Like I mentioned, it's always taken longer than Google Maps says to get from Georgia to North Carolina. That night it took a really long time because at one point on the freeway they had closed all but one lane on a four-lane highway, so all the cars were slowly funneling into the one lane. We were quite proud of the semi truck that straddled two lanes so all the cars that were trying to speed ahead would have to wait their turn (which was one of the reasons the traffic was so slow). So we ended up getting to the Lantz's house around midnight. They were very nice and still let us in.
I didn't sleep very well that night. Ann Marie and I were sharing a bed and I was just too excited about everything that was happening.
In the morning I came out into the hall just as Heidi and Addisyn saw each other. They gave each other a big hug and wouldn't let go. It was the sweetest thing ever.
Troy gave Ryan a ride to get the truck and take it the storage units and some other friends from the ward were there as well to help load the truck. The kids and I stayed at Jamie's house and played, and then we went to Oakwood park to play for a while. We were hoping some other friends from the ward could come, but we sent the email out at the last minute so nobody showed up. But it was so great to spend time with the Lantzes. With visiting teaching and the preschool coop we got to be very good friends, and we really miss them.
The truck was ready to go around 11:00, so we had some peanut butter sandwiches at lunch and then started driving back to Georgia because we were expecting people to be at our new house to help unload that evening.
We listened to the first book of Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, which was very well done. It ended up taking longer than we expected to get back to our house because the engine on the truck didn't have any guts. If there was even a slight incline it couldn't get up to speed, so for quite a bit of the trip we were driving 45 mph in a 75 mph zone. So we were late getting to the house, but the ward members were so nice and they still showed up to help us move in, and then several of them came to our apartment to help get most of the stuff from there moved to our house too. Someone from the ward took Kevin to their house and the girls and I got pizza for everyone.
By the time everything was done I had the worst headache I had ever had because I was so tired and I had to keep going. After three Ibuprofin and a good night's sleep I was much better.
We had leftover pizza for breakfast because the food was still at the apartment, and I took a shower with some handsoap the seller had left behind because we hadn't remembered to bring any soap.
We went to stake conference, and afterwards Ryan and I both received callings in the ward. Ryan is a Webelos den leader and I am a Sunbeam teacher in the primary.
After stake conference we went to the apartment to get all the food and some other essentials to take back to the house, and then began the massive work of unpacking and sorting through everything.
We visited a nearby nature preserve along Reed Creek. It was a beautiful place to explore. Most of it is swamp with boardwalks built throughout for people to walk on.
This was under the bridge. The pattern of the dirt was caused from the way rain falls between the spaces in the bridge. Kind of interesting.
Kevin lost his first tooth. He said he woke up at midnight and it had fallen out and was on his tongue. In the morning he wouldn't let go of it.
Then at some point he misplaced it and he said he left it in the kitchen somewhere.😕😫😛😨
Ryan needed some time alone to do some things to get ready for work, so I took the kids to this amazing park. It has three play structures, a splash pad, and lots of other fun extra things!
Check out what the humidity does to Ann Marie's curls!
August 8th was the first day of school for everyone. We got up early to drop Ryan off at work because he had a faculty meeting early in the morning. Then I drove Kevin and Heidi to school. They went into their classes easily and happily. Ann Marie thought she was going to kindergarten too and wanted to stay. Instead we ran some errands and got a library card.
Odometer patterns are fun. We missed 123456, unfortunately. It happened sometime during our second trip to NC when we moved into our house.
This is was my mom hack for the after school car line. You have to hang up these placards when you pick up your kids, so I clipped a pants hanger to mine and just hung it up on the mirror.
Ann Marie and I were in the car a lot in August. In the morning we would drive Kevin and Heidi to school, then take Ryan to work, then come home and/or run errands. In the afternoons we would pick Kevin and Heidi up, go home and work on homework, then go pick up Ryan and come back home. The afternoon car line was also really long. Even if I got there ten minutes before school ended I still wouldn't get to my kids for half an hour. The school and the university were both 15-20 minutes from our apartment, so it added up to a couple of hours a day in the car, plus I had to bring Ann Marie up and down all those stairs every time we drove somewhere. It was kind of rough, but we made it through.
