Grandpa's gone

We left the house at 8:38 to head to church this morning (we were aiming for 8:30, so we weren't terribly off schedule). The church building itself is about a ten-minute drive from our house and it looks quite a bit like our old Berini building in Durham, though it's not quite the same.

Walking from our parking stall to the church building, Grandpa joked, was like walking from our house to the church building in Utah. We will miss being so close to the church building but so far we are really enjoying our ward and are happy to be, as they say, "in the mission field" once again.

Zoë's favourite part of church was that they sang all the same songs she already knows (standardized curriculum will do that for you). Benjamin seemed to enjoy goofing off with the boys he was sitting with on the back row of the primary room (though I'm fairly certain they have put him with the wrong class) but he was annoyed that this primary was only now learning the song Gethsemane since our ward went ahead and learned it in January.

We told him that he's now ahead of the curve and can help his friends learn it.

Miriam happily proclaimed after church that she "made no friends."

"Surely you made at least one friend," I said.

"Nope. I met everyone in my class at the party on Thursday so I didn't make any new friends today!"

But she developed a deeper relationship with the friends she made on Thursday, I guess, and that's important as well.

Rachel would have preferred our first Sunday to be a Young Women's week, I think, but she bravely attended her Sunday School class.

In fact, I didn't even have to help her find her class because a woman in the row in front of us offered to escort her to the youth Sunday School (and Miriam, likewise, was carted off by a member of the primary presidency). It was easy to find where Benjamin and Zoë were supposed to be because the junior primary classes typically meet in the primary room before going to classes (while the senior primary attends their classes first and then meet in the primary room).

Alexander joyfully toddled into the nursery room to play with toys but then promptly had a little baby anxiety attack and started screaming his little lungs out. Andrew tried to wait it out but Alexander was unconsolable—shaking and crying and begging for Momma (and then, when that was getting him nowhere, for Grandpa)—so he went in to rescue the poor boy. Alexander wasn't particularly pleased that Daddy had been the one to come to his rescue, but he clung to Andrew's neck, anyway, and sniffled and whimpered and shook until he was sure he had come off as entirely too pathetic to send back to the nursery.

I'm not sure we'll ever get him to stay in nursery.

Camping in our first house

On our way home from dinner this evening (Waffle House—we're definitely back in the south) we saw a deer as we were driving through our neighbourhood, and in a perfect Bambi-and-Thumper moment, we saw that there was a little bunny hopping along beside the deer. So far we've also seen squirrels and chipmunks and have heard rumblings of bear sightings as well.

It's hard to believe we're tucked snuggly in the middle of ninth-largest metropolitan statistical area in the United States, not camping.

Especially because we're basically camping in our house right now.

The Relief Society president, who we met last night at Berkeley Lake for an evening of pizza, visiting, and playing in the sand (because the lake itself was closed due to unsafe bacteria levels in the water, which they've since cleared up), came by the house to drop off some air mattresses and pillows and things. So we're primitive, but comfortable.

The children could hardly fall asleep tonight, they were so bothered by the sounds of insects singing to the moon (a sound that with time will become comforting enough to lull them off to sleep, I'm sure). Cicadas and crickets and who knows what else, trilling and chirping and making a racket. There are frogs, too, I'm sure.

It sounds familiar to the older members of our family, but foreign to our little ones.

Our trailer arrived this afternoon and we've got appliances coming out our ears. They were delivered while we were signing the closing documents for our house and though we begged them to wait—just ten minutes—for us to get back to the house with the key, they ditched our appliances on our driveway and took off.

I wasn't very pleased about this, but with some (great) effort, we managed to get the fridge into the house and connected it to the water line and so forth. The dryer is all set to go as well. The washer is just about hooked up (though the pedestal for the washing machine arrived damaged and we'll have to send it off and wait for a new one (that doesn't really affect how well the washing machine works, however)) and the company should be sending someone out to hook up our dishwasher (because I called to complain because we had someone there to accept the delivery—Grandpa—he just didn't have a key to the house, but we were only ten minutes outside of their "wait window" and they could have started unpackaging things in preparation to move things into the house (the fridge, for example, had to be unboxed and the doors had to be removed completely before it would fit inside the house) but they wouldn't even start doing that; as it turns out they should have called headquarters before leaving anyway, even though the policy is to leave after their "wait window" expires, in which case headquarters might have told them to stick it out for ten minutes). Getting that all sorted out was a bit of a mess, but it's almost through.

