Exploring the neighborhood part 1

Since there's no snow on the ground and it's not raining just yet, Cache and I decided to go on a walk and explore what's around us. We didn't make it too far before it started to sprinkle so we headed back. We did manage to get to main street and explore some of the shops though. We will have to save the hospital, school and park for another day. I only took pictures of one shop, but we did visit the local antique gallery, second hand shop, and discount store as well. Cache did really well and he was enjoying the discount shop since we were able to get him a little toy for a quarter. :)
Here is what we saw:

A cute house on the corner

Across the street from our house. I think it used to be a school house

looking from our mailbox to our house....and Jared's trailers and truck

Front of our house

further down the road

stained glass in the Methadist Church down the street

I just love this methodist church. It reminds me of my Aunt Liz and Grandpa Smith

View from the front of the Methodist church to main street

The Tyndall Bakery! I keep hearing it's good, so we stopped in for a peek!

The view of Main Street from the other end of town. Standing in front of the second hand shop.





The back of our house from the back alley. This is our garage and the poor condemed Durango....

Donuts!!

Donuts in my buffet hutch! Yum!

More to come...

And a New Chapter Begins....

Well there is a lot to include in this post, so settle in for a bit. Big changes have happened since the last post! It all started when Jared came home to Utah from South Dakota. He drove all night (with only an hour an a half rest!) and got ther at 7 in the morning the next day. What a trooper! The next day, the chaos started with Jared and Cache taking apart the crib.



Helping Daddy!

  Jordon, Liana and Ethan came up from Tooele (sp?) to help us start to load the moving trailer.  Things get a little crazy when you're trying to pack your life into a truck! Ethan and Cache got some cousin time to play together in the process. :)



Dinner as the Thomas' house



They found a train set upstairs! Or as Ethan would call it, "Choo-Choo's!"

Messy face! Trying to get into the juice

Playing blocks with cousin Ethan

The next day some amazing neighbors and friends came by to help us finish the job. I still can't believe how many awesome people we know. Becky came over with home-made cinnamon rolls for everyone and of course a whole extra lot for Jared to take with him for the trip. I must say that he was a little possesive of those amazing rolls :) And of course, Stef had us over for our last dinner and gave us those yummy corn-pop treats with chocolate drizzled all over. I think they were secretly trying to make us too big to fit in our cars with all of our stuff ;). I must say, it is really weird to have your friends load all your stuff in a truck knowing that you will probably not see them for a very long time, if ever. A little depressing if you stop to think about it long enough....
That night, Cache had his last bath in our jetted tub:

 The next morning (Sunday) Stef, Emily and Erika all came over to help us finish up the packing and say goodbyes. Blake Halladay also came over to help and say goodbye since he wasn't to the day before. After it was all loaded, we had some heartfelt goodbyes, hugs and a prayer in right there in the cul-de-sac for safe journeys and hopefully seeing each other againg. I know that there is a plan for all of us and that we will be able to be with friends and family again the hereafter. Our time in Utah was some of the best time of my life. It is where we grew as a family, learned how to be on our own, made some amazing friendships, (some so close as to be family) and began to understand a new way of life. As I recently told Stef, if home is where the heart is, mine is half here with Jared and Cache and the other half is still in Utah. A piece of us will always be there where we have people we love and wonderful memories we will cherish. I have spent a lot of time thinking about what I would say in this post about who and what we will miss. I've made lists in my head, thought about writting it all down, but have decided that to keep from forgetting something or someone, I will just leave it as it is. You all know who you are. :)
Then off we went and the drive was long, tiring and cold, but we made it in one long trek. Cache did amazing and he tolerated getting into and out of his seat for the most part. We left about 9:30 am on Sunday morning and arrived in Lake Andes, SD at around 4 am Monday morning (3 am Utah time). Here are some of the pictures from the road.

Coming into Wyoming

Crazy Teepee house!