Ryan enjoys his job. He teaches four labs and has three one-hour lectures per week, plus grading and lesson planning. The department seems to have some really nice people. We would love to stay here for a long time. We'll have to see.
Heidi decided she wanted short hair again because it's easier to brush, so I gave her a haircut. She liked the mouse buns I made to get the top layers out of the way.
We also kept working on getting ready to close on the house. I kept feeling nervous that for some reason it wouldn't work out, but everything did. In fact, the bank contacted us and asked if we could close a week earlier, which was great. So we closed on the house on August 26.
The morning was busy with getting everyone to school, and I was also trying to get the kitchen all packed up. There was still plenty of packing to do after I dropped Ryan off, but when I got home I was still wearing my exercise clothes and sweating from packing, plus I hadn't straightened my hair. I was going to do a quick shower and just wear a ponytail so I could get more packing done, but Ryan looked so nice in his work clothes and I decided I didn't want to look like a dumpy housewife when I went to buy my first house, so instead of packing I fixed my hair and put on nice clothes. It was totally worth it.
Ann Marie and I picked Ryan up around noon and then we went to the lawyer's office. We signed a million papers and talked to the seller for a while with some questions we had about the house. Ann Marie was upset that she didn't get to color on all of our legal documents, but the lawyer had some paper and crayons for her and our realtor colored with her.
Then we went to see our house--so exciting after driving past it on the way to school and wondering if it was really all going to work out and what it would be like to live there. We picked up Kevin and Heidi from school and were very relieved that they would start riding the bus the next Monday, then we went to the apartment to finish packing clothes and have a snack because we were driving to North Carolina that evening to stay with friends and get the rest of our things out of the storage units.
If you don't care about the details of looking at houses I won't be offended if you skim the post, but I thought I'd like to jot down some memories because it was an interesting experience.
We had told our realtor that our priorities were getting our kids in a good school district, at least three bedrooms, a fenced backyard, and no carpet in the dining area. Looking at houses was an interesting experience because it gave us a lot of insight into our personalities and our family culture.
The first house was being sold through Better Homes and Gardens, so the photos with the listing made the house look magazine-worthy. Looking at the photos, I was pretty sure the house was way too trendy for me. But when we looked at it, most of the furniture had already been moved out and we thought it was actually an interesting house. It also needed more work than you would have thought from the photos, like patching some walls and painting--not that it was a dump, because it was mostly minor things that we could fix eventually. It was just interesting how different it looked in person from in the photos.
The next house we looked at was the one Ryan had nicknamed "The Brown Box." But as soon as we saw it Ryan said he was changing the name to "The Lodge." It had been fixed up extensively after being neglected and left to be a jungle for a while. A lot of trees had been cut down and the house had recently been painted the color of newborn poop. The inside had been fixed up quite a bit as well. There were a lot of things we liked about it--the yard was huge and there was a fence around the back, the house was pretty big, it had a nice great room upstairs. But I think it was hard for us to visualize us living there. As we left Ryan said that if we bought that house he felt like he would have to start wearing flannel shirts and cooking everything over a fire and he'd have to get an antler collection to hang up in the living room. It just felt like a lodge.
For the most part the rest of the houses we looked at were what we call "ticky-tacky" houses, and if you want to understand what that means you need to learn this song:
They were all in those subdivisions that went up overnight where all the houses look the same and there's only about five inches between each house, and they have a backyard that's big enough to hold a grill and a couple of lawn chairs. There was one house that had four bedrooms and a big backyard, but the yard was just flat with grass, no trees or bushes. Ryan's comment was that it felt like if you wanted to change anything at all about the yard you'd have to ask permission from the whole neighborhood to see if they felt like it would fit in, and then if we did do anything to add character to the yard it would take ten years to feel like we liked the house.
So we went to check in to our apartment and we were feeling a little disheartened because none of the houses really stuck out to us and most of them were ticky-tackies.
