April

Our First New Mexican Haircuts

Yes, I know that the title completely indicates that there will be at least one picture attached to this post, but there is not. When we moved Ben and myself were already in need of haircuts. So shortly after moving in we decided to go take care of it. Normally, Katie would just shave Ben's head with a #3 attachment on the razor. I've been going to the same salon since before we were married so I haven't had to really describe to anyone how to cut my hair for a LONG time. We were both in for something new.

I had noticed a little barbershop while I was out the one day that kind of reminded me of the barbershop I'd gone to growing up. Unfortunately, that place had closed by the time we got there. A couple blocks down the street however was the MDK (Mom, Dad, Kids) Salon.

The first thing I noticed was that the writing on the door made it excruciatingly clear that only cash was accepted. We walked inside and there was lots of "homey" decor and "homey" signs and such which only served to clash all the more with the appearance of the staff.

It was the roughest looking crew of barbers and stylists I had ever seen. Holes in their pants, very tattooed, some with excessive piercings. So of course, we decided to stay and get our hair cut.

I told my barber that I wanted it short on the sides and longer on top. Apparently, there is about 1/2" difference in length between saying that in New Mexico as opposed to Utah. Either that or my barber just cuts everybody the same way regardless of what they ask for.

Ben's barber actually did a good job and cut Ben's hair exactly like Ben asked him too. I thought he did a good job, but Ben decided he didn't like it and then told the guy to shave it all off. So we just payed someone to do what we normally do at home.

My barber finished before Ben's so I went to pay. This is where I found out that not only do the only take cash, but he would not let me pay for both haircuts at the same time. He described the barbers as "independant contractors". That is when I noticed there wasn't even a cash register. Yeah, these guys are probably involved in tax evasion. I guess it's already time to find a new barber...

Another Side of the Move

Yeah I know that Katie already posted on the move, but I thought I would post my own account of it since I wrote it up to send to my brother. I won't bother to include anymore pictures than Katie put in her original post.

We are finally in New Mexico. Crazy. I can't believe we did it. Two or three days before we were supposed to originally move I got a phone call as I am emptying out the freezers saying that the paperwork is not in order for me to start work on the Monday I was supposed to and that if we move that weekend the cost of the move will not be reimbursed. So with ~80% of our stuff in boxes we delay moving for two weeks. You'd think with an extra two weeks we'd be really ready to move right? Well, apparently you don't know us very well. Let's just say you don't really know how much crap you have until you have to put it all in a box. We literally did not pack up any more stuff until the day I picked up the Uhaul truck and that's when we realized that the 80% was really more like 60% of our stuff. Oh, good times.

So I pick up a 26' Uhaul truck, a 12' trailer, and an auto-transport for towing the mini-van on. That night the elder's quorum came to help us load up the truck. This consists of 3 people. The 2nd counselor who also happens to be our hometeacher, a guy who actually served in the mission field with me (and he's "injured" and can only stay for an hour or so. Just giving Dom a hard time :) ), and our brother-in-law Anthony. The previous two weeks the temperature had been in the 60's but while we are loading the truck it starts to snow. Despite all this the truck g0t loaded ~55%.

The next morning I have to shovel the driveway before anything can get underway. My cousin and her husband, my brother-in-law Dan, and a friend of mine from grad school show up in the morning to help continue the work. Throughout the day we were also joined by Amy and Alex, and Emily, and our next door neighbor Julie. I don't think I left anybody out. It was crazy. Just a whirlwind. I'll list a few of the more memorable moments for you.

-Amy was a fantastic help, but one of her more questionable moments was when she packed up about 5-10 boxes without labeling a single one.

-Katie's friend Julie packed up my closet: she labeled every box "Chris's POS" (Pile of S**T) except for one which she labeled "valuable". I have no idea how she determined that.

-Once the truck was completely packed floor to ceiling, wall to wall (yes, it was packed so tight nothing had to be strapped down and the moving guys on this end were amazed) we closed the door and found out that the lock I bought for the truck did not fit. Luckily Dan had one in his car that he loaned me. Given that I don't know where it is right now we'll just consider that he gave it to me.

-Once we packed up the truck and the trailer floor to ceiling and wall to wall we realized that we still had an entire trailer's worth of stuff left to pack. Exchanging the auto-transport for the trailer after 24 hour of having picked it up is a story that made me several enemies at Uhaul.