Coming into Nebraska

This just made me laugh! This is in Valentine, NE. A gas station

Sign into Tyndall, SD (New hometown)

Cache enjoying a break from the carseat

The pass between Utah and Wyoming

As we are cruising along in the dark, on a small two lane highway at 2 in the morning between Valentine, NE and the South Dakota border I'm sitting there thinking to myself, "Gosh, we are going fast and can't see a whole lot beyond our headlights. I'm probably going to hit..." WHAM!!! I see his friend crossing the road, but don't see the unfortunate deer who ended up deflecting off my bumper. I remember seeing tan, then his head turned and he stopped right smack in front of me. Jared, who was behind me about a mile, didn't see him so when I called to tell him it had happened, he thought I was seeing things because I was tired. But when we stopped in the next town, it was obvious that something big and hairy with blood had collided with my Durango. It's kind of hard to tell from that far away, but the front right side (left when looking at the pic) got the worst of it, except for the radiator.

When we finally arrived in the middle of the night, we went straight to bed. Cache was an angel and slept another 5 hours, so we were able to get some rest thankfully! Living in the trailer was a little crowded, but we only had to do it for about a week, so it was doable. Also, Laura, one of Jared's coworker's wife was so nice and let us come over to give Cache room to play and do some laundrey. She also fed us a couple of times, which was very nice as well. :) Lake Andes was not the best of neighborhoods to be living in, so I'm glad that we weren't there long. It also had a curfew alarm go off at 10:30 everynight. Not cool! One of the good things was that we were able to go on a short walk to a park.

Jared feeding him fruit snacks

First slide ride! He was more interested in the slide itself than the ride :)

Next came moving in. We are renting the house until the bank can get the mortgage closed. I don't have a lot of great pictures yet because the house is covered in boxes and stuff, but I will be sure to take some more when it's all ready. It's and older home (1923) but it's so well maintained and mostly updated (minus some electrical and stuff). There are a few things that I would love to do with this house, so we will see where we can go with it. For now, here are the pictures that I have.

Dining room/breakfast nook. Pretty sure there's hardwood under that laminate

Cache enjoying spaggetti in his Bumbo...in the kitchen...horrible wall paper, I know...that's probably my first project.

Entry from formal dining room

Fireplace room from Entry room (now living room)



built in china hutch in the dining room

 Ok, that's probably long enough for now. I am sure we will have more later. :)

Some Things I've noticed about South Dakota so far:
1) wild turkeys will sometimes cross the highway in front of your car
2) Every town is about a half an hour drive from the other
3) Tornado alarms go off throughout the day to announce various things, for example in Tyndall it's 7 am (wakeup), 12pm (businesses close for lunch),1 pm (businesses back open), 9 pm (curfew) (PS...totally sucks at 7 am)
4) There is breakfast, lunch (a snack), Dinner (instead of lunch), a snack (sometimes also called second lunch), and supper (not called dinner).
5) stop signs have shields on them to deflect snow (at least that's what I think they are for)
6) everyone waves to each other when driving
7) The LDS population is dwindeling because it's members are passing away...not growing like Utah
8) All windows and doors have a second set of windows and doors called storm windows and doors

Feeling blessed....and stressed!

As you know, we are in the middle of a move from Utah to South Dakota. A move like that can be so stressfull especially when you don't know where you will be living and you can't seem to sell your house because the market is in the tank. But isn't it nice when it all comes together? In a matter of one weekend we seemed to have covered all the major problems!

To start, Cache hadn't been sleeping well because he misses his daddy and he was getting over a cold. (not to mention learning to crawl) After much stress and less sleep, I decided it was time to do something about it. I tried a couple techniques and discoveredthay 'cry it out' isn't really for us. So I sat next to his bed while he fussed and continued to sooth him, but not pick him up...this took two hours the first night but at least he didn't choke or gag from crying too hard. The next night easnonly 5 minutes and since then he's been sleeping in his own bed, by himself from about 8pm-8/9 am! Yay for battles won!

Next, on a Friday, Jared found us a home! It is simply adorable, but I haven't seen it in person. Just in pictures. I knew I loved it just from that! Well, after I asked him to just take a look at it, he called me back a few hours later saying he'd made an offer! They accepted and we move in on the 20th! He comes back to Utah this weekend to move us out!

Now to figure out about paying two mortgages...turns out our bishop's brother-in-law had been looking for a place for a while. So now they will be leasing our home and that mortgage is covered!!