Friday we drove up to North Carolina to get the basics out of our storage unit. Google thinks it takes less than four hours to get there, but we've never had it take less than six hours, so when we got there it was already mid-day and it quickly got hot. We worked as fast as we could to get what we needed out of the storage units. Mainly that was the beds, the table and chairs, some toys for the kids, and the boxes of kitchen stuff. We didn't want to get everything because our apartment was small and on the third floor with no elevator. We didn't even bring the dressers because we didn't want to haul them up. In retrospect I really should have asked a friend to take the kids while we loaded the truck, because after spending so much time in the car they were out of control while we were loading the truck, and on the way back to Georgia there was an awful lot of screaming until I introduced them to the alphabet game, and even then there was still screaming. Once we got to our apartment Ryan and I worked on bringing everything up that evening and the next morning so we could get rid of the truck as soon as possible, and it was hard work going up and down the stairs so many times.
This is how Ryan had to hold the steering wheel on the truck to drive straight:
We had contacted the realtor and gave her some thoughts about what we liked and didn't like about the houses we had seen. We had realized that the yard was a really important factor for us. We wanted to live in a neighborhood where we could have a jungle or a perfectly landscaped yard (or somewhere in between) and fit in. We wanted a decent-sized backyard with some character that our kids would really enjoy playing in.
So the day after we went to North Carolina and back we went back out with the realtor to look at more houses. The first house was interesting but not in a great school district and it had a buried pool in the backyard.
Then we went to the second house and loved it. It was on a cul-de-sac and sat on a half-acre lot. We moved on to look at several other houses, and a couple of them were possibilities, but this one really stuck out to us. Ryan said it felt like coming home.
The next house was a definite no as soon as we walked in the doorway, and we nicknamed it "The Smoker" because of the smell. It did have a pretty incredible jungle in the backyard. Another house was "The Grey Box," which was a possibility but not our top choice. We looked at several town homes and it didn't take long for us to know we weren't interested--again, because of the tiny yards and the way they looked exactly the same as every other house in the neighborhood.
The last house we looked at had just barely been listed and it was clear that it was going to sell fast. The backyard was really fun. It had a play structure, a climbing wall, swings, and slides, and it was quite large. It was an interesting possibility, but as Ryan and I were talking about it we just didn't feel like it was our house. Ryan said if we bought the house we'd be known as the people with the "cool house," and he'd feel like we had to be the cool people to match the cool house we'd bought. The second house we had looked at that day was still our favorite.
The one problem with the house we liked was that it was very overpriced and it looked like the owner wasn't really willing to budge on the price. So we thought about it over the weekend and decide to make a lower offer and just see what happened. Unfortunately, somebody else had already made an offer on the house (which was a little surprising because it had been on the market for several months already), so we had to look elsewhere. It was a little confusing because we had felt so good about the house and the neighborhood and it seemed like it should work out, but it didn't.
We talked to the realtor and asked to look at the Better Homes and Gardens house again (the very first house we had looked at), and after walking through it another time we decided to make an offer. The seller made a counteroffer that seemed reasonable, so we accepted it and the house went under contract.
Ryan said he felt like there was a reason the house we had liked so much didn't work out, and part of it was because of the school. It was in a school district that was pretty good, but not a top school district. But living in the Better Homes and Gardens house would put our kids in one of the top schools in the state. Interestingly, the sale for the other house apparently didn't work out because soon after we closed we noticed it was for sale again, and even now it's still for sale.
As time went on I realized there were actually a lot of things I liked better about the house we ended up buying. It was a little sad that we wouldn't have a half-acre lot, but the yard at our house is still pretty big and it also has a lot more shade in back, which is definitely an advantage. The kitchen is also nicer, and I'm finding that we really like the layout of the house.
Just like everything else this summer, we were able to get our kids registered for school at the last minute. The open house for the school was on August 4th, and we got the documents showing the house was under contract just a few hours before the open house, so we were able to get the kids registered and they met their teachers that night. The school had no problems with letting them start there even though we wouldn't be moving in for another month. We had a really good feeling at the school. The principal is fantastic and the kids' teachers seemed really nice. Heidi had been really worried about starting school, but as we drove back to our apartment she couldn't stop talking about how great the school was and how amazing kindergarten was going to be. We were so grateful that getting the kids in school had worked out. I was kind of in shock at how everything had fallen into place.
For the drive back east we took the southern route. We left on July 25th and planned to get to Georgia on the 28th.
