Real Life

A lot has happened since I last posted on the blog. We accepted a job. We packed up all of our stuff and moved to Texas. It has been a big, interesting, fun, sad, hard, exciting, not-quite-what-I-expected adventure.

We were really sad to leave Utah. So many people helped us in the process of moving. We can still hardly believe how nice everyone was. People watched our kids, made us dinner, helped us clean, gave us money, wrote us nice notes, moved boxes, found us a realtor, gave us couches, and the list goes on. We felt loved.

 Oh, Felicia! It's a hard thing to leave a sister behind. She threw me a cousin/auntie party on my birthday (I turned 30!) the week before we left. It was wonderful. I have the coolest extended family. Living in Utah and getting to know them was a huge blessing in my life. I really appreciated the effort everyone made to come. The great thing is we actually enjoy being together.

Heather took these cute pictures while she watched our kids for about four days straight. So sweet!

 Moving is hard! Even when you live in a 700 sqft apartment and think you don't have that much stuff. I'm glad I took this picture to preserve the memory of the absolute chaos that takes hold when you're moving.

 Aaron made a really delicious pumpkin cake for my birthday. Wish I had some right now.

Book club with my old roomies was a highlight of our Utah years. I will miss these two ladies a lot.

So glad we squeezed in a Chinese New Year party with the K. family. They have been such good friends to us. Not exactly sure how we'll survive without them.

For so long I was always praying and hoping that Aaron would graduate sooner rather than later. But I really don't regret any of the years we spent in Utah. It would have been nice to have the PhD be an easier process, but we really loved where we lived, our ward, our friends, and our amazing family. I look back now, after moving, and am so grateful for every minute we had there.

Just want to say that Aunt Charlotte busted out a Thanksgiving lunch for us the day before we moved. It tasted SOOO GOOD to me. What sweet, sweet women Charlotte and Kathleen are. They're our heroes.

Moving day actually came. We actually got all of our stuff out of the house (minus the kiddie pool and an old bike which Felicia took care of--thanks.) Felicia came to wave us off. It was sad and hard. Still hard to believe that we actually left.

In Moab, we found out our application for a house had been accepted. So we weren't going to be homeless. That was a huge blessing. There have been several adventures with the house--more on that later. Here's Aaron on his first day of work.

It's just been really interesting being in a new town. I haven't moved around a lot in my life, so I sort of forgot that it takes time to make a really good friend. It takes time to be able to find your way around. It takes time to get used to a new grocery store. I'm feeling physically and mentally lost so much of the time here in Texas. And it's hard to be around a bunch of (really nice and friendly) strangers all the time instead of people that you already have a history with. So being in a new place has been harder than I imagined, not a magical dream of excitement and wonder at all moments. The other day at the park, some women in my ward were talking about streets in Provo. I almost felt like crying. In my mind I was like, "I know those streets! I know where that is! That sounds familiar!" But we're still really grateful to be here. Things will get better. We will start to feel normal again. The ward has been awesome. Aaron really likes his job which makes the whole family super happy and grateful. We made it--out of school and on to a real job. But it's been very clear that graduating from school doesn't make you a real person with a real life. We definitely have had that all along. But it is still most excellent to be done with his PhD. You won't ever hear me say I would want to have Aaron back in school.

Ohio--Part III

As mentioned previously, in the wee hours of Christmas morning, Scotty had several barfing episodes. It was cute/sad to watch him open his presents Christmas morning, smile weakly, and then curl up into a little ball again on the couch. Luckily, no one else got the barfies.

Here's a picture from Christmas morning. The only one I took. I was busy holding the barf bowl.

Santa brought everyone lots of games. One was Pie Face. Lots of fun.

The other fun gift enjoyed by everyone was an Amazon Echo. The kids loved asking Alexa questions. The adults loved finding the limits to Alexa's intelligence and evil intent. "Alexa, what is my social security number?"

The day after Christmas, we went to a lookout point by a church. There were LOTS of churches all across our drive. Ohio was no exception. And all of the churches had graveyards. That made me realize that Mormons aren't in the cemetery business--I'm not used to seeing churches and cemeteries together.

We also went to see Moana in West Virginia. On the way there, we stopped at Hillbilly Hotdogs. The pictures will give you a good idea of what an awesome restaurant it was.

Aaron got the Pineappalachian Hotdog. I got the Mothman Hotdog. It was tasty!

And Moana was a great movie! A pleaser for the whole family. And I just want to say that I did see some oddly matched couples in the mall in West Virginia.

On our last night, Scotty was finally feeling better and got to play dress-up with Cousin Jack. 

Our Ohio trip was great! We're so glad we went. We're so glad we were safe and that our car made it. We love Phil and Kelsey and their family. 

Ohio--Part II

Phil and Kelsey's little neighborhood was next to a lake. We took a lovely walk around it. The weather in Ohio was a nice break from Utah. One day it got to 74 degrees. The scenery was puzzle or postcard worthy in the dead of winter. It would be fun to see it in the spring, summer, or fall.

I forgot to mention that we also ran some errands our first full day in Ohio. We wanted to get our muffler fixed. There was a whole in it, and we didn't relish dealing with the noise on our 27 hour trip back to Utah. We found a lovely little muffler shop called Possum's. It was just across the border in West Virginia.

While we were waiting for the car to be fixed, we toured Mt. Pleasant. It was quite the historical town. They had the "first battle" of the Revolution there.

And we went into a few stores and couldn't understand what anyone was saying because of their accents. There was a railroad nearby that had disgusting, abandoned houses on the same street as lovely, huge, new-looking homes. And then of course there was the legend of the Mothman. People saw a strange, bird-like creature thing back in the 60s. These sightings then got tied up somehow with the collapse of a local bridge. There's a yearly festival all about it.

We had a lovely Christmas Eve celebration. I made some rice which turned out good again. Last year must not have been a fluke. Sadly, we had just enough without any leftovers. We had all kinds of yummy food. And Christmas punch. I liked that.

Tommy was the cutest. This was him at every meal, standing up on his chair or the table and making a mess. He is having one great childhood. Adorable

Awesome family pajamas!!

Scotty was not cooperating for this picture. But he did begin barfing repeatedly only six hours later. So we'll forgive him.