The Moving Saga Episode Seven: Moving Day

I was doing a little better by the next morning.  The main reason for this was because I thought David and I came to an understanding that I was going to need to re-carpet/laminate the whole top floor of the house ASAP.  Incidentally, I was wrong about that.  Dave did not come to the same conclusion from our discussion, I guess.  We're going to have to re-carpet on a little bit slower schedule than I had hoped. 

Our home on the day we moved in.
 

ANYWAY...the morning of the move came.  David went to work and I packed up a bunch of our stuff from my parents house.  In the late morning, my mom, the kids and I went to Smith's grocery store right around the corner from our house.  We bought a bunch of staples like milk, eggs, licorice  - you know the basics!  Then we brought it all to our new house.  I stayed behind and waited for the movers to show up.  My mom took the kids in our van back to her house so that I could be focused.

The movers showed up on time and worked their tails off.  They didn't let me lift a thing, just point out where to put stuff.  For convenience purposes (both to save on time - I was paying by the hour - and effort) I had them place ALL the boxes in the great room/dining room.  It was a LOT of boxes!!  Floor-to-ceiling from one wall to the other.  Luckily for us, we didn't have any furniture for that room anyway.  Between the great box dump and the fact that the movers were young, strong, fast men (seriously, they were practically running up and down the ramp with heavy peices of furniture in their arms!) they were done in less than three hours.  I used the rest of the afternoon getting everyone's beds set up and made so that we would have a place to sleep that night.  It was fun and exciting. 

Before the movers arrived.

After the movers left.

Meanwhile, my mom and kids were having quite an adventure, unbeknownst to me.  After they left my house, they got about 2/3 of the way back home when my van completely died on them in the middle of the road!!  Gas = empty!!!  In my defense, it's a new van to me and I swear I NEVER saw a gas light turn on!!!  Anyway, Grandma was stuck about a mile from home with four young children and a few bags of groceries (she got a few things at Smith's too - including popsicles).  She would have called me or my dad or someone, but earlier in the morning Bronson had taken her cell phone out of her purse so my dad hid it from him on the kitchen counter.  She was stranded!  So she did the only thing she could do.  She gave each of the kids a couple of bags of groceries, she picked up the VERY heavy baby, and she started walking home.  They took a short cut through the golf course, and eventually made it back without any injuries.  AMAZING!!!  Kristin's kids came over in the afternoon and they had a super fun day in the end.  I felt SO bad when I found out about the whole thing!  The kids actually thought it was a pretty exciting adventure.  I'm sure it's a memory they (and my poor mother) will not soon forget.

I'm not sure if I'll write too much more about moving in - maybe I will some other day.  Let me just say that I unpacked several boxes per day, but didn't feel a tremendous amount of stress about getting it done too quickly.  The main focus for me has been to help my kids have a good summer.  We've played a LOT (that definately will have to be written about on another post.)  We've bought some beautiful new furniture, and each day this house feels more like a home to me.  The BEST part for me has been living so close to stores.  I LOVE going to the grocery store in 3 minutes instead of 15!!!

The Moving Saga Episode Six: The Pain

Let's keep this post short and sweet so that we can get to the move, shall we?  Well, short anyway - there was NOTHING sweet about getting our home.

I don't want to go into horrible detail, but we had a very diffcult time getting into our house.  Remember all those previous posts where I said that things seemed to be going along so smoothly?  Yeah - not so much toward the end.  We had a difficult time agreeing on an agent here in Utah and in the end, I'm not sure we really liked the one we chose.  She wasn't horrible, but she was very busy.  Both David and I only met her once in person.  She sent her husband to show us houses and did the rest of the stuff over the phone.  She was even on vacation when we signed our documents so she sent her assistant then, too.  Our mortgage broker was a friend of the family.  He got us a great rate, but with the world's most nightmare-ish mortgage company.  I'm not joking!  They are notorious in the industry for being over-the-top picky about ridiculous stuff.  For instance, they came back after we signed the documents and said that one of my dates was unclear.  The dash was touching the next number so it looked like 5-29-72 instead of 5-29-12.  So the man from the title company had to drive to my parents house in Farmington (he lives in South Salt Lake) at 7:00 in the morning to get ONE document re-signed.  That is only one of about 25 incidents.  We constantly had to fix teeny stupid things or jump through hoops - and we had to make the people we were buying the house from jump with us on many occasions. It was humiliating. 