The first day (Monday) we drove through Southern Utah down to New Mexico. I just love to look at all the exposed bedding in Southern Utah. There were so many cool formations. Unfortunately it's really hard to capture them in a moving car that could use a wash, but here's what I got:
The rocks really were green-ish blue.
You may think that's an arch, but really it's a Stargate and that truck is being pulled through it. :)
On day two we drove through most of Texas and stopped to stay the night at Alan and Tiffany's house. The cousins played with a lot of toys and we had a nice time chatting. Spencer had gotten his wisdom teeth out, but he seemed to be doing pretty well. It was nice to get a little more time with them since we only got to see them for a little bit in Utah.
Tiffany had to go take a test in the morning, but we got some pictures of the cousins before we left.
On Wednesday we drove through Louisiana, Mississippi, and most of Alabama. We actually got all the way through Mississippi without getting out of the car. The police in those states seemed a little more predatory. I don't know exactly how to explain it, but whenever I was driving I felt like they were waiting for me to make the slightest slip so they could swoop down on me. At one point in Mississippi there was a police car behind me for quite a while and then he turned his lights on. I was really confused because I didn't think I was speeding or doing anything wrong, but I started slowing down and got in the right lane so I could pull over. Then once I was in the right lane he sped past me. I don't know if he was just trying to assert his dominance or what, because if he wanted to drive faster he could have easily passed me.
Wednesday night we stayed with Ryan's old roommate, Darin, and his family. I think they really enjoyed reconnecting, and it was fun to meet their family. We went to their wedding in Arizona eight years ago, but obviously didn't get to talk to them much since they were busy getting married.
Thursday was the last day of our trip, and we just had a few hours left to get to Georgia. I got some calls from our new apartment complex about getting electricity set up and when we could come get checked in, so I had to work on calling Georgia Power and getting that set up. We couldn't get checked in to our apartment until later in the evening, so we went to see where it was so we'd have a frame of reference and then we went to meet our realtor to start looking at houses.
Ann and James were coming back from their trip, so we decided to go stay at their house for a few more days before going to Georgia. They had a lot of helpful input about finding houses.
Until this point buying a house wasn't even something I was thinking about. I figured buying a house was something you did when you feel really secure about your job and you know you want to stay there for a long time. But after talking to the bishops near Augusta and a realtor who they had recommended, we realized that because of the strong military presence there, renting is more expensive, and Ryan was talking seriously about buying a house. I was really nervous about taking such a big step.
Ryan's sister Eliza offered to watch our kids so we could go to the temple, and we gladly took her up on the offer. Ann and James gave us some family names and we did an endowment session. While we were waiting in the chapel, Ryan felt prompted to open the scriptures, and I know this sounds incredible, but he was specifically told to go to the Doctrine and Covenants, then go to Section 48, and then he read verse 3 and laughed out loud: "And inasmuch as ye have not lands, let them buy for the present time in those regions round about, as seemeth them good, for it must needs be necessary that they have places to live for the present time."
So while we were in the temple I thought and prayed a lot about it and I felt that it was at least worth it to look into buying a house and see what would happen. We talked to the realtor and she sent us information about some potential houses we could look at so she could get a sense of what we were looking for. The more we talked about it and I thought about it the more it made sense to buy a house. We figured out that we would probably be paying $500 more per month to rent a house than to buy a house, and we felt that it was likely that we could get a pretty nice house and have a house payment that was less than what we were paying at Baity Hill. Plus, if we bought a house, even if we didn't stay there forever, we could sell the house and get a lot of that money back, whereas if we rented that wouldn't be the case. Or we could rent it out since the military presence is so strong in the area. So I felt better about it the more we talked about it, even though it still felt like a big step.
While we were looking into housing we were also thinking about getting our kids into school, and when I looked up the school district where we wanted to send our kids to school I realized that school started on August 8, which meant that we had two weeks to drive to Georgia, find a place to stay, and get our kids enrolled in school. And closing on a house would probably take a month, so we needed to find temporary housing too.
