Part II-- The Adventures (and Misadventures) of Our Cross Country Relocation...Part 1

The last post was long enough as it was and after a hungry baby began to revolt, a two year old stripped down to her diaper and the girls came home from school, I realized I had to find a stopping point and attend to them. Sorry I left ya hanging!

I'm happy to say things have improved vastly and while everyone is still adjusting, we are feeling much better about our current situation....

I left off on Halloween morning when He-Man and I was debating whether or not we should stay in this home. After taking a moment to ponder our conundrum, we prayed for guidance and decided to call our landlord. When we couldn't get a hold of him, we called our realtor. We were very frank about our concerns. Within an hour our landlord called back and began the process of fixing our most important concerns first.

I had a good cry and started unpacking. I'm almost positive I would've felt the same insecurity and terror moving to another place at that point because I was so overwhelmed by the whole experience. On Monday, the work started and we were all feeling much better. Our landlord, who is a very good man, showed me pictures of what the house was like when the last tenants left.

All I can say is "Wow!" I have honestly never seen anything like it. The house was totally trashed. The walls were badly painted and floors covered with drips of paint that would not come off. The garage was filled with trash with local library books strewn in the mix. There were, what I assume to be profound quotes, written in permanent marker written on the walls all over the house, holes in the walls, stains in the carpet, the list goes on.

At that point I had 2 epiphanies.

#1 When your dealing with that kind of destruction, any improvements you make are going to seem pretty major. I really believe that as the landlord worked on the house he was making amazing progress and it seemed like it'd be sufficient. When things change that dramatically, sometimes it's hard to see just how far you still have to go. Does that make sense?

#2 We really weren't the victims in the situation. The poor owner of the house lost thousands of dollars in this circumstance. Yes, we could've reasonably decided not to stay but we both felt strongly that we could help the situation become better for everyone involved. We had the opportunity to make a difference and help this guy out.

I'm glad we did because with the immediate improvements on the house and putting ourselves together has made this place feel like home.

So now that our refuge is starting to feel like just that, we've been able to venture out and explore our surroundings...

Yesterday, we went to the temple. He-Man and I traded between watching the kids and having some time to work there. It was nice and reminded me of how close to home we are, even if it feels so far away.

We happened upon the Blue Angels practicing their routine for the Veteran's Day celebration. We enjoyed it so much we came back twice just to watch. They are amazing!!























Yesterday, we drove past Disneyworld to show the girls what they can look forward to when they save up for our next vacation...I can hardly wait!!

This is our front walkway wall. I love the way it turned out!

By the way, look whose laughing now!! Reese's Pieces is the spittin' image of her Daddy!

So, there you have it! We've survived our first 2 weeks here in Florida! Hopefully, He-Man will be starting work on Monday and we'll be able to get into a routine.


In the meantime, here's a couple of gems I've happened to overhear in the past few days:

Bunny: "Do you want to play at my house?"

Bunny's new neighborhood friend: "Hmmmm, yours! Although, we always could go down to the pond. (then she casually added) You can't swim in it though because you have to keep your eye out for alligators." That is when Bunny's momma fainted and upon recovery declared all puddle jumping restricted. Just in case. :)

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The girls were watching "Enchanted" in the car while driving through Pensacola. At the end when good overcomes evil, Bunny sighed and exclaimed, "This must be why they call it 'Enchanted!"

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"Wow! You've got a lot of kids!" (This is when I knew we were no where near home) Nope, Toto we are definitely not in Kans...er, Utah anymore!

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Button Nose: "Skooose Mees!" Exclaimed upon discovering that she can make bodily function noise on command. We're hearing those a lot lately.

We love you all! Have a good one. I'll leave you with one more pic...



Seriously, this kid looks just like her Daddy in his baby pictures. Except, she's got my E.T. toes.

The Adventures (and Misadventures) of Our Cross Country Relocation...Part 1

I can't believe it's been over a month since I updated my blog!! Even more, I can't believe I'm writing this from FLORIDA...waiting to be pummeled by torrential rains brought to us by Ida. Let's play catch up, shall we?

When we last left you, we had just announced the arrival of our sweet Reese's Pieces. 3 days prior to meeting RP, He-Man accepted his dream job with the military and we agreed to relocate our family to Florida. (I've decided it's a good thing to be as broad as possible when mapping out some of our dreams. That way, we can be flexible when God wants to shape our destinies. (We've been praying for any chiropractic position with any branch of the military, and were willing to go just about anywhere the Lord would have us go.)

I would never have guessed we'd end up moving to Florida though. In fact, as we left Oregon after finishing grad school, I asked He-Man if there was anywhere he did not want to go. He responded by saying he wouldn't want to move to Florida because the board exams and by-laws for chiropractic there are extremely difficult and completely different from anywhere else in the United States. I guess that's about as ironic as falling into a truckload of fertilizer while trying to avoid stepping in a pile of dog poo.

And so it went, we finished up some loose-ends and said "Sayonara" to good ol' Utah...












One of those "loose-ends" was the culmination of He-Man's work with the Utah Board of Chiropractics. One of his focuses in Utah was to improve the public image of chiropractors in the area. (Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who've had negative experiences with chiropractors. Even more, there've been some pretty seedy and sometimes downright sleezy doctors.)

