Oh would you look at that. I live!!

Well Hubby informed me the other night that this is now his blog

And he's been the one writing all the posts

So that would explain the sporadic writing that's been going on here 

And the duration of time in between the postage

I'm glad we figured out the problem

Hopefully now we'll be able to rectify that

it's always nice to have a scapegoat 

especially one that happily volunteers

and even comes up with the idea

I've been here a few days over a month now and we've had some interesting experiences and have learned some interesting things about this new state we (temporarily) call home

(Carrie Underwood's song "Temporary Home" is my new favorite song in light of the move)

...I feel like that makes me sound like I hate it here and I'm miserable

I don't and I'm not

I'm just very much a homebody and a family girl

Utah has always been my home and I've always been close to my family...literally, figuratively, emotionally...

So yeah, it's not easy

Hubby has never had a place that he felt was "home"

Even Texas, where he is from and has lived most of his life

Where his family is

He never felt like it was "home"

So for him, moving isn't a big deal, being away from family isn't that hard

He even said he likes being away from home because he likes that he misses them and feels that they're closer

Yes, absence makes the heart grow fonder

But...no thank you

It's not going to be forever, and there will be visits home

And I'm not on another mission for my church, so it's not like we can't contact each other

But still...I just don't approve

ANYWAY....

Not where this post was going

Adventures in Iowa!!

Let's see...first on this list

Iowa wasn't so sure it wanted me around when I first got here

maybe it sensed my hostility

We were over at the house where Hubby was staying when he first got here collecting all of his stuff the day after I got here

He was on the phone, I was bored, I didn't want to sit on the bed because...partly because it's a waterbed and I didn't want to get lost in it, but also partly because...well, who knows who has sat on that bed? Yes, I'm a little bit of a germaphobe...I blame the OCD

Anyway, I wanted to sit and the bed wasn't going to cut it

I looked and saw this little...makeshift cupboard of sorts that hubby had his computer monitor on

Score!!

Surely if it had Hubby's monitor on it he trusted it

Big mistake

The second I put even the smallest amount of weight on that thing it broke out from under me

The top slammed down, the sides came out, and 4 lovely, long screws came out of their hiding spots

One of the screws decided it wanted to become really good friends with my thigh

Through my pants

I stand up, get over the pain, and tell Hubby I'm fine

He looks at me like I'm crazy

Next thing I know I look down and there's a huge tear in my pants and blood dripping down my leg

Ummmm, excuse me??

I barely move to Iowa and you're trying to cut my leg off?

That's it, I'm moving back to Utah

yeah, I wish it was that easy

Luckily Hubby doesn't have an aversion to blood and got some bandages and stitched me up

Even MORE luckily it healed, no stitches, no tetanus, no nada except a light scar that I didn't even notice until Hubby pointed it out

Lovely welcome to Iowa for me

And then there was the time that we went bowling with car tires...

The city where we live is FULL of hills

I mean it

I can almost look past the fact that there are no mountains because it's hard to tell with all of the hills

And while that might seem to be a big deal, it is when your car isn't anything but 2WD and you don't have snow tires because in Utah it isn't that big of a deal

Well, in Iowa with all of the hills, it gets to be a big deal

We were sliding all over the place, having a hard time getting up the hills

Pretty much the whole route to his work is downhill

There were many times driving to his work that I was afraid I wouldn't be able to stop and I would run into another car

Something had to be done, and there was no way we could afford another car

So we went and signed away any future fortune plus our first child spent mucho dinero to buy new snow tires

Now when Hubby went to set up the tire change, they told him that they would store our other tires until we were ready for them to be put on in the Spring, and then they would switch them out for free

Or at least that's what he understood

I was the one who took the car to get the new tires

It was a long wait with me reading lots of Philosophy

lucky me...

What a surprise I found when I got in the car afterwards and there were 4 tires, bagged up all nice and neat on our backseat

I started laughing and laughing....all while rolling my eyes

don't we love miscommunications...

Now the only place we have to store tires would be our basement

And, at the time, our basement happened to be cluttered with boxes that we hadn't taken the time to break down yet

Now, the sensible thing to do would be to carry the tires downstairs in an orderly fashion and find a place out of the way to put them

But that night it was snowing and cold and well...I didn't want to

I just wanted to get the tires in the house and out of the car so it would stop smelling of tire

yuck

So, obviously the real sensible choice is to throw the tires down the stairs

As Mary Poppins says "In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun. You find the fun, and snap! The job's a game!!"

How about we play bowling with tires and boxes and try and clear out as many boxes as possible?

I have to say, I did a pretty good job

Sadly, the other goal was to have all of the tires standing up in the end

Only one was standing up

Rude

But, the tires ended up downstairs and most of the boxes were moved out of the way

I'd say that the objectives were met

However questionable the process might have been

:)

Merry Christmas!!

The Hubster and I just wanted you wish you all a Merry Christmas!!