So even though things are exhausting and frustrating, they're a normal level of exhausting and frustrating and not "all-your-kids-have-the-stomach-flu-and-your-moving-van-is-lost-somewhere-in-the-continental-united-states" level of frustrating (which was the level we were at when we moved to Spanish Fork (though it was also less stressful because we were moving to a place where we were surrounded by friends and family and now we're here feeling rather alone)).

I'm sure in the coming weeks we'll feel better and better as we get things settled!

Travel notes: Day 3

Well, we did it! I didn't think it could be done, but we did it! We pulled into Atlanta around 11:00 last night after a very long day of driving.

I tried so hard to include interesting stops on this trip, to break of the drive and make some memories, but unfortunately things didn't work out as planned and the trip ended up being rather boring despite my best efforts. We missed the Oz museum on Saturday and then as we were going through St. Louis we got a notification that the roads leading to the arch were closed due to the river flooding (floods have been rather terrible and widespread in that part of the country this year), so we missed that as well. And then because we decided to just power on through the rest of the way to Georgia we drove through Chattanooga (where we were going to stop to see some Civil War things) just as the sun was setting (and the parks were closed). So we really struck out.

But now we know that Chattanooga looks like a very pretty area and that it's less than two hours from our house so we can plan a day trip there sometime, to enjoy the fall colours of the Appalachians, perhaps.

Here are a few stories from our day yesterday:

In the morning before leaving the hotel in Concordia, Rachel was following me around whining while I was trying to get ready to go. She had a bit of a short fuse and after she snipped at Miriam (again), I asked her to cool her jets.

"It's just that she cries about everything!" Rachel...cried.

"Which is exactly what you're doing now!" I pointed out.

"I'm not crying! I'm just whining!" Rachel argued.

"Which is the same thing as crying...only drier!" I said.

Rachel collapsed onto the bed and moaned, "MOOOOOOM!"

Because there's nothing like a good mom joke when you're in the middle of an adolescent rage.

Travel notes: Day 2

I was initially a little worried about staying in Limon because it looked rather rundown, but then I looked up the crime rate for the area and felt much better about, for instance, leaving our luggage tied to the top of the van (it's just sleeping bags and Rachel's dirty laundry from camp, but still).

"Guess how many crimes were reported in the area last year," I said to Andrew, but he didn't have a guess, so I told him. "Seven!"

"Seven...like, right here around the hotel?"

"No. In all of Limon," I said.

"Oh, we're going to be fine then," he said.

And we were. But it really was a little rundown kind of joint. Still, the kids enjoyed playing on the little rundown playground in the morning.

We struck out for Goodland, Kansas to see the world's largest easel...and also a replica of Van Gogh's Three Sunflowers in a Vase painted by the Canadian artist Cameron Cross (he has done two other gigantic sunflower paintings on easels just as large as the one in Goodland, so I'm not sure how it can claim to be the world's largest...but it does). We had to take a picture to send to Uncle Rod, who also made a version of this painting (which will hang in our home, which I'm excited about because of Uncle Rod's paintings it is one of my favourites).

Eventually I will put some pictures up. This blog feels so empty without them. But anyway...

Saturday ended up being another long day of driving. After stopping in Goodland, we stopped in Oakley for lunch at iHop and then tried to decide if we would make it to Wamego (where the Oz museum is) in time to visit it. We decided we would not be able to make it in time (much to our daughters' disappointment) and instead went to a Buffalo Bill museum. It was to mark the birthplace of the idea of Buffalo Bill. I guess there were two Buffalo Bills who held a contest over the use of the name and Buffalo Bill Cody won by killing more buffalo, right there on the plains of Oakley, than the other Buffalo Bill.

After that we drove for hours upon hours upon hours. Alexander and I fell asleep. Zoë busily coloured and chattered away to herself while listening to her shows with her headphones. Benjamin was so plugged in that we hardly heard a peep from him. Andrew just drove.