-When I went to pack my air compressor and miter saw I realized that I had secured them to my worktable and that my mother-in-law had packed the keys to the locks. I had to ask my neighbor to cut the locks off.

So the next morning we get up pack up the stuff we slept on along with the last rocking chair and hand the keys over to Melanie. At the weigh station on the way out of town I learn that the truck and the trailer together are 7000 lbs over the maximum gross weight for the truck. I just pretended that the trailer weighed 7000 lbs. even though there is no way possible that it did. We had a pretty uneventful drive out to Grand Junction with Mom and Dad. Katie drove the minivan with Kallie and Zack. Dad and Mom pulled one of the trailers with the suburban and took Ben and Coco. Andrew, Dandy, and I took the truck and last trailer.

The truck has a little gauge on the dash that tells you how efficiently you're driving the truck. I learned that a Uhaul truck gets a whopping 5 mpg when its efficiency gauge is in the "Best MPG" range on the gauge. Luckily the gas tank is so big that it cost ~$130 every time I filled it despite the fact that it wasn't yet empty. In Grand Junction Mom and Dad treated us to Outback Steakhouse for dinner. Dad decided to supplement his meal with a lobster tail. Apparently lobsters have problems in Australia because his lobster tail amounted to something slightly bigger than a jumbo shrimp.

After we finished eating Dad was looking at the route for the next day on his phone. He turns to me and says, "we can't go this way!" And sure enough, the road I had chosen went through Silverton and Durango and wound it's way through the San Juan National Forrest in the middle of the Rockies with switchbacks and shear dropoffs. Let me tell you how my mother LOVES roads like that. It was like pulling teeth to convince her that we shouldn't go that way. SO, the only real option is to backtrack 2 hours and go down through Moab instead.

It was fantastic because just north of Moab you come around a bend in the road to this spectacular view of the mountains you could have just driven over, all snow covered and beautiful and such. We made it to the house about 7 pm that night.

I had hired 2 guys to come unload the truck for 4 hours the next day. It was worth every penny. Dad and I had unloaded the two trailers the night before. In 4 hours those guys had unloaded the truck, moved all the boxes to where they needed to go and assembled all of my furniture. I have no idea what I would have down without them. Later that afternoon dad returned the Uhaul truck with me and I took him to the airport.

On the way back from the airport I still had to get one last weigh ticket for a trailer before I returned it. As I pulled off the freeway to go to the weigh station I can see that the normal route is blocked off due to construction. I can't really see much of what I'm supposed to do because I'm right behind a semi, so I decided to follow him expecting he was going the same place I was.

Sure enough he makes a turn as if he's going to the truck stop, but it only takes about 100 feet before the truck in front of me ends up in a Mexican standoff with a Dodge pulling a 5th wheel practically in the drive-thru of a Jack-in-the-Box, and behind me is another truck pulling an oversized load who made the same mistake. The fun of course began when the road construction crew poorly marked the correct detour route. This is now my definition of a "New Mexican stand-off".

Mom stayed for the rest of the week helping set up the house. It was so nice to have Mom here with us. We took her out to dinner for her birthday to a "New Mexican" restaurant but the food was so hot she couldn't eat any of it. So we took her out to lunch the next day on the way to taking her back to the airport. When we got back home Ben entered the house and said, "It doesn't feel the same without Grandma here." We are really going to miss being so close to Mom and Dad.

How cute is this baby?!??!

Andrew loves to hold baby Zack.  Zack loves Andrew and will talk and talk to him.  Love these boys!

Zachary’s Baby Blessing

Before I start this post let me just put something out there.  You might have noticed that we never spell the shortened version of Zachary the same way.  That’s because we don’t know how we want to spell it yet!  You would think at almost 2 months old we would know…but we don’t.  So you might see it spelled “Zach” or “Zack” or “Zac”.  We are just trying it out.  As soon as we know…we’ll let you know.  If any of you have opinions we would love to hear it!  I like it spelled with a “k”, but can you do that if you spell the long name with an “h”?  Can you even spell it with just a “c”?  We don’t know and are still debating.  Hopefully we figure it out before we have to teach him how to spell it!

