Here we are a month into our new adventure and I haven't even posted one thing.  That could be due to the fact that the internet out here is horrible!  Let me recap our moving experience for you all in highlights.

When we first arrived here late in the day, we went to the town hall so that someone would turn on our water.  It was cold, we had been in the car all night long- we drove from Denver starting at 2:00 am. We had to be in Inowa by 5 the next day.  A 13 hr trip- no problem except you change time zones and loose an hour.  :)

So we got to our home, which we hadn't even seen in person, and went off our realitors reccomendation.  We got here and turned on the water.  Little drips... then a little more and then nothing.  The water man came to the door and said..... did you turn it on?  Yes, we didn't get anything.  Come to find out that the water had not been shut off ever and with the line from the road to the street along with most of the house was frozen! Upon hearing this from the water man I quickly thought to myself Self, what would you normally do in a situation like this?  And self answered, Call Nick your brother of course! For a 6 pack of Dr. Pepper Nick would fix anything. >  Lucky for us Nick was the one driving the moving truck and was 20 mins from arriving.  Durnig that time the water man returned to his office to talk it over with others. 

Next thing I know, a woman appears at the end of my driveway and promptly announces that she "heard about my water problem and wanted to be the first to come over and let you know that we are going to get this taken care of.  I'm the mayor of this town, and I want you to feel welcomed and will do what we need to to get it fixed."  So we met the mayer of the town and I learned my first lesson.....

#1 IN A SMALL TOWN THEY ALL KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT YOU IN 2 MINS. 
AND #2 THEY ARE MOST LIKELY RELATED TO THE PERSON YOUR GOING TO COMPLAINE ABOUT SO DON'T.

To finish the water highlight, the owner of our house (cause we are renting here until we get things figured out...) paid for us to stay in a hotel in town. and paid for our dinner as well.
The next day we learned that just the meator was broken, no pipes in the house and we had running water.  It started with a faster drip, then finally shards of ice broke through, and then chucks of ice cubes.  It took a while but we got it all fixed.

By the time we had water, there were 18 people at our house unloading our truck so fast I think it all ended up in the garage so I could sort through where I wanted everything.  They had us unloaded in about 30 mins, and had shoveled all our snow in the driveway and cleared a path for the back door access.  It was great!

Note on that point.  Each of our boxes had labels on them with rooms and a listing of the cjiooi      g nbgvglkvnn                              hkttgottttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttthhhhhhhhhhlikjjkjjjjjjjjjjjjjghughgubnontents (Kadence is adding her input).  When we moved in we didn't want to put anything inside because we didn't know if the pipes were busted or not.  So we slowly moved things in that we needed.  

We quickly noticed how much fun we were going to have in Iowa belonging to a small branch. (For all the  non mormon followers each area you live in has an assigned congragation.  A Branch is a small group 0-200 or so  and then you get a ward of about 300-600) That's a guss khiojuyhuhfg  - Ok so change of author Jake is going outside to shovel snow off our driveway).  I am not sure where he was going with this last line.  45 minutes after the men from our branch left the relief society president showed up with lunch and cleaning supplies ready to help clean the house and unpack us.  When we didn't put her to work she said she would be back with dinner.  So we had dinner that night and for the next two nights after.  It was so nice. 

A funny side note to our hotel experience:  It has been a joke at our house that they must eat lots of corn and bacon here since those are things they grow alot of.  So we go to dinnerour first night here and I asked if they had broccoli as a side dish for Kadence (she really likes broccoli)  the waiter says "No we don't have broccoli but we do have corn."

Is her hair wet?

Moving is such a great experience. I see why people live in their homes for years and years using the excuse that they don't want to uproot their children.... LIE it's because they are afraid of all the junk they have accumulated and having to sift through it if they did move.




With moving comes boxes, packing, cleaning, and of course painting. Chantrie and I have been having a great time getting this all together so we can make a quick move. The stress of moving can be felt by all members of the family including Kadence and Maizy. Maizy doesn't want to be put down for longer than 5 seconds and so Chantrie has resorted to using the baby backpack and putting her in so she can see all the things. That's keeping her busy and happy. Hard on Mom's back, but not as hard as her ears.