The Apartment Guide recommended several places for temporary housing, but that website was decidedly unhelpful because all the places they recommended actually required a minimum 12-month lease. I called a lot of places and started to lose hope because none of them would let us rent month-to-month. I was also worried that Kevin and Heidi would have to start school at one place (and most of the apartments are in bad school districts) and then transfer after we closed on the house. I ended up writing a rant about it on Facebook and asking for prayers. Well, somebody must have said a prayer for us because I ended up calling one more place, and while they did require you to sign a 12-month lease, they said that the penalty for terminating the lease early was only one month's rent, which actually wasn't that bad compared to some of the other places we had talked to. So within an hour after my Facebook post we had an apartment set up with the lease starting the day we were planning to arrive in Georgia. So we were very grateful that this had worked out. I was still worried about the school situation, but we hoped that if we could make an offer on a house we could persuade the school to let our kids start attending there from the beginning.
Anyway, it was nice to get to spend more time with Ryan's family.
There were a few visits from a mother deer and her twin babies, which are not as cute when they eat all your flowers.
We found this little girl playing in the dirt by Ann and James' house, so we decided to take her in and give her a bath. It turns out it was actually Heidi. :)
I never did get all the brown stains out of that skirt.
We had a dinner at Eliza's house the night before we left for Georgia. Becky and Paul came with their family too and we got to hear about their experience being in the Palmyra pageant. It was very fun to spend more time with everyone and for our kids to get to know their cousins better.
Kevin and Nathan figured out that they're the same age (even if Kevin is a head taller . . . ) and were instant friends.
Heidi and Ann Marie enjoyed playing with Lucy (or Boosey, as Ann Marie called her).
We got everything packed in the van and left as early as we could the next morning (because we had to get to New Mexico, not because we were eager to leave).
It was so great to get to spend two weeks with my family.
It was such a relief when we knew that Ryan had accepted a job offer and everything was finalized. But the stress didn't end there because now we had to figure out when to leave and find housing. We were able to get in touch with some of the bishops in the area to get advice about where to live. One of our top priorities was getting our kids into good schools, and they were really helpful about telling us where the good schools are.
When I get stressed I start organizing and decluttering, and I ended up going through all the dolls and Barbies (and there were a lot). It was interesting to see that some of the doll clothes I used to use were still there. I don't think any of my old Barbies or dolls were still around, but it was interesting to go back down memory lane.
On our second Sunday we went to visit my grandparents, which was great. Grandma shared a lot of new things she had learned from Uncle Wallace about her family history and she had some pictures I had never seen before.
I wanted to be sure to get a picture with my grandparents while we were there.
Ryan found this in the pantry. Apparently the weird food storage lady from the ward gave these out as Christmas gifts. Yes, those are freeze-dried ice cream sandwiches, and my only question is, Why???
So, interesting story. Michelle really wanted to come down and see us before we left, but Donovan had to work and needed the car. So my mom went to pick her up from Rexburg, and Ian and Ellen were going with her. Mom offered to take Kevin and Heidi too, and they seemed excited about it, so we said they could go.
Several hours later Michelle sent me a text asking when they had left. By this point we thought they would have almost been back home, but they hadn't even gotten to Rexburg yet. I asked her to let us know when they got there because I didn't think they had a cell phone (it turns out Mom took Dad's phone, but I didn't know that). Half an hour later when I learned from Michelle that they still hadn't gotten there, I slowly started freaking out, until I was certain that they had been in a terrible car crash and I had lost my child, my mom, and my brother and sister all in one day. I knew it was kind of illogical to get this worked up, but I kind of gave in and got way too upset. Finally I started saying a prayer begging Heavenly Father to bring them all back safe, and as I finished the prayer I literally heard the voice of the Spirit say, "Why are you crying?" And immediately all those worried feelings were gone and I felt kind of silly for crying. Then I heard the voice again saying, "Mine is not a spirit of fear, but a spirit of peace." A few minutes later we heard from Michelle that my mom had just arrived. It turned out that the traffic had been really bad, and that was why it took so long to get there.
So they finally got home and we got to enjoy seeing Michelle for a day, which was really nice.
I liked this book because it addressed some of the logistics and gave a general idea of all the products, methods, and ideas that are out there. It's a good starting point.
I think the saddest part of this book was to see all the talent that was wasted. Mao built up this culture that made it possible for people who wanted revenge or just felt envious to cause all sorts of problems for those who they resented. ...