For those of you who celebrate it, we hope you have a wonderful filled with family, love, and that we can all remember the true meaning of the season

Well hello there

Yes, I am alive

I didn't mean to disappear for a month like that

Sorry, blog land

I am in Iowa now

The Hubster and I are finally back together

(sorry, Taylor Swift....looks like your song struck out on this one)

And we're trying to settle in

I just took the final for my class yesterday

I passed the class

Go me!!

There will be a bigger, more detailed post soon

I just wanted to stop and say hello and tell you all that I missed you all

My reader has about 200+ blogs to read

So I'll get around to catching up

I hope you are all enjoying the holiday season!!

My life as a novel....or so it seems

The Josh Groban concert was pretty much one of the best things ever

It was a nice date night for us

We don't go on much of those lately since Hubby lost his job and school started

(let's talk...Ethics and Values? Really?? Who came up with that idea?!)

Josh is AS amazing in real life if not even more

And he's hilarious to boot

I was going to share some videos I took...but I can't email them to myself from my phone because the files are too big, and for some reason my card is all messed up

So, just pretend I posted videos of Josh singing beautifully, crooning softly in your ears....

I can do pictures though

*sigh*

Such a wonderful night....

***

In other news, Hubby has found us a house!!

If I'm going to be perfectly honest, there are a lot of things about the house and the situation that I don't love

BUT

Beggars can't be choosers

And at the moment we're closer to being beggars than not

Moving across country + Hubby being jobless for a month + neither of us being independently wealthy = a lot of money spent and not had

Once we get settled it won't be as bad, but we have to buy a washer and dryer and living room furniture (aka couch, love seat, etc)

Hubby is going to be getting a sign on bonus, supposedly at the end of the month, which will be a HUGE help, so at least there's that

But anyway, the house is within our budget and will allow us to finally get completely out of debt

So I will take what we get until we can afford something else

We only plan on being there 5 years (hopefully), but neither of us want to rent the whole time because we both feel like it's a waste of money

We'd both much rather build our equity and try to make some money

Plus, having my own home and not having to worry about a landlord (that isn't family....family as a landlord is nice) hanging over our heads will be nice

So anyway, Hubby sent me a few pictures of the house that the landlord sent him

The new flooring that was just installed not too long ago:

The kitchen

The bathroom

The living room:

The bedrooms:

And the basement:

I'm most excited for the basement because it gives us a lot of space

AND there is a LOT of cupboard space in the kitchen, more than I've ever had in my adult life

It's not a bad house, I know, I'm just super picky

I'm trying to get over that, but I just don't see that happening :)

The Padres and I were going to drive a U-Haul across the states, but upon further investigation there are companies that come, drop off a trailer at your house, and then they drive it across the states for you

Umm, yes please!!

It does make my life a little more complicated because all of the sudden I have to pack my stuff for an airplane and not a BIG truck and all of the sudden I have send it away RIGHT NOW and not have it until I'm ready to leave

Like my computer

With my two monitors

Where I prefer to do my homework because I have two big screens that I can have multiple screens up and not have it be such a big deal

Instead of this itty bitty tiny laptop screen

Yes...I know, first world problems

Anyway, in all of the ways that it's way easier, it's also a little more stressful

They delivered the trailer last weekend and we had until Monday to pack it up

And I am just me and cannot pack a whole trailer for myself, especially our fridge, bed, treadmill, etc

Hubby is in Iowa, which doesn't help much

But to be perfectly honest, as much as I love him, he wouldn't have been much help anyway

I don't really like to talk about Hubby's health problems on here because it's depressing and the more I think about it, the sadder it makes me because it makes me stress over his future health and what could happen and...yeah...I try to be positive about it and not dwell on the negative

Anyway, he would have been able to help for maybe 10 minutes, and then he would have had to take a 30 minute break, and that would have continued the rest of the night with his working rounds getting shorter and shorter

So I did the only thing I could do

I sent out an SOS to the entire Platt family

And boy did they come through

Minus a brother who is sick and a sis-in-law who was watching chillens

And because of all the awesome help we got it done in a decent amount of time

Just a few hours, I believe

And it's not easy for them

Most of my siblings have children

One of the little ones has health problems and is fed through a feeding tube, so it requires some work and extra hands to tote all of the necessities around

Two of the little ones that were there are still quite young and not able to be independent

They all have lives and responsibilities and are quite busy

And yet they all came out to help me load this truck

The men did all of the heavy lifting (thank heavens for the men in the family who are all pretty dang tough)

The women, the older children, and the men handled all of the boxes

(the guys did like quadruple duty...they are just awesome)

And we all took turns helping with the babies

And we got it all packed in and ready to go in the space allotted us so we didn't have to pay more

(well, unless you count the 4 items I forgot...there always has to be something forgotten, right? luckily the company removed the paneling in front of my stuff and let my sister and her husband throw them in before they hauled them off)