On top of the picky mortgage company, we had a few issues that exacerbated the problems.  One major issue was the radon mess I already wrote about.  Another was the source of funds for our down payment.  We'd had the money for our down payment for months, but never thought about the fact that we would have a hard time getting to it when neccessary.  Our money was in a bank in Idaho.  We couldn't get a cashier's check in Utah - they wouldn't send a wire without an original signature - and we were barely issued new cards due to the fraud on our account, so we didn't know our new PIN numbers.  We had money, but not GUARANTEED money and the mortgage company wouldn't take anything else.  We also had more than enough cash with us.  Cash is the ultimate guaranteed form of funds, but to this lender, cash = maffia affiliations or drug connections or something.  It's NOT acceptable.  We (all of us - the agent, broker, title company, me, etc.) scrambled to figure something out that would appease the lender.  There just wasn't an answer, so I did them best I could - I got a cashiers check with our cash, and prayed that everything would work out.  (I know this seems long, but I'm REALLY abridging a lot of stuff here!)

The day of our funding came.  At the last minute - and I really mean the LAST minute, the lender decided not to fund because they discovered that I'd used cash.  I was pretty upset that we didn't get funded.  I had to call the movers and ask them to hold our stuff on their truck for ANOTHER three days (over a weekend), we had to tell the people we were buying the house from that we weren't ready yet (humiliating again, but they were so glad to have a few extra days to move out and clean - maybe their prayers were more pressing than ours).  I had to impose upon my parents for another three days and I had to wait to get into our new house.  All of those issues were upsetting, but I could have survived them.  The REAL issue came when our mortage broker (a friend of the family, remember) told David that this was my fault for getting the cashier's check with cash and trying to cover it up.  He basically said that I was dishonest.  Dave LOST it on him and defended me in no uncertain (or soft-spoken) terms.  Luckily for Craig, he to take another call about our loan.  By the time they spoke again, Dave had calmed down a bit.  I, however, was FIRED UP!!!  I felt horrible!  I already felt bad about having to wait another three days, but to have my integrity questioned was more than I could bear.  I spent the entire night thinking about it, and determined that I couldn't work with this person anymore until I told him how I felt.  I got up early the next morning and wrote a pretty scathing e-mail to Craig.  I explained the reasons for getting the cashiers check the way I did and reminded him that he was fully aware of how I was handling it at the time.  I mentioned a few of the headaches we'd had over the loan in the past and the less-than-honest ways he'd wanted to fix them, which we wouldn't do.  I complained a bit about the lack of professionalism he displayed.  I think I did so very calmly and matter-of-factly.  I didn't call him names or anything, but I wasn't going to sit there and take it either.  Craig responded with a very humble, apologetic letter.  I responded back with a let's-put-it-behind-us-letter.  And the whole incident was over.  I don't think Craig will be sending me a Valentine in the future, but I think we're okay now.

So, in the end, we finally got our loan funded on Monday, June 4th.  The movers weren't coming until Tuesday, but we got our keys on Monday night.  We loaded up the kids and my parents and went over to see our new house.  David met us there.  He actually beat us there.   We walked in the door and.....it was such a HUGE dissappointment!  After all the trouble and heartache, we had lost any excitement we'd been feeling over this house.  We almost wished that it would all fall apart towards the end.  We just weren't excited about it anymore.  When the house was empty, we saw every nail hole in the walls and all the stains in the carpets.  We hadn't realized how bad the carpet was when we went through earlier.  The whole house seemed older and more dingy than we remembered.  Then, I saw a spider crawling on the wall and for some reason, it just sent me over the edge.  I kept a happy face on as good as I could until we got the kids in bed that night, then I just started crying.  Both David and I were like, "What have we done?  That's not the house I remember."  Great way to start you life somewhere, huh?  Don't worry - it will get better, but that's the way it all began for our family in Layton Utah.

The Moving Saga Episode Five: Livin' With The Smiths

We arrived at my parents house in the afternoon on Memorial Day.  The plan was to stay with them for five days and move into our new home on Saturday.  That plan didn't work out so well.  We weren't able to move in until the following Tuesday, so we were there for a total of eight days.  I'm sure it felt like an eternity to my parents because we are a huge, loud crowd that kind of takes over their lives when we're around, but we had a great time!

Ali lounging in the backyard at Grandma's house.