To add to this crazy weekend of blessings, a nursing job opened at the local hospital IN the town we are moving to! It's a part time/on-call position that is requesting a bachelors degree!! Now I don't know if that means I would be "queen bee" as one of my friends described it, but it sure is fortuitous to be falling into place so nicely! That all just happened this last weekend! So now we await the moving truck and awesome neighbors who will help us move this Saturday!

Whew...nice to share that. Now maybe I can go back to sleep!

The "Not So Calm" Before the Storm

Ok, so....it has been super busy lately. Ever since Jared left for South Dakota on the February 25, life has been sort of upside down for us. He is living in our travel trailer in Lake Andes, SD  for the moment, where apparently they have a tornado alarm that goes off every night at 10:30 for curfew, which, for an outsider who doesn't know that, this can be very disturbing and alarming to hear when you are trying to go to sleep. I think they should post a sign or something. Like "WARNING: tornado alarm will go off at night. If you hear it once, it's for curfew, if you hear it more than that, run like hell." Speaking of which, another nuance of South Dakota is that lunch is called dinner and dinner is called super. Oh, and there's a "supper alarm" that goes off at 6pm in Lake Andes.....yet another reason to find a house quickly. He started his job at the Ft. Randall Dam on the 28th and he says that it's been nice so far. He feels like he's being bombarded with a lot of information that he will be tested on periodically throughout his internship. However, being the smart man that he is, he will know it all before he expects. He's already spouting off things that he's learned and I am so impressed with him. He's always impressed me with his knowledge of things like that. That's why I always say, "You stick to that stuff, I'll stick to biology..." Mechanics and Engineering are not my specialty! Cache and I are still in Utah and we are slowly, but surely getting the rest of the house packed up. You never know how much junk you have until you have to pack it all in boxes...makes you want to live like a popper sometimes. For the most part, we are packed up and ready to head out to South Dakota....but we are still waiting on a few details to be sorted out.


Back here in Utah, Cache and I have been spending a lot of time with Aunt Stefanie and getting things that we might not be able to get when we move. For instance, I have been using her decorator prowess to help me find things like flower arrangements to warm up our new house when we move. Heck, I wish I could just take her with us! But I think her family would miss her....I know we will miss them! We are going to miss all of our wonderful neighbors. I don't think we could have asked for a better experience when we moved to Utah. We have definitely made life-long friends that we will never forget. Speaking of which, Cache and I went over to Blake and Marintha Halladay's (next-door neighbors) for dinner tonight and it was so nice to be able to enjoy their family and watch their sweet kids playing. Their little Lucy wanted to tell me all about this cool toy she had and she played blocks with Cache. I tried to get a picture of them, but she said she was done playing. lol. I did, however, get a picture of Marintha trying to get Cache to pet their little dog Roxy. I think he kind of liked her because she was not as huge as our dog Lacey!

 Cache certainly has the crawling down and has discovered that if he wants something bad enough, he can get there. He'll crawl fast if it's something like Mr. Bear or the laptop. :) He's also said his first word! At first he would just jabber and say "Mamamamamama" but now he'll be saying, "Mama....Mama....Mama..." as he's crawling toward me or trying to find me. :) So it's officially his first word! Better than mine was...

As I've been cleaning stuff up, he has been getting into things, and when he's on the counter with me, he's decided that the sinks are pretty cool places to hang out.

As we have been hanging out with Stefanie a lot, we have had some cute picture opportunities. He's quite the entertaining kid.

He's learned the fish face! Makes for funny kisses!

Erika strapped Mr. Bear to his overalls :) All aboard!

Like his turban? I found him like this after helping Jared with the car. That's Emily behind him and Ste'f foot on the right.

Dinner with the couples and Cache at Ruby River

First forward-facing cart ride! And the weather is so nice, we didn't have socks on!

He is growing up so fast. I can't believe the difference even a week makes. He's showing signs of wanting to walk or run already! He eats table food, drinks formula from a sippy cup and we bought his forward-facing car seat today! I know that he's maybe not ready for that yet, but soon he will be! Life is sure changing fast around us. I hope we can keep up! All I can say is that I'm thankful for all the wonderful people in our lives!