We decided sense we were moving we wanted to bless Zachary with the whole big family before we left.  That left us with a very short window in which to bless him (this was before we knew we weren’t moving on the 17th).  So before he was born we set it up to have his blessing when he was two weeks old.  My parents bought their tickets and other family made plans to be in Utah on the 11th.  It was the perfect plan!

Little did we know this little man would decide to spend 11 days in the NICU!  That changed all our plans.  He came home from the hospital late Thursday night and we were going to bless him two days later.  When we left the NICU they gave us instructions to keep him in and not to have too many people around him.  So our big family get together was cancelled for a smaller, more intimate blessing.  I kind of feel like Zack got jipped on a big get together to celebrate his birth – but what can you do?  So it was our little family and our parents.  No aunts, uncles, cousins, friends.  Christopher did a beautiful job on his blessing and you could tell how much this little guy was loved.  Here are some pictures from that day!

My amazing sister in law Amy is a photographer and came and took these pictures for me the day before we moved.  Aren’t they amazing!  I’ll post more from the photo shoot on a different post.  His blessing outfit was very special.  Christopher’s mom made it just for him and it turned out amazing!  She is incredible!  In all the crazy I never got a picture of her holding Zack in his blessing outfit!  Kicking myself!  We have a white blanket we have used for every baby blessing that one of Christopher’s aunts made for us…but it accidently got packed.  Oops!

Chris had plenty of help getting Zachary dressed in his blessing outfit.  These kids just love this baby!

The four amazing men who were part of his blessing.

We have yet to master getting all of us to look in on direction and smile.  Here is the best attempt.

Wondering about Ben in his scout uniform?  Well I told him to go and get dressed in church clothes…but all his were packed.  I told him to go and find a collar shirt then and this is the only one he had in his closet.  I really wasn’t going to fit him on this one.  He will love to look back and see this

I still can’t believe we have four kids!  CRAZY!

We are now New Mexicans…well kinda

After years and years of threatening to move to New Mexico and having to push it back we finally made the jump…but not without a final push back for fun.  My parents came up to be with us for Zachary’s blessing (I’ll have to blog that later) and like a whirl wind packed up our house for us…which was a huge blessing as we were to move the following weekend and I was still recovering from surgery.  This is what our dining room looked like….

We had enough clothes to last the 7 days and a few dishes in our kitchen and that was it!  We were ready!  Then we get a call TWO days before we are to load up the truck saying that the orders haven’t been issued and we had to push our move back by two weeks.  Incredible!  So this is how we lived for two weeks and borrowed kitchen cookware from neighbors and family and did laundry every night.  In the end it turned out to be a blessing to have two more weeks with our family and friends…but a little frustrating and embarrassing.  The kids got sang goodbye songs two or three times at church and the school kept sending home goodbye notes…only to have the kids arrive the next Monday.  fun times

Moving day finally arrived and we were ready…or we though we were.  We hadn’t moved in 10 years…and you can pile up a ton of stuff!  It seemed like for every one box that got packed 10 more to pack would appear.  Thankfully we had amazing friends and family who came to bail us out.  My amazing neighbor Julie also made everyone dinner and feed the whole group…about 20 plus people.  Did I mention she is amazing!?!

Of course the night we pack the truck it snows.  We had had beautiful weather in the days before…but snow the two days we packed the truck.  I found it very fitting.

Best helper?  ANDREW!  He carried out any box he could lift and all the couch cushions.  He was amazing!  While the other two watched a movie inside Andrew was battling the cold and snow with the big guys.  I finally had to force him to come inside and get warm.  He was pretty mad at me, but some pizza another amazing friend brought over softened the blow.  He was sleeping in just a matter of minutes after laying down!

I can’t believe that over the two days of driving I only took the above picture of Kallie.  I’m just kicking myself!  We were quite the sight!  Chris, Andrew, and Dandy in the big truck with a trailer behind, followed by Christopher’s parents driving the suburban pulling another trailer with Ben and Coco, and Kallie, Zachary, and I bringing up the rear.  We didn’t really stay with the caravan since I had to be cautious about getting Zachary out of his car seat…and we could drive faster than 55 mph.  We passed on the road and would meet up at varies stops.  All in all it was a great ride…well minus the hour or so of back tracking we had to do the second day since the big truck couldn’t do the mountain roads.  We had a good laugh though over the thought of attempting it. 