My mom, in particular, pretty much put her life on hold and took care of us for a week.  She has many other responsibilities in her ward (she's the RS pres.) and lots of other family members to visit and help, but she couldn't get much done with us commandeering her life.  We sure appreciated it.  She babysat for me many times when I had to run around and jump through hoops for our loan and when we signed our documents.  She also accompanied me on many many shopping trips.  Some trips were for groceries, others were for new bedding for the kids rooms, etc.  Some trips were for summer clothes, others were for furniture ideas.  We did a LOT of shopping!  We also went to a park, several restaurants, and other fun adventures.  The kids had a great time watching the Disney Channel and jumping on the trampoline.  Those were the only two things they needed to be happy.

Grandma and the kids at a park feeding the ducks.
 

In the mean time, Cookie was confined to Grandma and Grandpa's shed.  It's just a regular shed, not a huge, windowed garage like the Gee's.  We were only going to keep her there for a day, then put her in a kennel on Tuesday, but Alison didn't want her to be away from us.  She worried about how Cookie would do around strange cats because of the way she acted around Dusty back in Idaho.  Anyway, we ended up keeping Cookie in the shed and visiting her a couple of times per day.  We tried to let her out whenever we were around.  It was probably cruel, but that's what we did.  The truth is, it worked miracles.  Cookie has been a much more patient and friendly cat since she spent time in solitary confinement!  I think my folks should open up a business - Smith's home for troubled cats. 

On Sunday, we weren't sure where to go to church.  We weren't comfortable going to our new ward before we even bought the house and we didn't want to go to my parent's ward either (especially since we were a pretty ragamuffin crew - lots of Sunday stuff either got lost in the move or packed, so we looked a little ragged).  We ended up going to sacrament meeting with my parents, then driving to Salt Lake and spending some time on Temple Square.  It was so pleasant.  The weather was very nice and the flowers were stunning.  It was a wonderful way to spend the Sabbath.  I told Dave that since we live close, we should try to do it a few times per year.  Dave said, "Sure, Kell.  It'd be nice, but we're gonna get too busy with callings and family.  We'll probably never do it."  I hope to prove him wrong.

Although it was frustrating to wait for our new home (more about that another day) it was exciting to be in Utah and getting ready to move into our home, etc.  We will never forget our last sleep-over visit to Grandma and Grandpa Smith's house.

The Moving Saga Episode Four: Livin' With The Gees

We were officially homeless on Friday, June 25th.  Luckily for us, we have some great and generous parents who let us crash at their pads for a while!  We stayed with David's parents for the first five days, over Memorial Day weekend. 

We spent Friday morning finishing cleaning and moving out of the house, but by the afternoon, we were as free as a lark!  We celebrated our new found freedom by eating at Pizza Pie Cafe (aka Craigo's) one last time.  The kids and I love that place and will miss it greatly!  David was a good sport and endured it well - somewhere along the line, a year or so ago, Dave overdosed on Pizza Pie Cafe and has never regained his love for it.  That evening we watched a movie in the grandparents' basement.  They have a huge HD television with surround sound so it's like being in a theater.  Bronson wasn't into the movie, but he was happily playing around the room with us.  That is, until he tripped and hit his eye on  the corner of an end table.  It instantly puffed up and turned gruesome colors!  He looked like Rocky Balboa after a fight.  It was pretty terrifying - so close to his eyeball!   I took him upstairs and held an ice pack to his eye (he liked that even less than the injury and screamed bloody murder!)  He was a pretty horrifying sight for a while, but there was no permanent damage done.  That boy!  He had barely healed from his previous near-death experience!  That evening, Dave and I slipped away after the kids were in bed and got an ice cream cone together. 

Saturday was very laid back.  We had a whole day with literally nothing to do, so that's what we did!  Grandma made us pancakes for breakfast.  Yummy!  Both girls had picked out novels (or chapter books, as they call them) from Grandma and Grandpa's basement library and read all day long.  Nicki chose Black Beauty.  It was her first REAL experience with a novel (she's read a few easy 60-pagers before).  She was so excited and proud.  She'd read in the same room as us and constantly interrupted our conversations to announce what page she was on or what was happening.  It was cute.  The kids played and watched television, but Dave and I seriously just sat around and recovered.  It was kind of cold and rainy outside, so that kind of killed any ambitions I might have had to go to a park or the zoo, etc.
On Saturday evening, Kristi hosted a family get-together as our going away party.  It was a pot luck dinner with Sloppy Joes as the main course.  We were all looking forward to going.  As I walked in the house and looked at all the people I love so much chatting and laughing and as the cousins swept my kids away to some game they were playing, I just burst into tears.  Not exactly the reaction they expected I'm sure, but I got control and we had a very fun evening.  David pulled up an app on his phone that takes pictures of people and makes them look really old.  We had a fun time playing with that for a while. 