We finally stopped for the night in Concordia—yes, Missouri—where we were surprised by the humidity. Kansas was nearly 100 degrees Fahrenheit with a parching wind. When we stepped out of the car in Missouri it felt as if we had stepped into a sauna. It felt delightful (perhaps because we were so cold from being in the car with the AC blasting (cold air helps car sickness at bay in addition to keeping the driver away) but also because we're not sick of the humidity yet). The children were also pleased to see a few fireflies out and about while they were romping around in the lawn in front of the Pizza Hut we stopped at.

*****

Here are few funny things that happened while we were driving, as recorded on Facebook (which is where I happened to take my notes that day (I guess my phone service was better out on the open prairie than it was while driving through the mountains)):

Andrew: I think we’ll stop for a potty break in Salina.
Me: How far is Salina?
Andrew: I think...67 miles?
Me (looking it up): 70. That was good! You were so close.
Andrew: That’s because I’ve been mentally calculating it in my head...because...that’s where one typically engages mentally...anyway...moving on.

Zoë has been obsessing over the difference between a hotel and a motel and we haven't been able to satisfy her quest for knowledge. As we were driving (shortly after lunch), she asked if we were going to a hotel. So I told her we were.

"Excuse me," she chided. "I'm talking to Daddy, so..."

"Oh, my bad," I said, even though she'd given no indication to which parental unit she'd intended to address.

"Are we going to a hotel?" Zoë repeated.

"Yes," Andrew said.

"Don't you mean motel?" Zoë asked.

"Sure," Andrew shrugged.

Then Zoë, returning to her colouring, muttered to herself, "Probably not. He doesn't even know!" and resumed happily humming.

Later Andrew tried explaining that hotels have hallways on the inside and motels open up to the outdoors, which left Zoë incredibly complexed when we showed up to whatever place we stayed at last night and found that the first floor opened up to the outside while the second floor opened up to the inside of the building. Talk about confusing!

*****

We didn't really hear many are-we-there-yet's due in large part, I'm sure, to the fact that Benjamin was in screen-time heaven. Zoë asked variations of this question several times, but not so many that it got to be annoying. And she doesn't understand time at all so her line of questioning was always very interesting.

Zoë: But when will we get to the hotel?
Andrew: In about two hours.
Zoë: Is that in whole time or half time?
Andrew: Ummm...half time?
Zoë: Yippee!!

Later Andrew answered this same series of questions and told her that it was in "whole time," whatever that is, and she was equally excited. We're not really clear what "whole time" and "half time" mean in her mind.

Travel notes: redacted

Warning: the following content may contain elements that are not suitable for some audiences. Accordingly, reader discretion is advised. In other words: it may border on being inappropriate (but we got a good laugh over it at the time).

*****

Rachel has been in charge of communication in the white car (the white car that is still so new and foreign to us that we never recognize it as our own, even when it's sitting in our own driveway (seriously—I'm always like, "Who's here? Oh. Us.")) since Grandpa is driving and she has nothing but time. Her response time is a little bit slow, however, and at times it's been frustrating because sometimes I'll need to communicate a last-minute change in plans for our caravan and she won't respond.

Today I resorted to using the "find my phone" app to ping her phone because I knew it would override any sort of "do not disturb" barricades. She didn't notice my texts, my phone call, or when I tried to facetime her, but she did finally pick up the phone when it started pinging.

I think she's since (as in "since I exasperatedly told her to pick up the phone!") changed the settings on her phone (to the "most annoying sound I could find," she told me). We'll see if that helps.

Anyway, yesterday I sent her the following text (because we had sleeping babies and didn't want to wake them but had promised everyone a pit stop): "We are skipping Grand Junction (unless your car says otherwise), aiming for Rifle. About 100 miles. That okay with you?"

I got no response. So I sent another message.

Still no response, so I sent the following message, which I thought was funny:

"Speak now or forever hold your pee(s)."

She didn't even respond to that—or to my next four messages—but I did see that my messages had at least been read so I wrote, "You can at least laugh at my joke!" So she did a little "haha" reaction to my message. "Thank you!" I said.

Because people laugh when things are funny!

Travel notes: Day 1

Today we drove from Spanish Fork, Utah to Limon, Colorado (560 miles, 8 hours and 45 minutes of driving time).

