Big Changes

I know I haven’t been the greatest blogger lately. I have lots of posts that still need to be done but I wanted to document this before my brain forgets the details, which doesn’t take very long these days.

Back at the end of September one of Matt’s dental school buddies told him about a job opportunity that they had looked at and decided not to take. He encouraged Matt to look into it so the next day he contacted the company and made an appointment to meet with them. By the next weekend he had met with the company and we drove to the potential city and met with one of the partners of the office. He and his wife were gracious enough to drive us around the small city and show us the office Matt might work at and meet another one of the potential partners. Over the next few days we prayed and thought about this new job constantly. We were also struggling with the decision to stay with the company Matt was already working with and help them open a new office in Utah. During dental school we had always thought that getting back to Utah was our main goal and really wanted to feel good about this opportunity. But that reassurance never came. We never felt like it was the right choice for us. So when this new opportunity became apparent to us it immediately felt like a better route for us and our goal of getting out of debt. We made the decision to go for it and have felt good about our decision ever since, even though none of our family can really understand why we decided to move farther away and to a smaller city.

We quickly began packing all our things. My mom and dad called on Monday (Oct 17th) and told us they wanted to come and help. We are SO happy they did! We couldn’t have gotten all our things packed in time for the moving truck coming Thursday night. Matt’s brother Jason also drove in on Thursday and we were able to get a good start on getting the truck packed.

Our house rapidly became chaotic!

While cleaning out Lily’s closet she discovered the baby bath and immediately wanted to give her baby a bath.

Cutest thing ever!

Lily LOVED having her Grandma and Grandpa around to play with.

So most of Friday was spent moving our things into the truck. Dan was able to come Friday night and help with the last few big things. We can’t thank our family enough for all the help they were.

We all joked that Matt got the “little” truck and should’ve gotten the bigger one! We got the 22 foot truck and it was huge! But we filled it. It always amazes me how you don’t realize how much stuff you have until it’s all being packed into a big truck.

Because of all the helpers we were done ahead of schedule and were able to get an early start on Saturday (Oct 22). We loaded up all the cars with fragile things and set off for our new home. Since our blog is still public, I’ve decided to NOT say exactly what city we’ve moved to.

She couldn’t get enough of the big truck. She climbed up and down the ramp many, many times.

Our moving crew!

This “little” guy wanted to welcome us to the neighborhood. Didn’t expect to see tarantulas here! Now I can’t go outside without being paranoid about seeing another one!

Because of Matt’s final day being on Monday, we drove back to Denver for a few days. We “camped out” in our mostly empty house and slept on an air mattress. We spoke in sacrament meeting at church. I bawled through the WHOLE thing. I’m pretty sure it had a lot to do with hormones. But we really are going to miss our ward a LOT. We both had multiple callings and got to know a lot of people that we will truly miss. Just for memory’s sake: I was a Relief Society Teacher and Activity Days Leader, Matt was ward clerk and then 2nd Counselor in the Bishopric. In the year that we were in this ward we really grew to love it – even with all its quirkiness. But we realized that we fit right into the quirkiness when we started bike riding to church every week. So fun!

On Monday Oct 24th, Matt had his final day at work and we said goodbye to our Denver home. Or tried to anyway. We realized we had too much stuff to pack into our little car and had to make one final trip on Tuesday to get the rest of our stuff. We are really going to miss living in this city – mostly all the places we rode our bikes to. We were in such a good location for going to so many different places.

Here are some pictures I took right before the boxes took over.

We’ve been anxiously waiting for our angel trumpet to start blooming. It finally opened its first bloom one day before we moved. We sure did put a lot of work into our little garden. That’s one thing we are really going to miss about this house. Hope the next people enjoy it as much as we did.

We decided to give our patio furniture to a couple in our ward. We know they will use it well (they are both amazing cooks and throw some awesome parties). We’d rather have it go to someone who can use it rather than it sitting in our storage.

So that’s what’s been going on in our lives lately. We’ve been in our new town a little over a week now and still trying to figure out where things are. Matt has started his new job and trying to get used to the new routine. It’s going to take us all some time to adjust but we’re getting there.