The Bairds

Well, this week has been a crazy one, and it's still not over yet. I would have prefered our move to have gone smoothly, but alas, it was not the case. Things started out awesome when about 8 or 9 or 10 guys from the elders quorum showed up to help. How awesome is that size of a crowd? They had the truck loaded within an hour probably. We had tons of stuff. I can't believe we own so much. We needed the largest truck, and we even got rid of some things.

I would also love to give a grateful shout out to my wonderful in laws Jeff, Megan, and Trevor who took some time out of their vacation in St. George to help us as well. Megan was the one responsible for cleaning all that last minute stuff in our place. Your awesome Meggie!

We swung by my friend's house to pick up our children. It was a tearful goodbye, because Michelle has been my best friend here. We are both married to athletic trainers (or I guess I was) and that meant that we had many evenings, Friday nights, and weekends without our hubbies....but we had each other and we had some good times. I feel bad leaving her with her weekends alone, but hopefully she'll find another trainer wife. They are few and far in between, but here's hoping.

We started to head out of town, Jon got a head start since I needed to drop off something at a friend's house. (Thanks for the tape gun Ambur) Jon headed on with the giant moving truck, but I knew I would catch him soon enough. Those things are aggravatingly slow. Once I got on the interstate, I drove as fast as I could to catch him. (It was over five over the limit. I'm too much of a pansy to drive too fast. I have a ticket less record....if you don't mind me bragging. :) Well, I never caught Jon, and I should have, going over those giant hills, and I knew I didn't pass him. I knew something was wrong. So I pulled off in Cedar City and used the pay phone. Unfortunetly, Jon just got a new phone and I didn't have the new number yet. I luckily remembered my inlaws home phone off the top of my head, and called knowing that they knew my sister in laws number who had Jon's new number...blah blah blah.

I got ahold of Jon who was sitting in a garage shop while the truck maintenence people were running diagnostics on the truck. The truck's alarm started beeping as Jon pulled out of town, and he had to take it back. Well, I waited things out in Cedar City while Jon sat in the shop for hours as the people could not figure out what was wrong with the truck. It was the computer system that was going crazy.

Its kind of hard to entertain children in a town that you have to hang around in parks and stores to pass the time. My kids weren't so interested in all the things I tried to do with them. Chase just wanted to see daddy in the super cool big truck and Logan wanted a nap, but would not take one. We tried to decide if I should keep waiting in Cedar to hear what will happen with the truck, come back to St. George, or go on the Salt Lake City. The last option would be complicated because we planned our trip so well that I had Jon's overnight bag in my car, and me and the kid's stuff in the other car he was towing.

At around six in the evening, the truck still wasn't figured out and I didn't want to leave Jon alone in St. George, especially if we had to move our stuff into another truck and that idea made me want to cry. It's so hard to load up once, but again? So, luckily Megs, Trevor, and Jeff were still in St. George and they had room in their condo for us since we no longer had a home. As soon as I got back, the truck was fixed. Yeah!!!

So we headed out of town the next morning and I got to say goodbye to my beloved former home one last time. We stayed one night in Salt Lake at Jon's parents and then left the next morning with Jon's mom. She was so sweet to drive with me and she was so helpful in fulfilling the children's needs in the backseat so I could drive. I had a fun time with her and enjoyed our conversations. (Love ya Su)

Now, the next problem we had was one we knew could possibly happen. We didn't get a chance to check out housing in Billings before we moved. Jon is going to be a graduate student at a college there, and we signed ourselves up for the one family housing building on the campus. We coudn't get much information about the place because the manager lost the apartment layout sheet. She tried to describe it, but it was iffy on the details on the living room and kitchen space, but it was such a good deal, that we decided to go for it and hope for the best. Well, we got there and our eyes popped out and our hearts dropped. It just wasn't livable space for our family. All the square footage was in the bedrooms, and they forgot to include a living room. Ok, there was a living room, but I hardly could see it. It just wasn't going to fit us, or we had to get rid of everything we owned. We could do it if we needed to, but we wanted to see if we could find something a little better for our kids. We hadn't signed a lease yet, so that was in our favor.

This is where Jon's mother came into great help as she watched the children for us as we went searching for a place to live. We also spent a chunk of the next day unloading our stuff into a storage unit. They charge you a whole month of rent to store your stuff for one week. I was a little bothered about that extra money, but we had to do it anyway. We stayed in a really fun hotel for two more nights. It had a neat tropical indoor area with pools and several hot tubs scattered about the tropical rocks and foliage. We had a hot tub right outside our door. That was great after that backbreaking unloading day.

Most importantly, we found a good place to live. It had a living room! Yeah! And also pools for the kids, exercise rooms, a playground and its right against a very large park, and there's a stake center just down the street. It will be a great place for me and the boys to be as Jon spends a lot of time with his schooling. Its further from the campus that we want to be, but it came down to two choices. We could live on campus, but our home would be unfavorable. (You have to keep in mind that the winters here are long and cold, and we'll be indoors a lot). So if Jon has to drive a little more so that we have a comfortable home then so be it. I think we'll like it there. It's not perfect and its more money that we initially tried to spend, but its worth it for us to be comfortable.

This apartment didn't have an availability immediately, but one would be ready in a week. So, we decided that going to Fairfield and staying with my mom would be a great weeklong distraction. Jon's mother's flight wasn't leaving until Friday, and this was a Wednesday. We looked into changing her flight, but it cost more than her initial flight did. It was cheaper to book a hotel room for one person rather than five, so we put her up in a decent place that had shuttle service to the airport and we took off for Fairfield. I feel bad that she had to stay one more night alone in Billings. She was a trooper. I know that was a hard few days in Billings, taking care of our kids, but we all loved having her along and she got some good grandkid time in.

So, I am currently at my mom's house. We will be leaving soon. I am not looking forward to Thursday, when we leave for Billings. Friday is the 4th, and we couldn't go that day because the managers of the apartment building will off for the day and the truck rental place will be closed as well...so we need to go up one day earlier to sign our new lease and get a big truck to move our stuff from storage into the truck, then unload it back into our new place. How hard will that be? Very hard since we don't know anyone in Billings. It will be just me and Jon doing it all in one day, as well as driving up that morning. Ahhhh! That will be hard, but mostly I'm concerned about what I'm going to do with my kids. So, there is the latest in our moving fiasco which has gone anything but smooth.