Saturday, March 9, 2013

Our New Home

As promised, here's my first post about our lives in Minneapolis. It's about time too since it just dawned on me that we've lived here for 7 weeks now! That's crazy to me, but I'm sure what will be even crazier is when we've lived here longer than we lived together in Utah. I just did the math and that will be November of this year. Crazy!

Well, if I'm starting at the beginning, our move itself went really well. We loaded our moving truck in Orem with the help of family and some members of the Elders Quorum. We were so grateful for their help! Then, the next morning, Chad and his dad were on their way.


They had a great trek across the Midwest...and enjoyed the "lovely" scenery.



Shout out to the best father-in-law, Mark, for making that drive with Chad. We all know you were a far more enjoyable driving companion then I would have been :)

I enjoyed my 2 hour flight after dealing with the carpet cleaners, apartment inspection, and all the last minute arrangements (much better than a 2 day drive, if I say so myself). I was also lucky enough that both of my parents were able to take me to the airport. Such a blessing.

I met up with my mother-in-law, Suzanne, at the Minneapolis airport. She had taken a different flight due to scheduling, but it worked out perfectly. I'm so grateful that she too was able to help us with this move. It was comforting to have her there with me. I was surprisingly emotionally stable and I'm sure that is in part due to her being there. Plus, her designer eye came in handy when we ran to the store to buy some things for our apartment...at Target, of course!


We were very fortunate that Chad and his dad didn't run into any crazy Midwest storms. In fact, they made it into Minneapolis on Friday night and the initial plan was for them to get in Saturday morning. That made for some pretty interesting negotiations with our apartment manager, but she finally agreed to let us move in early.


The four of us quickly got to work on getting us moved in and set up, especially because we knew that later in the weekend the temperature was supposed to drop to negative 25. Eeek! A lovely "Welcome to your new home" kind of feeling.


Feeling a bit exhausted at this point.

Forget putting it away. We were just happy to have it all inside.
Why?

This is how we felt about going outside. Oh, Minnesota.

It went well though and we got everything off the moving truck, up 9 stories, and into our apartment in record time -- a little over an hour.

So, I thought you'd all enjoy some pictures of our new place. We love it!






 

Stay tuned for some more posts about work, church, and other fun Minnesota adventures.

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

My Mom


If you don't know my mom, you're missing out. Trust me. She's definitely one of the greatest people I know. In fact, I'm sure everyone who knows her loves her. One reason why everyone loves her is because she is always happy. My favorite part about her happy nature is that you can hear her laugh from miles away, and then you want to laugh and be happy to.

The last few months I've been a little bit stressed with everything going on in my life --moving to a new state (away from family and friends), adjusting to working remotely, new church calling, etc. Sometimes (and thankfully not often, because I have an amazing, supportive husband) it feels like I'm trying to juggle a million things and occasionally something slips and goes crashing to the floor. Thankfully, it's usually something less important, like forgetting about chicken thawing on the counter and having to throw it away because it's been out too long (True story!). It's times like this when I'm even more amazed with my mom.

My mom juggles motherhood, work, church responsibilities, community involvement, and a bajillion other things every day. And she does it all so gracefully and with a smile on her face. Yes, I'm sure that occasionally she "leaves the chicken out" too, but I'm utterly amazed at everything SHE DOES. Most importantly though I'm amazed at WHO SHE IS. She is the most Christ-like person I know. I love her so much!

Mom: If you read this, thank you for everything! I love you! And, HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

P.S. I promise to do some posts about our life in Minneapolis...soon.