Happy Belated Birthday Kenny

Kenny's birthday was Friday. He bbq'd steaks and potatoes, and we had a nice dinner. KC and Tawni came over and we had a nice quiet evening at home. Then we had the family over for Sunday dinner, and had his favorite dinner. This is an annual menu:

Cube steaks

Mashed Potates and Gravy

German Chocolate Cake

The other menu items vary...but this is Kenny's family dinner every birthday. All the kids came over, and Tyler and his roommate. It was a lot of fun.

(Notice the edible arrangement....we ate a ton of it at the party Saturday night, the kids munched on it while I was making dinner, and there is still a lot of fruit in that basket!)

Happy Birthday Kenny. Thanks for all your hard work getting everything set up for the move. I know it has been hard being home lately while you recooperate. I hope you had a great birthday and look forward to celebrating many more in our new house!

While we were eating dinner, the sun started to set. We have an amazing view to the west. It didn't last long, but it was awesome. The first picture is off our front porch, so you can see that there is absolutely nothing to obscure the view.

Newton House First Party

KC and Tawni arranged for us to have a fun night on Saturday night, to get to know some of the neighbors. Logan decided that he wanted to do something nice for the party. He ordered this fruit bouquet for the party. It was a lot of fun and it was sweet of KC and Tawni to put it together, and it was sweet of Logan to want to order this for the party.

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!!!!!!!!!