Packing Up and Driving

We waited almost a year to see the "sold" on our sign!
At times it seemed like this day would never come! I forgot to take photos of the 15-20 wonderful high priests and their sons who showed up at 7:00 a.m. on Saturday morning to load our truck...
Which turned into TWO trucks before we were finished--the biggest truck they have--26 footer--was not big enough for all our stuff! Yuck--that meant both Niles and I had to drive a truck each the entire 650 miles or so to Utah. I was just a little nervous about the prospect. Thankfully, we were extremely blessed and everything went really well. I normally cannot drive more than 2 hours without feeling extremely drowsy but thanks to a blessing from Niles, I had no trouble with drowsiness for the entire 12 hours of driving. Niles was coming down with a bad cold as we left for Arizona, so he got a blessing and was able to feel well enough to function the whole time and I didn't catch it from him. Complete divine intervention on both counts. The most painful thing about the trip was filling up the gas tanks--choke!

So this is a quick run-down of what we did--We flew out Friday morning at 9:00 a.m. and arrived in Phoenix at 9:30 a.m. local time. It was raining so we saw hardly anything but clouds on our way in--but we did fly right over Chase Field and the roof was open, which was cool (that's where the Diamondbacks play.) The weather was rainy and extremely cool the whole weekend. It was really strange--not at all the typical weather for Arizona for this time of year. However, the cooler temperatures were very nice for loading the truck and such. After we landed, we took the shuttle to the rental car facility and Niles handled the picking up of the rental car, while I had an ink pen explode all over my hand and worked out a problem with the home owner's insurance company on the cell phone (they somehow had the wrong address for our new house.) Then we drove straight to the Title company in Scottsdale to sign papers. While there, we discovered that our house was not closing that day, as planned. The buyer's loan papers are not ready yet and they are not even scheduled to come in and sign. Groan! Then we went to our house, where our realtor had lunch waiting for us and then we started packing and disassembling furniture. Niles is the greatest! He packed 5 boxes to my one. He is so efficient and I just plug along at a snail's pace. Sometime in there, we went and picked up the moving van. By midnight, we were almost done and ran out of boxes and tape so we quit and went to bed. We started loading at 7:00 a.m. on Saturday--I ran to the store for a few more boxes and some tape--and were mostly done by 9:30, except we had to go get another truck and then a few of the faithful men from the morning went with Niles to load the new truck up at our storage unit. I started the final cleaning at the house. My vacuum and my mop both decided it was a good time to break (I didn't think so!) so I had to call in some friends to borrow theirs--and they not only let me borrow them--they came over and did the vacuuming and mopping themselves. So we were completely done by about 5:00 that evening and went to our hotel for a shower. Later, a friend met me at the rental car place so I could return the rental car and get back to the hotel. We are SO grateful for all the help! (Also to my family in Utah who took care of our kids while we were gone.) We attended our ward's sacrament meeting on Sunday. We were quite a sight--pulling into the parking lot in a Penske truck--but in our Sunday clothes! It turned out to be an interesting day to be there--our bishop has served for 5 years now and the entire bishopric was released and a new bishop and counselors called to replace them. Then we said good-bye to many well-wishers, went to our house to change our clothes and pick up the other van--then we hit the road. It was about 1:15 when we started and for the next 7 hours this was the view:

Niles had the same view as this minus the Penske truck. I drove behind him the whole way. I drove the "baby"--it was only a 16 footer. We stopped in Kanab for the night. Our hotel was a brand-new Holiday Inn Express and it was a fun combination of luxury and "Western:"

Notice the "cow print" throw pillows. The chairs were upholstered with the same fabric
Granite counter tops, boots and steers on the wallpaper, and cow horn lights! Cute! Unfortunately, the restaurant we ate at wasn't on the same level with the hotel. We cannot recommend it. Don't eat at Tina's--it's across the street from the hotel. Monday we started out around 10:15 and arrived in Lehi at about 3:30. It rained off and on all day on Monday. We even saw some snow coming down as we drove through the mountain pass on highway 20. It's hard to believe it is almost June--the weather feels more like March. We were so happy to arrive safe and sound. This morning we learned that the papers we were supposed to sign here this afternoon have been delayed until tomorrow. Nate has work obligations all day tomorrow--including the evening--so we don't know when he can sign tomorrow--he may not be able to until Thursday. We have the trucks rented until Saturday so we are crossing our fingers that things come together on both closings so that we have a place to unload our stuff by Saturday. It's all out of our hands at this point--we have to sit and wait and see what happens!