Kadence is having a little harder of a time with moving stress than Maizy. We were at our friends Jeff and Naomi house this last weekend. We had finished dinner and sent their girls 3,2 and our 3 year old up to play so we could attempt to watch a movie. You know the feeling when you get 7 mins of uninterrupted movie time and then it hits you..... the dreaded "it's too quiet up there"... and we turn to look up the stairs and here comes the 2 year old crawling down her stairs. Chantrie and I look at her and say, "Is her hair wet?" Upon further examination, it's not water but Bag Balm- a very nasty smelling thick hand cream. (Used to lube up the cow utters so they don't get chapped when milking... yep!)



Bag balm all over her hair. Globs of yellow covering ever hair follicle on that girls head. Also covered are Kadence and her friend. Pj's are covered, walls were just about to get touched when both Mom's reach the girls. Needless to say the movie night was over, and bath time was moved to the top of the list of things.



Kadence sat in the car squishing her fingers together the trip home because she has soo much of it on her body. "Don't touch anything" was her orders so she did the only other thing of constantly squishing the stuff through her fingers making squishy farting sounds.



It took 4 washes with dish soap, a few attempts with corn starch- which we had to unpack because we had just finished the kitchen. All in effort to make some of it come out.



Best part was we had church the next morning. Kadence looked like a greased rat the next day at church. Although she wasn’t alone in that adventure so when they stood together you just thought something was odd about them. Only alone did you really notice. :)





< UPDATE we have almost got it out of her hair a week or so later>

Pics to follow... :)

Boxes Boxes and More Boxes

Mission memory

There was a man I new on my mission who had 6 BIG barns full of CRAP. For our service we would go to one of the barns and help him organize his stuff. We are talking this guy had 20 feet of used suit cases, box after box of greeting cards that he paid for in an auction- mind you he didn't know any of the people in the box but kept them.

I kind of felt like that this week with our storage! My parents got sick of housing all their kids stuff in the garage so they had my brother build a shed in the back yard. We have always moved stuff in and out for each sibling during their transitions in life. Chantrie and I thought about moving over a year ago so we boxed up a lot of stuff and have kept it there. We went through that stuff and I swear some of the crap we had in there. Not nearly as bad as the guy on my mission but we had to pair it all down and move my other sisters stuff around to get to ours.


Rent Her

We had been weighing our options about selling or renting our house and then renting and buying in IOWA. We decided that we will rent our place here in CO and hope to rent a place for a while in IOWA before we buy one. So this week we had a rare occurrence in our family... Dad was at the table for breakfast. <> So as we were saying our prayer over the food, I was feeding the lines to Kadence. .... Please bless that we can find a place to rent.... and that we can have someone rent this one... And she said.... "And that we can find someone to rent this one- Pointing to her baby sister when she said it, and turned and smiled at me. :)

That's it for today. We have high hopes of getting through a few more things this weekend and getting ready to go! Tune in later for more!

Iow-Where?

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to pack up and move to another exotic destination? Hawaii, California, Florida and who could forget IOWA! I know it wasn't on our list either.

Chantrie and I have had a great experience working for TLG in Denver. But sometimes you just need a change. So we have decided that we are going to move to IOWA. The Heartland of America. I'm going to be working for a new company there and feel like I'm going to love it!

Deciding to move your family across state lines, and where no other family members live- (closest will be 13.5 hours away!) is a big move. We thought it would be a great adventure and that we would need to document it for others to see. So we created this blog.

We hope to post often so that everyone can enjoy our adventure with us. For those of you who were privileged enough to read my emails from my mission, these blog posts will follow the same style. Short sentences and stories about our experience.

Ummmm Corn! and don't forget the Bacon :). We expect to be there about the 3rd week of January.

Enjoy!

Jake, Chantrie, Kadence and Maizy.
PS. MERRY CHRISTMAS!