Andrew and I are in the minivan with Benjamin, Zoë and Alexander. Miriam and Rachel are in the car with Grandpa. We're a happy little caravan. At least for today. At least until we told the kids we weren't stopping anywhere for dinner because we had so many snacks for them to munch on (and, like, good snacks—cheese and carrots and celery and nuts, if they should choose such things, which make a very healthy meal (but also many things that might not add up to a sufficient meal)).

Anyway, I took some notes from our car because our children are habitually hilarious.

At one point Zoë called my attention and I looked back and she was feeling her nose and looking very perplexed. "Mom! Mom! Mom!" she said. "I think...I think my nose...is an M!"

And, you know what, noses are M's...in a way. If you are strapped into your car seat long enough you, too, might discover this about yourself.

"See? Boredom is good," Andrew said. "You discover all sorts of things you never realized when you're bored."

Farewells

What a whirlwind of activity we've had this week! I eventually really do need to get all the pictures off my phone and camera and run through everything we've done (bowling, farewell parties, and so forth). On Tuesday we packed up the truck and said goodbye to mostly everything we own (and learned that we own far too much stuff). On Wednesday we met up with my friend Jade and her little girls at Red Ledges.

Jade and I became fast friends when her family moved into our ward in PoCo (from South Africa). I was so excited to have another little girl my age in our ward because for years it had just been me and *grumbly voice* Damen *end grumbly voice*.

I'm sure Damen is fine. But seven-year-old me certainly didn't think he was enough of a playmate.

Lia and Hona (sisters, very close in age (but not twins?), whose names, if you say them together are liahona) were also in my age group for a time, but they stuck together like glue and I think eventually moved to a Chinese-speaking branch or something.

Anyway, I was so happy to have a girl my age in the ward. Jade and I would take turns going home with each other's families on Sundays. That was a very common way for us to have playdates with our church friends because our ward boundaries were so large that it meant we'd only have to be chauffeured once to come home at the end of the playdate instead of twice (to be dropped off and picked up). Her dad would make "flapjacks" quite often and we just loved being together.

Unfortunately, she happened to move in only a few months (6? 9?) before my family moved to Alberta, but her friendship has stuck with me my entire life. I saw her once when I was 13 and I flew out to BC for a visit but haven't seen her since. We really are quite two peas in a pod though.

Before getting back in contact after years of radio silence, we both grew up, graduated from our respective high schools, and ended up at BYU. I taught English in Voronezh, Russia. She taught English in Voronezh, Russia. I did a study abroad in Jordan (as a trailing spouse). She did a study abroad at the Jerusalem Center (the first semester it reopened). I lived in Egypt (as a trailing spouse again) and she was writing to me about a job prospect she had in Egypt years ago (but ultimately decided not to take). It's kind of funny the number of very similar things we've done!

Of course, our lives also have been wildly different.

I got married young and have five kids. She went on a mission and then to law school (and somewhere in the middle got married and started having kids—her first baby was born just a few weeks before she graduated and her second is about nine months old).

It was so fun to reconnect with her, though, and to reassure my girls that friends we only get to be with for a short amount of time (like the two years we spent in Spanish Fork—which really is plenty of time to develop a long-lasting friendship, in my opinion and experience) can be lifelong—and important—friends.

Anyway...I'm sure I'll be back to revisit our last visit to Red Ledges once I get those pictures off my camera.

Loading Day

Our moving truck was dropped off yesterday afternoon. We had three days to fill it but because we went ahead and hired movers—thanks to a rather generous moving package—it's already filled (to the brim!) and has been taken away. And we didn't even lift a finger.

Having moved how many times without the help of professional movers (answer: many times), I can testify that using professional movers is definitely the way to go. It took three men five hours to load at 28-foot trailer for us and all we did (besides move a couple of things out of the house at the very end to hasten the project) was sit around and fret that we wouldn't be able to squeeze everything we wanted to in there. But we did, more or less, manage to get our entire house into one trailer!

We've been selling things off and giving things away for several weeks now. Some things we knew we wouldn't have room for and other things we simply didn't want anymore. Other things we wish we could have held on to, but knew doing so was impractical.

