Okay we were actually doing this...moving. I can't believe how crazy life was. Trying to pack up as much as possible, but still needing to live there until the move date.
Trying to get movers. I couldn't believe how expensive movers were. We called plenty of different companies and let's just say that it was a good thing that Caldera was paying for the out of state move, cause whew.
I can't remember if I wrote about this before but we ended up with 5 offers on our house. We just took the highest offer which was the best because our agent was also the agent for the buyers so he gave everyone a discount. They offered 525 but with the discount it was more like 530. Unfortunately the appraisal came in low. They appraised it for 510, which means that they could only get financing for that much. They did put in a clause for paying $5000 over appraisal, but it still wasn't enough. Our agent sent in an appeal for the appraisal, saying that both the buyers and the sellers thought it was low, and they ended up raising the appraisal to 515, and 5000 more = $520,000. Whew that is a lot of money, but because of the discounts it is more like $525. Thankfully we sold high because our new house cost even more, by a lot.
Moving day arrived, and it was a bit chaotic. Alison Price helped by watching the kids while things were getting loaded up. Diane Minium helped us a lot by helping clean our house as they carried things out.
Two big trucks, is everything going to fit??
Our last meal in our Phoenix house.
So many boxes. So much packing. I used to joke that if John ever got called as bishop we would just move. Nope, now it sounds easier to just have him be bishop. I think we have a little PTSD from this whole process.
I still miss this house. We put some much work into it. Right now we are trying to do our yard at the new house and I am really missing our old yard.
New house!! Surprisngly similar to the old house, but with an unfinished basement. It is also just a bit roomier.
New living room!
Darcy checking out her new space. Her bedroom is the only one that is about the same size as the old one, but it was the biggest kid bedroom in Phoenix.
We love the walk in closet!
Holland's bedroom is giant.
Actually the parents bedroom is gianter!
Enjoying the new island.
First meal in the new house!
We brought two giant plants with us. This plumeria and the madagascar palm. I think the jury is still out if they are going to last long term here. It was pretty tricky getting them loaded in the back of the van.
Both of our big plants had so many leaves when we moved here. They are not as happy inside for sure. We are trying to baby them the best that we can though.
No blinds yet. Sheesh those were expensive and necessary.
We don't know how to dress in Utah in the fall!
With the excess of moving boxes around the kids came up with these for their Halloween costumes. Moving box princess, moving box genie, and moving box monster and a pumpkin.
Darcy thoroughly enjoying access to her toys and books again.
We did love all of the fall leaf colors we saw when we moved!
We're so so happy to live near (ish) to the Davises again.
It is good to meet new friends too. It is seriously a miracle to me that the kids made friends so quickly. They made friends way easier than I have.
Why is moving so expensive? Well here is one reason. It turns out even if you are coming from a house, you still have to buy one million things for your new house. In addition to immediately buying blinds, we bought grow lights and pots for our plants, organizers for the kitchen drawers, baskets for the shoes, 2 tvs and sound bars for the upstairs and basements, and probably a lot of other things that I am not thinking of right this moment.
Starting middle school in person for the first time. So glad she met some nice girls right away.
Darcy is way to adept at walking almost immediately. She wanted to push around Grandma's walker.
It took forever to get the kids registered for school. It was readily apparent that Provo School District is understaffed and over worked. The only time my phone call was ever picked up with this whole month long process was when I called the old district. No one returned phone calls or emails. I kept thinking through the whole process, "Isn't this literally your job to help register kids for school? What if I was a less responsible mom? It wouldn't have happened!" I ended up going to Eliza's school to get her registered because I couldn't get a response either way. She was my highest priority because I didn't want her getting behind in math or something else that more challenging. It took a couple of weeks, but we got her registered. Miriam was the next challenge because I wanted to get her into the self contained gifted class here called CAST. That was a circus trying to get people to respond about that. I started emailing the district supervisor about this more than a month before we moved. We eventually got approval for her to join the class without having her tested again, but then I had to get approval for Holland to go to that same school which never actually happened. I could get 0 responses from the district so eventually the school secretary was able to get approval for her. It was absurd. Those sweet school secretaries have enough to do without having to chase down district people in order to get approval to get kids registered. Basically it was a really long break mid school year.
Starting on our next house project, building shelves in the cold storage room.
Thanksgiving dinner with family. Marc's family had a covid and David's family didn't have time to come so it was just my parents and us at Kayla's house. We were supposed to host it, but we were waiting for a repair on our brand new oven. Our oven wouldn't heat and oven cooking is pretty central to many Thanksgiving dishes.
Still needing to unpack boxes. Months later there are still things to unpack and organize. Obviously it has never quite made it to the top of the to do list. I am just grateful that we got blinds in so quickly. The cardboard boxes in our windows felt pretty classy....
Sweet baby! She learned how to walk so fast after she started taking steps. Kind of breaks my heart!
She loves the babies! And Grandma too!
Daddy built some pretty epic shelves. They are really sturdy. Sometime he is going to build some on the other half of the cold storage room.