On Sunday, we went to our church one last time.  At family prayer that morning, Dave requested that Nicole pray for Mom to not cry.  I was like, "What?!?!?  I can't have faith in that prayer!?!?!?"  Anyway, I think it helped a lot.  I made it all the way through the first two meetings without a tear.  I was doing pretty good at Relief Society too, until they asked me to give the opening prayer.  I lost it!  Many of the women in our ward have been the closest friends I've ever had.  We've been a huge part of each other's lives for a decade.  Wow!  I still can't believe I left!  Anyway...I got control and listened to the lesson.  Then, they asked my best friend, Heather, to give the closing prayer.  She bawled through it too.  So, I said my goodbyes to all my ward friends in a watery, blubbery state.  Heather and I particularly struggled.  Our husbands saw each other in the hall and they each said, "My wife is sobbing in the van in the parking lot right now, thanks to your wife!"  The good thing is, we have the kind of relationship that will stay strong no matter what. She has family in Utah, so we'll probably see each other once in a while. 


After church, we went to the cemetery for our Memorial day visit.  It was cold and windy and starting to rain, so we didn't get to spend much time there at all, but it sure is lovely there.  When we got back to Grandma and Grandpa's house, we ate a huge feast.  Delicious! 

That evening, the extended family all came over for the traditional Sunday night visits. Afterwards, Alison and Nicole went over to Uncle Shawn and Aunt Amy's house for a girl-cousin-sleepover. They had a total blast! It was so thoughtful (not to mention brave) of them to host a sleepover! The kids had makeovers and performed a fabulous fashion show. They listened to "spooky" stories from Uncle Shawn.

On Monday, we packed everything up, drugged the cat, and headed for Utah.  Dave and Cookie drove the rental van.  The boys and I picked up the girls at their sleepover, which made me cry again, and we drove in the van.  We drove straight to a storage unit, where Evan and Jodi's family met us.  They helped us unload the rental truck into the storage unit so we could return the truck.  Then we all went to Chuck-E-Cheese's for a couple of hours.  And just like that, we became Utahns.

The Moving Saga Episode Three: Getting Out

Wednesday, May 23rd, was the last day of school for my girls.  It also happened to be the day the moving van came and took all our stuff away.  I originally tried to book the van for Thursday, but the week school gets out is the busiest moving week of the year so I was VERY lucky to find a company that would do it at all.  I felt terrible because the last day of school is a pretty big deal at South Fork.  All the families are invited to participate in a huge field day and attend the awards assembly.  I missed it all this time, but I don't think the girls cared much.  They were too distracted by the excitement and sadness of it all. 

I was very prepared for the movers.  (Seriously - they were impressed).  They were scheduled to be at my house around 1:00pm.  I spent the morning putting the last few things in boxes and stripping beds, taking down the crib, etc.  Then the boys and I went to Burger King for lunch.  After lunch, I took them over to stay at a generous neighbor's house, then went home and waited for the movers.  They called around 1:30pm, saying that they were still about an hour away.  Then, the poor guy suggested that since they were late, they'd just lay over in Idaho Falls for the night and get started first thing in the morning.  That didn't go over too well with me.  I can't remember exactly what I said, but I know I laughed out loud and said something like, "No. You'll come today.  I've got a babysitter lined up for today, not tomorrow.  I'm missing my kids' last day of school for this.  I'm waiting for you.  Get here.  Now."  Then I hung up and called the owner of the moving company saying that they can't just change the day like that (especially when I WANTED Thursday in the first place and had to shuffle things around to make Wednesday work.)   He was all apologies and I'm sure he called his guys in the van because they worked their TAILS off and got the job done in no time.  All's well that ends well.  They were a couple of rough lookin' guys and they were excited for Idaho's higher alcohol content in their beer once they got off work, but they sure could lift heavy stuff and they sure could pack it into a truck!  They were worth every penny. 

Kind of a rainy day.
 

The girls came home from school some time in the middle of all the moving.  They watched for a while, amazed at the workers' strength.  Nicole was like, "Whoa!  You're strong!"  The worker said, "Thanks."  Then Nicole said, "My dad's really strong too.  He could probably pick that box up and throw it in the air."  She was totally serious.  Love it!  I took the girls over to the neighbor's house, too.  At dinner time, I picked the kids up and we ate dinner (furnished by one of my best friends) in an empty bedroom.  The movers finished up just in time for me to load up the kids and take them over to Grandma and Grandpa Gee's house to go to bed.  We lived with them for five days, but those stories will have to wait for the next post.  For now, I'm writing about cleaning.