Both Miriam and I are mourning the loss of our chairs. For me, it's my rocking chair—too big and bulky to justify moving across the country (again) when my nursing days are numbered. For Miriam it's her big red office chair, which we decided at the last moment to jettison when we started getting really nervous about not having room for everything else we needed to put on the truck.

She's sad, but has decided that if she had to choose between the organ and the red chair, she'd choose the organ every time. And the organ definitely made it on the truck, so she's happy.

And Karen's big comfy recliner will be taking the place of my rocking chair and Alexander and I will live out the rest of our nursing days in that chair, I suppose, so we can be happy, too.

It was weird sitting back and watching while the truck was being loaded, but it's certainly nice to not be completely exhausted at the end of our loading day! And our nerves feel a lot better now that everything is on its way to Georgia.

Now all that's ahead of us is packing our vehicles for our cross-country road trip...but for now we have a couple of days to breathe and enjoy Utah while we wait for Rachel to get back from Young Women's Camp!

Utter Chaos

Our moving truck arrives on Monday—ironically 23 months to the day we left Durham—but our moving crew isn't scheduled until Tuesday. In a way this is an act of grace because it allows us one more day to get our act together. Really we're pretty close to being done.

I think we have one or two more things to disassemble.

We like to joke that in our house we only ever disassemble (and never dissemble).

The sad part about disassembling furniture, though, is knowing that we're going to have to reassemble it all over again. It's kind of like making a fancy cake in that regard. You put all this effort into a project only to destroy/undo all your work. Oh, well. We're looking forward to getting settled even if it means putting all the furniture we just took apart back together again.

Moving always seems to breed chaos, at least for us (but surely for everybody).

Ten

I am the world's best and most catastrophic rounder, according to Andrew. He told me this after he suggested we take a packing break and I said, "We only have ten more days!!"*

"Eleven," he calmly corrected.

"Today is almost over," I said.

"But today is not over yet so we still have eleven days. You are the world's best and most catastrophic rounder. You make everything sound like impending doom!"

So, there are eleven days until our truck arrives. But by the time we wake up tomorrow there will only be ten days until our truck arrives (and two weeks until we really take off) so in honour of eleven (almost ten) days until we once again cram all of our belongings into the back of a truck, I give you our ten highs and lows from life in Spanish Fork.*

* Now there really are only ten days until our truck arrives, which honestly feels more like nine...

I feel like we did something like this before leaving a few other homes (though I'm not sure we did one for Durham, but I could probably do one retrospectively). So without further ado, I give you a few lists of things that "we" think we'll miss/look forward to, and by "we" I mean "I":

Ten highs we experienced in Spanish Fork:

1. Alexander's birth
2. Miriam's baptism 
3. Benjamin started kindergarten
4. Rachel's spectacular last year of elementary school
5. Andrew graduated from Duke
6. Nancy got to play with gamelan and take a writing class
7. Zoë went from baby to big kid—from potty training to preschool
8. We got to go to Grover again (and visit Alberta, for that matter)
9. Rachel got to go to the temple for the first time at the Payson temple
10. We always had family to invite to everything

Ten lows we experienced in Spanish Fork:

1. Karen's death
2. Alexander's broken arm
3. We frequently felt smothered by family drama
4. Some of us have struggled to find friends here
5. Sometimes the train wakes up the baby at 2 AM
6. There are no bo-berry biscuits here
7. It's so far from the ocean
8. This last winter was so long and we were sick the entire time
9. The library was just so small, guys
10. We were perpetually stressed out over our impending unemployment

NC to Utah: The drive (finally)

Now that summer is somewhat officially over—because Labour Day has passed, obviously, and now all the pools and splash pads and things are shutting down for the season...not because we've made it to the fall equinox or anything official like that—I suppose it's high time I shared a little bit about the kids' trip out here. 

Writing about things I didn't participate in can be difficult to do since I wasn't there, so you can consider whatever I write as hearsay. There is, however, photographic evidence to be had (and while I'm waiting on aunts and uncles to share pictures from Goblin Valley (which is where the kids were on Labour Day), I may as well share the long overdue pictures from their cross-country trip).

