Welcome Home

So we worked really hard on Monday. The movers came, packed up the kitchen and the truck. We help pack everything else and cleaned. Kenny's sister came over and helped clean. We never would have finished Monday without her.

We delivered the keys to the new owners about 9:30 pm and headed to the new house. It was very foggy and I couldn't see anything as we went through the canyon from Tremonton. I'm glad I was following Kenny and that he knew where to go.

KC and Tawni had picked up the new house keys for us, so they were meeting us at the house. We didn't get there until almost 11:30 pm. But have I mentioned I have the greatest family? When we pulled down the street, the house lights were on, they had balloons tied to the front porch, they were waving at us through the window and they had pizza baking in the oven.

They wanted to make sure we felt at home. I had felt emotional all day. It is hard to leave a home you have been in for over 18 years. We have so many memories as a family there, and we loved the people in our ward so much. It was hard to think that I was cleaning this house for the last time, and I hoped that the new family would love it as much as we have. But to drive up to the new house, with the lights on and all of our family together, this was home. I was emotional again, but grateful that we have been guided here and that we were all together.

The moving truck showed up early Tuesday and we got everything unloaded. The pictures don't show it very good, but just as they backed up to unload, it started pouring rain. You can kind of see the puddle. They tried to back a truck up to the shop to unload there, and the truck got stuck. So what happened next could only happen in a small town....The neighbor was driving to the dairy. When he saw the moving truck was stuck, he stopped and then went to the dairy and got a big tractor and a chain and pulled the moving truck out. That NEVER would have happened in WJ. (Not because the people weren't nice, they certainly were...they did tons for us...there just wasn't a dairy with a big ol' tractor available down the block! )

Tuesday

We are scheduled to move in on Tuesday. We asked the title company of we could schedule the movers for Monday for sure. They said yes. Finally!

I've decided moving is not for the faint of heart

Of course we are not experienced movers...we've lived in the same place for a long time. So I have decided that moving is a skill that I don't want to have. You have to be prepared for the fact that many people have your fate in their control and as hard as you try to plan everything...to cross every "T" and dot every "i", something will come up and throw a wrench in things.

We've been moving along finally. The people buying our house had a snag and got delayed. That cost us some extra money because we missed days with good rates and then the rates went up, so we had to buy the rate down. We moved past that and plowed ahead making plans for the moving company, the utilities off at the old, on at the new, and so on. We were excited and we are surrounded by bare walls and boxes and geared up to head north.

Well, we closed today, only to learn (as we have been CONSTANTLY doing throughout all of this) that the lender our mortgage company went through requires 48 hours before they will fund the loan. The county won't record until the loan is funded. Well, since we signed on Tuesday afternoon, we may not be able to fund until late enough on Thursday, that we won't be able to record on the same day. Then to further complicate things, the county is closed on Friday, so if we don't record on Thursday, we can't record until Monday and we can't take possession until after we record. Whew!

Are you confused yet? We are. We've rescheduled the movers (tentatively), we rescheduled the utilities (tentatively), and we will continue to be on pins and needles until Thursday at 1:00 pm, when we either will become able to take possession of the new house, or learn that we have to wait until the next week. So I've decided moving is a skill I don't want to have and I will not move out of the new house until I absolutely have to or I die, hopefully the latter.

So my prayers tonight will consist of something like "Please help the lender to process our paperwork efficiently so that we can fund and record on Thursday afternoon and load the truck on Friday." If my one or two blog readers are so inclined to include the same in your prayers, that would be awesome.

Finally....a closing date!

We finally have a closing date on the WJ house.  The folks that are buying our house ended up with a bit of a delay.  It has been hard waiting.  We are scheduled to close on Feb. 18.  It is going to be so great!  

What is Happening?

Many of you already know that we have finally sold our house. We are waiting to close, and made on offer on a house up in Newton. Our offer is contingent on selling our house and they get to keep their house on the market while we wait to sell ours.

Newton is a very quiet little town. We are looking forward to a more simple life. My commute will be about 20 minutes each way. But a little different from my 20 minute commute in West Jordan. I probably won't see more than a couple of cars on my route until I get close to Logan.

The house we have made on offer on is awesome. It has almost everything we were looking for, but most of all is really well built. Check out this kitchen! I love to have everyone over and this kitchen is certainly set up for us to enjoy cooking for family and friends.

The one thing that I was hoping to have was a formal living room so that I would have a place for my piano. This house doesn't have that, so that is the compromise that we had to make. We will have it in the living room of the kitchen for now, and see what we where we want to put it later. There are only 2 bedrooms on the main floor, so I may turn the other upstairs bedroom in to a music room. Who knows?

We have to finish a couple of rooms in the basement, but a most of it is already done (sheet rock hung, doors hung) so it won't be too much to finish. Logan is excited to move up there too, and has given his notice at Jerry Seiner.

Kenny's shoulders are healing very well. The doctor has given him clearance to go back to work, but he can't take a job that would require him to lift any more than 15 pounds. He has started the application process and hopefully the timing of moving and him starting a job will all work out.

We have been so blessed thorugh this entire transition in our lives. As we have gone through each step, we have seen the Lord's hand in making this happen. We are so grateful for our blessings, for my job, for the opportunities that Kenny is finding to apply for in this tough economy, for good friends and family that have loved us and helped us and encouraged us.

I especially want to tell Bre and KC thanks for putting me up. There is just something wrong when the parent has to mooch from the kids! They have been great though, and with the exception of me having to scrape my own car windows every morning, things have gone really well.

Cache Valley here we come. Yipee!!!!!!!!!

