. We miss our dear friends in San Angelo. We're glad to be back in Utah, close to our families. We're grateful that every thing has gone relatively smoothly with our move so far. We feel Heavenly Father is blessing us and watching out for us.

P.S. County-counting stats: 3 new in Texas, 5 new in New Mexico, for a total of 648 (approx. 20%).

Sold!

We sold our first home today, almost two years after buying our first home. The best thing about it was not having to put it on the market because some friends in our ward wanted to buy it from us. It was a win-win situation, AND nobody had to pay real estate commissions. We think we gave them a decent deal on it for the current market here, plus we got enough out of it for a down payment and closing costs on something in Utah Valley where the market is almost double. Anyway, we hope they feel as blessed as we do. Now all we have to do is finish packing and cleaning, move, find a new home, buy it, and unpack. Somehow I'm not feeling any relief yet....

On a totally different note, Adam and Ryan finished a two-week session of swimming lessons today. Adam was a pretty good little swimmer to start with, but he really improved his crawl stroke. I think he's a better swimmer than I am now. Ryan made the most progress though. He was scared of the water last summer and didn't want to take swimming lessons this year. Once he got started though, he adjusted amazingly quickly. It's so nice when they are finally comfortable on their own in the water.

Boys, Boxes, and Busy-ness

I know my life is busy when what I really want to do is blog or read a book or take a nap rather than doing all that needs to be done. Along with all the normal cooking and cleaning and home management, the kids naturally want Mommy to entertain them constantly now that school is out. I have yet to figure out how summer vacation can be so booooooring. The first week was rough, but I persevered and we at least got into a good morning routine--breakfast, chores, reading, and math or spelling practice--all before we go to swimming lessons at 10:30. They don't grumble about it hardly at all anymore. One thing that is working pretty well is giving them a short list of chores to choose from. I make the list--things that I really need or want done that they are capable of doing--and the older boys each have to pick one. It goes much better when they've chosen what they will do than when I assign something. Even Jared (age 3) is figuring out what morning chores are about. It's fun to see him so excited about helping one of his brothers wash the dishes. So mornings are good, but don't ask about afternoons....

And as if all the normal stuff isn't enough, I started packing boxes a couple weeks ago in preparation for our move, which is just a couple of weeks away now. I've been trying to sort through, throw out, and pack things in the afternoons while Jared and Dallin nap. (Jared is ready to give up naps, but since he doesn't fight them too much, I'm hanging on to them as long as I can--at least until we move.) That means Adam and Ryan spend an awful lot of time in front of movies or video games. Oh well, the mornings aren't a waste. I sometimes feel guilty about not playing with them more, but I just can't entertain and get ready to move at the same time. I've tried paying them to help me pack at the rate of 25 cents a box. That worked okay when we were packing books, which were pretty straightforward, but hasn't lasted as I've moved on to other things. Speaking of boxes of books, we are up to 24 Xerox boxes full, and that's not quite all of them. We aren't called Packers for nothing! Yes, we have a few books, but at least the boxes are easy to stack when it comes time to load the truck. Built-in bookcases will definitely be on the "nice to have" list when we get to the house-hunting stage. Anyway, if I don't post again anytime soon, you'll know I'm just up to my gills in cardboard.