Here's our truck all loaded up on Tuesday morning, July 25th after Andrew and I finished stuffing our mattresses in:

Bed switching

Yesterday we went "shopping" for furniture in Grandma Pat's basement—and high time, too! We were supposed to go last week over and over again but Andrew was still so busy with his dissertation that we kept putting it off. And then we were supposed to go on Monday but had to postpone until yesterday due to extenuating family circumstances. Yesterday might not have been the very best day to go; it certainly ended up being more complicated than we had originally planned, but it was also quite fun. Uncle Rod showed up to help move furniture and Aunt Nicki was there as well and because we showed up a little late (okay, by more than an hour) Grandma Pat ordered pizza so we could fill our bellies and avoid the worst of rush hour traffic.

We had a fun little visit, even though Grandma Pat's house is a little like a museum, full of interesting-to-look-at things that are verboten to little fingers (making it somewhat of a trial for the smallest of us (only Benjamin and Zoë came with us; Rachel and Miriam spent the afternoon/evening with Naanii and Bumpa at the movies/dinner). I think the only person to knock anything over, however, was Andrew, so...

Stuff

Our truck really, truly arrived on Saturday morning—and it even had our stuff on it! A good number of people from the ward came to help as well as our families. Karen went out to get some doughnuts from Cowboy Donuts and my mom brought some Nanaimo bars. Everyone seemed to enjoy coming inside for some refreshments when they were finished unloading the truck.

Although the morning started out cool, things warmed up quickly.

My mom, Uncle Patrick, Andrew and his dad slaved away piecing together furniture for a good part of the afternoon. Karen and I helped between tending the children. Rachel, Benjamin, and Miriam went over to the bishop's house to play with the kids there so in the morning we mostly had Zoë and Riley to contend with...but two two-year-olds is plenty enough trouble for anybody! They were all home in the afternoon.

By bedtime we had beds for everybody and, let me tell you, sleeping has never felt so good.

Also, sitting. Sitting has never felt so good either. I'm so happy to have my rocking chair back. I don't know how much time I've spent rocking babies—both born and yet-to-be born—in that chair (and/or my old rocking chair) but it's been a good chunk of the last decade and it felt good to be able to collapse in it again to rest and cuddle my toddler and read stories and so forth.

We spent a good chunk of this evening furiously unpacking. My feelings about stuff has run the gamut, from "sort through everything" to "forget sorting just pack everything" to "forget packing, just burn it" to "I'm so glad to have this back" to "why in the world did we haul this across the country?" to "where the heck is this specific thing I really want to find?"

I can't wait to be finished with everything so we can relax and get ready for this baby...

Ridiculous

Our truck was supposed to arrive today between 10 am and 2 pm, and when it didn't show Andrew called the company we booked with to see where, exactly, it was. They called their partner company in Utah to find out and then told Andrew that it would be another 2–3 hours before our truck would be delivered and that the company out here would call us to confirm delivery time.

Two soon passed and the third hour was quickly ticking by with no truck in sight. When Jacob and Shayla showed up to help I decided I should call the company to confirm, once again, that this truck was coming. Unfortunately, the number we have is based in the East Coast and they keep rather strict business hours so no one answered the phone.

Andrew looked up the number for the partner company based in Salt Lake and I called them at about 4:50 (shortly before closing) and confused the poor customer service representative on the phone so badly that she ran out to find her supervisor...who was in the parking lot getting into his car to go home. Because they also keep strict business hours.

He came back inside to help clear things up.

Turns out "our" truck was actually on its way, but after my call (and a quick review of our paperwork) they radioed out to the driver and told them to turn around because for some reason they thought we needed an empty truck delivered this afternoon. The actual truck we need—which is full of our stuff—is apparently parked in their lot, still waiting to be delivered.

Slooooowly settling in

The kids are all registered for school and are, I think, starting to get a little anxious for the school year to start. This is our first time trying to fill an entire summer break because on the year-round schedule we only had five weeks. They're pretty good about playing with each other, but they're also pining for interaction with other children.

Moving into a Utah (county) ward is weird because, whereas practically anywhere else a Mormon moves in the world their ward basically throws a party to welcome them because they're just so excited to have another family (with kids—even better!) in their ward, no one really gets excited when another Mormon family moves in next door.