And it was awesome

I started out the day with a pretty serious headache that turned into a migraine and was sent home from work early so I could try and sleep it off and just prayed that it would go away so I wouldn't be useless at my own "party"

Fortunately for the most part it did

(the ironic thing? as soon as we were done and my adrenaline had calmed down...the pain started to come back. not as bad, but it was definitely there)

And the whole time I had to focus on other things so I wouldn't break down in tears because, number one, come on, my family is awesome

And number two, I'm leaving them

For a very long time

Sure, there will be trips home and hopefully some, if not all, of them will be able to take a break from life and come out and visit us

But it's just not the same

We are a very close knit family

We were all raised working together, especially once Papa Smurf started the family business

We're always together

To be truthful, I think we're a bit of an oddity

Most of us live within 2 minutes of each other, if that

The next closest is MAYBE 8 minutes away, depending on traffic

And the farthest two are 15 mintues, maybe 20

We work together every day

And we eat Sunday dinner with everyone usually every other week

And the odd weeks we eat with what we call the "small group"

(which is really becoming not so small)

We go shopping together, we go see movies together, we hang out

We're friends and family

And I love that about my family

No, I'm not a perfect sister/daughter/aunt

And some days I'm ornery and some days I'm a brat and some days I'm probably a little ungrateful, but seriously I have the best family in the world

And I love the fact that they all sacrificed a night of their busy lives to come help me pack up our life and get it ready to ship out

And I'm having a really hard time accepting the fact that I can't just fly them all out to Iowa to help us unpack the truck

For which I am sure they are all very grateful

:)

Anyway, I'll get off my tangent now

I just needed the world to know that my family is awesome and they are some of my favorite people ever

And with that I'm going to bed

I have tomorrow off and I have to read about 11 weeks worth of material for my class in a month to be able to finish it all before the semester is over

May I recommend to never have a major life change, like a move across country, while in school?

Especially when your husband leaves you alone for almost 2 months to do it all on your own

It's just not a good idea

Because school is ultimately the one that gets neglected...and yeah

No bueno

So if anyone wants to volunteer to do some reading and quizzes for me, I would totally let you

Could you just let me know by...yesterday?

Gee, thanks :)

Oh, and to clear up something...I am moving, but my blog is not going away. In fact you might be hearing more from me in the near future as I'll have more time on my hands. Anonymous left a comment on my last post that sounded like they thought my blog was being retired, but it's not. Just for the record :)

Farewell, adios, tchau, sayonara, good bye, adieu...

Well, he got the job

We're moving

To Iowa of all places

Which just seems so random to me

But hey, he has a job that pays well

I hopefully will have to work very little at first, if at all, which means I can focus on finishing up my school and moving on with life in that direction

So at least there's that

Now comes the stress of moving and all of that mess that I feel like we were still in the process of

And now we get to do it all over again

He's leaving tomorrow

We found out a week ago that he starts on the 28th

Seriously?

Not a good way to start out with this wife

"Okay, we expect you to be able to move in a week and a half"

Yeah...that isn't happening

So Hubby is leaving tomorrow, he'll start work and stay with a friend until he can find us somewhere to live

And then I will follow behind with all of our stuff

With Papa and Mama Smurf who are going to be helping me drive the ginormous truck/s filled with our stuff

I'm not a big fan of him leaving and me staying, not gonna lie

But it's really the only way we can make it work

Happy, happy, joy, joy....

(sorry for the lack of quality...Hubby's phone camera isn't nearly as good as mine)

That is the state our house was in as of last night

It is now D-Day and Hubby has now left

I was fine all morning until he dropped me off at work

He helped turn on all the lights and I busied myself getting the rest of the store ready to open

Unfortunately, there was nothing left to distract me with after that

And that's when the flood gates opened

(and they still are just thinking about it...)

It was awful

Hubby and I don't really spend time apart

We like just being together, doing things together

Even if I'm doing homework and he's playing a game, we're in the same room

Even on the same couch if possible

I know, we're a little silly

So this is going to be rough

I'm hoping it will only be a month

Long enough for him to start work, and find a home for us to rent

And that will give my family a little more time to figure out their schedules and how they're going to make it all work without me

But it's going to be a long month

Hopefully I can get a lot of school done

Until then I'll just be hanging out with a box of tissues next to me

If you see a river full of salt, I'm sure it's from my tears

Just look for me, floating along

I'll be sure to wave hello in between all of my tears

I'm awesome, I know. You're jealous, I know.

What am I doing?
Oh, just sitting here with Hubby waiting for Josh Groban to come out.
I know, you're jealous. It's okay, I understand. I would be jealous of me too. I just can't contain my awesomeness very well.
We didn't really love the opening act. She was really loud and didn't seem to fit Josh's style, so we're glad that's over. Now just to wait for the man of the night!
If you need me, I'll be here buried in the awesomeness and beautifulness that is Josh.
I might not come of that cocoon for awhile.
But I'll try to contain my awesomeness.
Just for you.