Merry Christmas 2008

We had a wonderful Christmas. Losing Brittea helped remind us how important we are to each other and we really enjoyed having family time together. I'm grateful that all the kids could be here for our last Christmas in the West Jordan house. It just worked out that way and we had a great time. We had fun at the Jensen Christmas Eve party, visited with Grandma and Grandpa Harward, then opened Christmas jammies. Christmas morning was a little weird in our empty family room but was still fun. We went to the Dailey's for Christmas morning breakfast burritos. I don't know what it is about Debbie's breakfast burritos, but they are always the best. You can't eat just one, and when you try to make a second one that is small, it never turns out that way. After breakfast, we went back to the house and baked a turkey and relaxed, then went to Grandma and Grandpa Jensen's to exchange gifts. Many of Kenny's family came over about the same time and we had some more fun together.

For Christmas, the kids gave us a new camera. I'm really excited about it and I expect I'll use it more than Kenny but I'll try to share. Now I hope to include more pictures in my posts because I won't be borrowing Logan's camera.

The only damper on the day was KC and Tawni's trip back to Logan. It snowed all day long. When they headed to Logan, they made it okay to Brigham City, but couldn't get up the canyon. Their car got stuck multiple times in Brigham City before the ended up getting towed to a hotel and staying the night. Then, then next morning, Sardine Canyon was closed unless you had 4 wheel drive or chains, so they just came back to Salt Lake. I'm glad that they were safe. Kenny bought them some chains for their tires in case they have to go through Sardine Canyon in the snow.

Merry Christmas. We are very grateful for our blessings and for the Savior's birth.

I hope that you were able to enjoy the holiday with those that you love.

Tribute to the Princess

A sadness touched our hearts this weekend. Our beautiful princess Brittea, left this earth in the early morning hours of Saturday, December 20. The phone call from Chandra asking us to pray for a miracle seemed like a bad dream. We did pray for a miracle, but the miracle we were praying for was not granted. We already had our miracle; we got to know one of the purest souls that our Heavenly Father sent to this earth. We've shed a lot of tears this weekend, so sad for the days that we will not be able to see her in this life, but so grateful for the time we had.


You know how important Brittea was to our family. She impacted our life in such a wonderful way. Her unconditional love and bright smile are a treasure that we will carry in our hearts always. She impacted the lives of each of us, made us more caring and loving, she affected Breanne's career choice, she made us more considerate to others, she showed us how to be delighted in everything, and that you can be as happy just by watching other people.


Logan has been so sad. Last night at 3:00 a.m., I felt a tap on my shoulder. With tears rolling down his cheeks, he asked if I could help him. I asked what he was doing, and he was writing a poem for Brittea. He doesn't really want me to share it, so I hope he won't be too mad at me. It is so beautiful and it is from his heart.



My Hero


My hero had a special smile
My hero touched everyone she knew
My hero had great style
My hero wore Jensen blue
My hero was a fighter
My hero helped me grow
My hero made our life brighter
More than you will ever know

My hero is Brittea Hirschi
Who we will miss so dear
My hero's in a better place
But memories will keep us near


My love for you is so great
That no one can replace
You'll always be my little princess
Brittea, I love you


*****************************


Logan and Brittea had a special relationship. She loved him so much, and he could always make her laugh. She has not felt well for a while, and when they came to Utah last week, she was pretty serious all the time. The last time she smiled was last week when she was at our house, and she smiled for Logan. There were times when she was in the hospital, and Chandra would call Logan and ask him to talk to Brittea because sometimes all that Brittea needed was to hear his voice.



Breanne loves Brittea like a sister. She started tending Brittea when Brittea was 18 months old. Brittea loved to shop, and Chandra says that comes from all the time that she spent with Bre. Until the last couple of summers, Breanne spent almost every summer tending Brittea. Brittea loved to watch Breanne practice her cheers. Once Breanne could drive, she took Brittea with her when she needed to run errands, and I'm sure a few trips to the mall were involved.




KC also loved Brittea very much. I remember when he was about 16 years old, he was tending her. He was laying on the floor and rolling her wheel chair over him and she would laugh and laugh. He makes funny noises and funny voices and she loved it when he would talk funny and make funny noises. When KC was a senior, he ran for Homecoming royalty. In one of the assemblies, they had to have an escort and he asked Brittea to be his escort. Chandra dressed her in a fancy dress and KC carried her on the stage. She stole everyone's heart.



Our family enjoys camping and we invited Chandra to come with us when Brittea was still pretty small. Chandra was nervous about being far from a hospital in case there was an emergency, but she decided to try it. Brittea had so much fun coloring and hunting for eggs with my nephews. Then Matt and Chandra bought a trailer so they could camp with us. We have some great memories of the fun time we had together in Arches before they moved to Texas.






I probably should explain the "Jensen Blue" in Logan's poem. Apparently, when buying gifts for Brittea, I got in to a pattern where I would buy things that were blue. Matt is the one that noticed it, and dubbed it "Jensen Blue." Once our purchasing pattern had an official label, we had to keep up the tradition and so we've tried to include something blue in most of her gifts. I had the awesome privilege of going shopping for one last dress for Brittea. Kenny, Breanne and I picked out a dress for her to wear. Red is her favorite color and we found a beautiful red dress that Brittea would love. But she needs to have some Jensen Blue, so Breanne made her a beautiful bracelet and included blue beads so she can always wear some Jensen Blue.




I wish I had the words to adequately say what is in my heart. Mostly, I just want to tell Brittea how much I love her. How grateful I am that I was lucky enough to be with her, to spend time with her, to watch her grow and to watch how she made others grow.




I love you Princess. Give Maia a big hug before she comes down to this earth, and make sure you tell her about us. I can't wait to see you again and listen to all the stories that you have to tell. I'll save lots of butterfly kisses for when I see you again.