I'm sure everyone in the ward is very nice. We just don't know that for sure because pretty much 0% of the ward spoke to us on Sunday. I spoke to Zoë's nursery leader for, like, two seconds to tell him her name was Zoë (and I even stayed in there the second hour but I couldn't really seem to edge in to any conversations) and Benjamin's primary teachers introduced themselves after church. Other than that we got a lot of looks sizing us up, but that's all.

Happiness Ahead

On Sunday morning I had the kids dress in their reserved Sunday clothes. We'd packed everything else in their closets, except their chosen outfit for their last Sunday in this ward.

Benjamin had been playing in his room—with DUPLO, the one set of toys that we had yet to pack away—and he came out to ask me a question. I looked up at him and gasped in horror. 

He had blood smeared all over his arms and shirt sleeves (and dribbling out of his nose)!

"Benjamin!" I shrieked. "You have a bloody nose!"

"I do?" he said.

"It's all over your shirt..." I nearly cried. 

"It's fine," he sniffed, wiping his nose on his arm again. "It's not that much blood!"

"Oh, Benjamin, please stop!" I said. 

A few glitches...but we're moving!

My friend Laura took the kids on Monday again. Andrew and I worked all day; we took all the beds apart and packed up all (or much of) the miscellany left around the house. It was nice to know the kids were happy and well-cared for while we did all of that.

I picked the kids up shortly before dinnertime (not that we’d end up having dinner until much, much later) and we started scrambling to get things prepared to load the moving truck since the Elder’s Quorum was due to arrive quite soon.

Benjamin mentioned something about his tummy not feeling right, so I gave him a little sympathy but then continued with whatever I had been doing. Unfortunately his complaint had been very, very genuine.

Minutes later I found myself cleaning up a puddle of vomit from the middle of the hallway and drawing a bath for my poor little boy.

As bad as I felt for him, I also felt bad for us—having a child come down with a stomach bug on moving day is simply not ideal.

Car jobs

Growing up, I was no stranger to long car rides. We seemed to travel between BC and Alberta and Utah quite a lot. My children, who are on their fourth drive across the country (once when we moved out, once to visit Utah, once driving back from Utah, and…now), probably feel the same way.

They are well conditioned.

This, however, is Zoë’s inaugural long-distance car ride. She and I flew to Utah and back the summer everyone else drove (and I flew out with Benjamin when we moved out here and I’m flying out to Utah this time around—I’m just always hugely pregnant or have a brand-new baby when we make these trips, what can I say?). She needs to be trained in the art of sitting in the car all the livelong day.

And who better to teach this art than a big sister?

Fortune telling

I last wrote during a 1:00 AM packing break on Saturday morning. It is only Tuesday and yet I just made a list of things I need to write about an it’s about a mile long! So much has happened the past few days it’s making my head spin. But here it is the middle of the afternoon and I’m showered, relaxing with my feet up, watching bluebirds out the window, and blogging like the chaos is over because mostly…it is.

I will try to organize my posts in some fashion going forward, but for now, here’s a funny story that I honestly cannot fit into the timeline whatsoever. It happened…sometime…

We’ve been eating a lot of mismatched meals lately—anything we could pull out of the cupboards or freezer was up for grabs breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

One day, Andrew pulled out a box of fortune cookies that we’d  had in our cupboard since our Chinese New Year celebration at the beginning of the year. Everyone was very excited to read their fortunes.

Benjamin’s fortune was, “You will soon be involved in many gatherings and parties.”

“That’s true!” Andrew said. “Everyone is so excited to see you when we get to Utah.”

Rachel’s fortune was, “A pleasant surprise is in store for you tonight.”

“That’s true!” Andrew said. I can’t remember his reasoning, but there are many pleasant surprises in store for her in the future, I’m sure.

Acceptance letters are exciting

Andrew and I were excited when we got into BYU.

We were excited when he got accepted at AUC.

We were excited when he got into BYU (again).

We were excited to be here at Duke.

But this morning FedEx rang our doorbell and delivered what is, perhaps, the most exciting letter of all—a job offer! We'll be heading back to BYU (because we just can't get enough of that place) for a one-year assistant professorship. We have no idea what we'll be doing beyond this one year, but at least we have a one-year plan in place.

We've been sitting around biting our nails for quite some time, and although we still have quite a few ducks yet to get in line, at least we know what direction to prod those unruly ducks.