He-Man organized a meeting with Governor Herbert to discuss chiropractics, bring it further positive recognition and have him sign a declaration recognizing October as Utah Chiropractic month. I'm so proud of He-Man for his hard work and ability to make a place better than when he got there.








Button Nose joined us and was quite impressed...my sentiments exactly, darlin'.












If the girls had it there way, every seat they sat their derrieres upon would be just about as ornate as this one...

On October 21, we loaded up...

And said our last goodbyes.

I would have posted more pictures of us saying goodbye to Wonder Women, the kids and our beloved neighbors, the Lewis family, but they kept making me cry so opted not to. This one of Sunshine trying to keep it together is heartbreaking enough!
We were encouraged to take a picture of the state signs as we passed through each state. We got some great ones and some not so great ones...

Awesome! I got it right on! This was about as eventful as it got for a couple hundred miles...

Everything is bigger in Texas? I couldn't tell. I was pretty delirious by this point. This is about the time when my fever hit. Button Nose was already sick.

Question: How do you get your brain out of the fever fog?

Answer: Pick an outdoor, extremely breezy rest stop bathroom with cold metal seats and this sign post near your stall...

I must have gone to the bathroom in record time.


The sign in the distance is Louisiana. I missed that one by a long shot!!

Whoops! I almost made He-Man turn around for that one. I would have too if it weren't for a baby screaming at the top of her lungs and hungry natives who were about to revolt.

The revolt was about to blow!!

We made it to our destination state! At that moment, the tears came...it could have been the revolt or the fact that our full bellied, screaming baby really needed to burp or the fact that we were officially on the other side of the country from our friends, family and home.

There you have it! We made it through every state on the southern border of the U.S. Between, the state signs we stopped for some adventures...

We took an abbreviated tour of part of the Vegas Strip.

Had a delicious, ridiculously sugary breakfast treat, compliments of the Smiths...Thank you, Becky and Daryl!! We love you!

Toured the M&M Factory...

Drove past the Hoover Dam...

Spent a couple of days with my brilliant and beautiful parents (Mom and Dad, we miss you already!)

Opened presents periodically from our guardian angels, Jeanette and Jeanie. The present Button Nose is holding is a toilet for her baby doll. It came complete with flushing sounds...which we got to listen to 1,392,210 times en route to Florida...to serve as not-so subliminal messages to our potty training hopeful.

Visited one of He-Man's best friends from his German high school. She's a mom/actress extraordinaire, destined to take the big screen by storm someday! I, on the other hand, spent the afternoon curled up on her guest bed nursing a fever. I hate the feeling of being a lousy guest!

Got to chase, accost and snuggle with an adorable kitten. Sunshine and Bunny's flushed cheeks and red faces are from all the chasing.

The rest of the adventure wasn't documented on film because of my blasted fever and accompanying delirium. But they include visiting our wonderful friends, the Hulmes, who put us up even though some of us were sick (a soft, clean bed never felt so good!)

We also rocked out to Weird Al. I'd like to say we were so cool and back in my parents groovy Hippie Green Volkswagon bus from the 1960 but alas instead of singing to "American Pie" by McLean, we belted out the lyrics to Weird Al's parody..."My, My this here Anakin Guy..." I know, I know, we really are total geeks!

Grandma and Grandpa totally spoiled the kids with Fruity Pebble breakfasts (which Button Nosed called "Pretty Pebbles") and supplied the kids with flip flops (known as "Pretty Flops") for beach cruising.

Finally, on Friday, October 30th, after driving for several hours that morning, we entered a little gated community and pulled up to the house we'd been planning to move into for weeks. It looked exactly like it did in the pictures. Shortly after we pulled up, the realtor and the owner showed up to give us a walk-through.

At first blush, He-Man and I both noticed a few things we were concerned about but didn't vocalize them, figuring the other wasn't terribly worried. We we received our walk-through papers to document anything we didn't want to be responsible for, signed the lease, happy to be out of the car and both the realtor and the owner left us to get settled. About an hour later ABF (awesome company to move with, by the way) dropped off our belongings and that's when things got real.

He-Man and I began our own walk-through while the girls started staking their claims on bedrooms. We noticed how filthy and run down it was. I couldn't help but be completely confused. We researched the area and discovered how great the community was. In fact, within a half an hour of pulling up, the surrounding neighborhood kids were introducing themselves to the girls.

The following 24 hours turned into a nightmare. We began documenting everything; exposed wiring in the corners of almost every room, broken appliances, filthy cupboards, leaky and corroded faucets...the list went on and on. He-Man continued the writing after the kids went to bed. They were exhausted, Button Nose still had a fever and apparently, it was Bunny's turn to get sick. (The one bright glimmer in the day was the church party we were invited to. The girls got to go trunk-or-treating and we ate a nutritious dinner that didn't include fast food)

By late hours of the night, the list was already 3 pages, front and back. After scrubbing the disgusting floors, I had laid down to feed RP on our mattress that I wasn't going to allow be laid onto a dirty floor.

That's the last thing I remember. He-Man woke me up the next morning. A group of men would be there within a half an hour. He had a somber look on his face as he said, "I'm not sure we can stay here." We had already signed the lease and were about to move our stuff in. He-Man was just as haggered and we had a decision to make quickly, before we moved our stuff in....