So July.... Nope, better start in June... I'm all focused on Girls Camp and well, the month before camp basically nothing else happens in my life, at least not that I notice. ;-) I spend the last week of June gone at camp. I left about 6am Monday morning and got home about 8pm Friday night. Ahhh.... Home. I spent a nice restful weekend with my little family. So nice.
July 2nd - Monday morning Jared gets a call from Idaho. Apparently while I was gone at camp Jared sent in a resume to a small school in Idaho. No big deal, he's been emailing resumes for over four years hoping we could move back closer to family, but nothing has ever happened. Well, something happened now! Here was a phone interview! The guy said he had one other to interview and he'd let us know in the morning. We spent the rest of the day looking at ways to get Jared to Idaho for the next step of the process, the face-to-face interview.
Tuesday the guy calls back... and offers Jared the job!! Woah! Everything looks great, except it comes with a pay cut. Now, teachers don't make a ton of money in the first place, but to willingly take a pay cut?? Are we crazy? But it's Idaho! Do we take it or not??
After HOURS of discussion we decided yes let's go. We call him back to accept and he said "Great! Can you start tomorrow?" What?? Are you serious?? Do you know where we live?? Jared says he'll be to work on Monday the 16th. We accepted the job on Tuesday July 3rd, his first day of work is 13 days later.
The next 8 days are a serious blur of boxes, confusion and exhaustion.
Wednesday the 11th - We picked up the Penske truck and loaded the house. We hoped to be on the road about noon or 2pm. We left at 10pm. I kid you not. Where the heck do you go at 10 o'clock at night?!?! Egads. We ended up finding a hotel in a small town on the freeway just 2 hours down the road. We were showered and asleep by 12:30am.
Thursday the 12th - We were up and out by 6am. Ya, not lots of sleep, but we gotta get going. We're already behind schedule, by lots! This day was sooooooo boring. We drove and drove and drove... and drove... Trenton wanted to ride in the big yellow truck with Jared and ended up staying for 10 hours!! He finally crawled into the suburban with me to watch a movie at 4pm! 6am to 4pm! With nothing to do but stare out the windshield and play with a few toys. Crazy. But Jared said he did great. I wish I had done so great. I had a hard time staying awake in a dead silent car all by myself. I did turn on some tunes but it was just hard to keep my head alert. Blessings that nothing happened to either of us during those looooong hours! That afternoon I started making more phone calls to try find a place to stay in that small town. Nothing, nothing and more nothing. Not even in the surrounding towns. A lady told me there was a baseball tournament going on and there was NO WHERE to stay, everything was full! So discouraged and frustrated We decide to call it quits for the night at Little America. It felt dumb to stop driving at 6pm but we had no other choice really. Didn't know if we'd find a hotel when we get off the freeway. Once again our plans went out the window, yet good things happened with a plan B forced upon us, again. Little America is NICE! We had a great sit down dinner in their restaurant, Trenton really ate well. Thank goodness. Then we hung out, relaxed, watched a little TV, bathed T and went to bed early.
Friday the 13th - If you're superstitious, this day in my life will prove all of that wrong. I could write a book on the events of this day, but just suffice it to say that we drove into town that morning with no where to go, no where to live, or even to sleep that night... and after many miracles, most obviously directed by the hand of the Lord, we were moved into a place of our own by dinner. I kid you not. What took us 12 hours to load into the Penske truck on Wednesday, took them 90 minutes to unload on Friday! 25 people showed up with no more than 30 minutes notice, and hauled in our unending mountain of boxes! Unbelievable! All for 3 little strangers that happened to drive into their neck of the woods. We were still talking with a few of them when the Relief Society President showed up with dinner. Wow! I heard her say to someone "I was making dinner for your mom anyway so I just made two casseroles." So nice! So we went in and had a nice, quiet, hot sit down dinner, just the three of us... at our computer desk. :-)
The rest of the evening was setting up Trenton's room and getting him settled. We gave him a bath in yellow water that smelled like sulfur and rotten eggs. Wow. they weren't kidding when they said the water was strong. Holy Cow! (no we don't drink it)
Trenton was soooooo happy to see his bed, with his dresser and lamp, right in their right spots!! Poor kid had been through the wringer the last 10 days! He was beyond happy to see something normal after having everything in chaos for 10 days.
We had family prayer, I read him a couple of books, tucked him in and he was out like a light! Jared got our bed put together while I was putting Trenton down. We both showered and went to bed ourselves. And let me tell you, it felt sooooo good to sleep in our own sheets with our own pillows in our own 'new' home.
It's crazy to think that we arrived at 10 am this morning with no where to go and no options available, and by 6pm we were completely unloaded into a place of our own.
I will call that a miracle.