David rode the shuttle from Farmington to Rexburg.  He rolled in around 10:30pm.  I wanted to go the house and clean until he got home, but Dave's dad insisted I take a break - he wanted to pick David up for me.  I sat and had a very nice chat with Dave's folks that evening.  I really enjoyed myself, in spite of the fact that I was dying to get started cleaning the house.  Once David walked in the door that night, we were officially through with the living-in-different-states phase of our lives.  Whew!!!

We intended to spend most of the day on Thursday cleaning the house.  We had to take a small break to sign documents at the title company, but that didn't take long.  However, in the midst of our chaos in Rexburg, all HECK broke loose in Utah.  The radon test we'd ordered on our new house came back positive.  We made an agreement with the people we were buying the house from to have them pay for the mitigation process (which is basically a ventilation pipe being installed in the basement).  Our lender, however, said that wasn't good enough.  We had to have the mitigation system put in, tested, and at acceptable levels BEFORE we could get the loan.  It takes time to do each step and we were out of time since we were already homeless.  So we spent a LOT of time on the phone trying to find someone to put in a mitigation system on short notice on Memorial Day weekend, asking permission of our sellers to get it done while they were still living there, finding a testing company to go in once the system was in, signing documents for our lender/agent and faxing them back and forth at the copy store since our computer was in the back of a moving van.  Urgh!!  It was a mess.  Needless to say, we didn't get as much accomplished as I'd hoped in our Rexburg home.  Dave's parent kept the kids with them for at least half the day, we had them at the house for a few hours.  Then I took them back to the Gee's for dinner, baths and bed while David, Terry, and about five guys from our Elder's quorum loaded up a second, smaller moving van (we had too much stuff for just one truck, so Dave drove a rental van to Utah as well). 

Friday morning, I couldn't sleep because of worry.  I knew we had to be out of the house by noon and I couldn't see how it would happen.  I left Dave's parent's house at about 4:30 am and got to work.  By the time David and his mom came to help, I had a pretty good handle on the basement and was feeling better about the whole project.  I ran out to Ace Hardware to buy some paint to cover up nail holes (I'd done it the day before, but the paint I'd used was matte and the walls weren't.  It looked awful!  I had to fix it!)  When I returned home, some ladies from the relief society were already there cleaning baseboards and shelves for me.  It was amazing!  I had just enough help to get the house clean in time.  What a blessing!  (Kristi was watching all four kids for us, speaking of blessings!)  By the time Marilyn and the ladies left, the place looked pretty good.  It was no show home, mind you, (I knew the new family was replacing the carpets, so I didn't worry too much about them) but it was clean.  Before we left, Dave and I sat down to write a quick note to the new owners explaining garbage days, sprinklers, etc.  Then, we went to get our keys and leave them on the counter.  Uh-oh!  Dave had left his key in Utah because he didn't drive home, he rode the shuttle, and I had packed my key in a box (it had been in the lock box while we were selling the home).  Ahhhhh!!   So, with about 30 minutes to spare, David and I ran to the closest hardware store and bought new doorknobs for the house.  I think it was a real blessing because I was too stressed out to get very sentimental. 

The back of some of my helpers.  They weren't very happy with me when they saw the camera.

David trying to change the locks with only minutes to spare.

A real trick was moving Cookie, but that's for another post too.

We pulled out of the driveway with only minutes to spare...but once we did, I felt a tremendous amount of pressure being lifted off my shoulders.  I didn't have to worry about it anymore - it was as clean as it was gonna be.

 

Goodbye great room

 

Goodbye basement

 

Goodbye front room

 

Goodbye girls' room

 

Goodbye boys' room

 

Goodbye our room

Goodbye house.  We love you.

The Moving Saga Episode Two: My Tree

In Rexburg, we had several huge trees just past our property.  This is a picture of the one I could see out my bedroom window.  I LOVE this tree!  For seven and a half years, I saw this tree every morning when I woke up and every day as I worked at the kitchen sink.  I've seen it covered in snow, little green leaf buds (like right now), flocked in summery green, autumn orange and skeleton-bare.  I've watched the cows graze at its base and the hawks perch in its branches.  It has been the foreground for stunning sunsets and dazzling thunderstorms and lazy blue skies.  I am going to miss this tree!  I wish I had more pictures of it in all the seasons.  I just never knew that I'd leave so I took it for granted.  I'm seriously considering blowing up this picture and hanging it in my bedroom so that I can still wake up to my favorite tree.