We finally arrived Sunday night.  It was so great to be out of the car and at our new home!  I love our house.  It has a great backyard for the kids and is just wonderful.  Here are the kids enjoying the new backyard..

The  new House

Well, not every place is perfect.  One huge downfall is there are stickers (or “pokies” and my kids call them) EVERYWHERE!  You really have to wear your shoes all the time.  In Provo we were always walking around barefoot and that is kind of what we do.  Not here.  Kallie had to learn the hard way to wear her shoes.  She went out to the backyard and got a tiny thorn from a sticker embedded in her foot.  It was horrible to watch Christopher have to dig it out of her foot.  The kids are pretty good now about remembering their shoes and we keep shoes at every door.

the stickers also get into the dogs paws and the kids bike tires.  We took the whole family…dogs included for a long walk on Sunday and ended up having to stop multiple time to get a sticker out of their paws.  The poor dogs.  If they walk on anything besides the concrete they get something in their paws. 

found this picture on my phone and had to include it.  Ben was wondering why Chris and I were laughing so hard when he came upstairs dressed in this little number.  I’ll let you judge for yourself….

After a day of having the kids “help” us unpack we decided we should get them in school sooner rather than later.  They were so excited to go and check out their new school!  I think they were a little taken back with how unlike their old school their new school was.  It is pretty much on lock down and you have to have an electronic key card to pass from one building to the next (the school is made of three different parts…Ben and kal are in the same building thankfully).  I asked if I could work in the classroom and was told I have to be approved by the school district and take a class.  So unlike Provo!  They were really excited to ride the bus though and couldn’t wait to walk to the bus stop the first morning.

It took one bus ride for them to realize it wasn’t all they thought it would be.  Now they beg me to drive them so they don’t have to ride on the loud bus.  This is the kids classrooms…

Ben went right in and was fine….Kallie was a different story.  It was horrible to leave her crying.  Thankfully they only had two days of school before spring break.  I’m not looking forward to Monday.

Another form of stickers attacked our house recently!  These also get stuck all over your feet…but don’t hurt

Christopher’s mom came and stayed with us for a week.  We would have been in deep trouble without her!  She had the kitchen all un packed and organized the first day.  She is incredible!  I was a little overwhelmed -to put it lightly -with all the unpacking that loomed a head of me.  She just came in and went to work like a whirlwind!  This amazing woman was emptying boxes and putting stuff away faster than I could keep up with.  My house is all unpacked and decorated thanks 100% to mama E.  There aren’t words to express how grateful I am that she came to help us!  We were so sad when she left to go home.  In fact when we got home from dropping her off at the airport Ben said, “Our house doesn’t feel right without Grandma here.”  I couldn’t agree more!  I loved having her here and was so sad when she left us.  Come back Mama E!!!!

This is the best baby on the whole planet.  He is perfect and wonderful.  He loves his swing and his little ducky friends.  He hardly ever cries and just loves to be held and swaddled.  I just love him!

This is my view right now.  We have two front porches and I love to sit out on them and have the doors open. 

My favorite time of day?  When Chris gets home!  He plays with the kids and I take a little break.  His days are long too and he is pretty tired, but always lets me relax.  He is so good to me.  He loves his job and they even gave him an office….he feels so special

The park by our house that we walk to and never see another living soul at.  In Utah there were always people at the parks and outside riding bikes or playing…not here.  in fact we have been here almost 2 weeks and still haven’t meet or really even seen our neighbors.  So strange for me!

Pictures from the other day.  We play outside in the back yard a lot.  Kallie has taken to doing the dogs hair with her headbands.  yep, really excited about that.  Hopefully that will end soon.  Andrew rides his bike all day while Kallie jump ropes and Ben reads his books or rides his rip stick.  it’s going to be really lonely here next week when the kids go back to school next week!  Kallie is also working really hard on her monkey bars.  We have to drive to the school everyday so she gets some practice time.  So cute!

So that’s us.  Now that we have internet I’ll be better about keeping up this blog and back blogging all the stuff that got left out during the move.  We miss Utah so much, but we are going to love it here weather we want to or not!