So as Sam so eloquently said: All's well that Ends.
Please note how the pictures get progressively more exciting as we move past Wyoming.
Sunday, August 28, 2011
The Move Illustrations
Here's a little glimpse at our actual trip. We had a brand new yellow Penske filled to bursting, and our tiny green corolla strapped on the back. Although nothing mechanical or disastrous went on, something seemed to derail some part of our plans each day. Little hiccups, stress, and all your worldly possessions in one place make for some tense moments. Like when we hit Ohio. Paid over $50 in tolls for the worst roads of the trip. We initially set the GPS to avoid tolls and went on a 3 mile, 1/2 hour detour through some pretty interesting ghetto. I was hyperventilating thinking that we were going to get carjacked and lose everything while Sam was busy maneuvering the huge truck through tiny little roads. Little hiccups like that.
So as Sam so eloquently said: All's well that Ends.
Please note how the pictures get progressively more exciting as we move past Wyoming.
Here is a park that is literally a 2-3 minute walk away from our complex.
So as Sam so eloquently said: All's well that Ends.
Please note how the pictures get progressively more exciting as we move past Wyoming.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
We're Alive and Kicking
I apologize about taking so long to post that Sam and I have arrived safe and sound in State College, PA. We've been fairly busy with school stuff, job stuff, and organizing a mountain of boxes. Fortunately that mountain has been reduced to about 7-8 boxes left!
In addition to all of the moving excitement, in the week we've been in Penn State we've survived a tornado warning, thunder, lightning, monsoon rain, an earthquake and soon hope to survive a hurricane. To say Pennsylvania has been eventful has been an understatement.
I realize this post is way long, but we'll work on that as we will have much less excitement in our lives day by day, and much more predictable developments.
As far as getting to Pennsylvania trip was pretty amazing. Amazing as in an adventure I'd not like to repeat, but looking back at it pretty incredible. Remarkably comfortable in the moving truck, the first few days felt like they went faster than they would in a normal car. The progression through Wyoming took forever, but reminded me a lot of southern Utah and some of my desert hometown.
As we made it into the midwest I discovered that there are a lot of bugs. At the first hotel we stayed at, I thought there was an oscillating sprinkler close. The kind of sprinkler that makes a loud tshhh sound. Apparently lots and lots of bugs at dusk can make that sound. Gross.
As we progressed east there were a lot more farms when we hit Illinois and Ohio. Except there was only two crops-corn and soybeans. Each corn stalk had a sandy-blonde single set of tassels at the top. There were so many that it made the entire field look like a sandy-blonde head of hair, the parts in the hairstyle being the long roads cut for machinery and farmers to pass through the crop. We saw lots of huge windmills, with blades as large as a semi-truck. and lots and lots of rolling hills. The surprising thing about rolling hills was the fact that you can't actually see that far over them. For some reason I believed that you would be able to look out, and see forever. Technically that happened at parts of the drive, but not once we got into the actual east coast. The last part of the drive totally blew my mind. I ran out of words to describe it. Literally, on the last stretch of road I asked Sam for synonyms for "so beautiful" and "amazing".
As a little girl, I believed there was beauty in every landscape, especially in the desert. The sunsets are beyond gorgeous. The wildflowers that transform the college heights hills into yellow carpets for one week. The rocky crags that morphed into hills and mountains on every side. The mountain evergreens, streams, creosote and sagebrush, bunches of purple wildflowers that at times came up to my waist. I thought it was so vibrant and green. I always will have a special spot in my heart for the specific smell of the desert after a rain. The soil after rain in Utah, elsewhere smells nice, but nowhere near the particular smell of Ridgecrest after the rain. That and the mountain sagebrush. The light blue-green scraggly brush smells so marvelous. I thought when I went to Montana, sawYosemite and the Sierra Mountains that I had seen green.
I had no idea. Even in Ohio it floored me. There were walls of green. Then we came into Pennsylvania, it was a whole different story! There are walls of green as soon as the fields surrender the edge of the crop. The only comparison I can think of is a rainforest. There are layers and layers of green. Even a little 5 year old that draws a tree can't capture it. The elementary design of a straight brown column and green scribbles on the very top doesn't catch the least of it. There are layers of grasses, shrubs, intermingled trees, and the large ones that tower 100 feet high. Not even the trunks are brown, they are covered in vines, so you can't even tell that the bark is brown! The same 5 year old would be better off taking a green marker and scribbling over the entire paper to try and mimic the same growth. I am still trying to process it. Duh-I knew this stuff existed, but thought it was out in the middle of nowhere where people didn't live. Literally less than 5 minutes of walking distance we have a gorgeous park, and a beautiful view of hills and hills of what looks like uninterrupted foliage for miles. Less than 2 minutes by bike is a just one of the trails that we have discovered. Paved and right next to the road, it at times is towered by a huge green walls on either side. I can't wait to see what that looks like in fall! It is so beautiful here.
We took a little breather towards the end of our trip to visit Sam's Aunt Mindy and Uncle Thad, but really for Sam to get a chance to check out Cedar Point. I will admit, after being a Six-Flags girl for most of my life Cedar Point is pretty cool! It is a great park that is smack dab in Lake Eerie, albeit an island of roller coaster oasis. So when you rocketed upwards and down it felt like you were flying off the edge of the Earth. Sam had the time of his life, and laugh-cackled like his life depended on it. For those that have never been on a roller coaster with Sam, he has this laugh (in the mentally disturbed, psychotic-like cackle-laugh) that he does extremely loudly. Sam's family got a huge kick out of his maniacal response. We also had an exciting river raft ride. Half of the people were fully clothed. Half were in swimsuits. Guess which half got hit with tens of gallons of water from a waterfall. Yup-for several hours all those people that were doused had sloshy shoes and left wet but-prints on every bench that was sat on.
Once we arrived in State College, everyone was amazingly friendly. We hadn't spent more than 5 minutes in the parking lot of our complex when a wonderful woman cleaning out her car came over with a treat and introduced herself and welcomed us to the neighborhood. Btw she was a non-member, but a sweet and very helpful woman. While the Mormon man muscle took almost an hour to show, she helped me bring in odds and ends up and down our stairs. All while her kids were taking a nap, and she could be doing something much more productive. She has some of the cutest kids I've ever seen. Probably has something to do with her little girl having big brown eyes, and big beautiful curls :)
We love it here, and still have a lot of adjustments. By we I mean me, Sam feels like he's back in his element. I literally will use my phone navigation to find things less than a mile away. I have no idea which was is north, and one-way city streets freak me out. It's like a two lane road, but they decided to shove a city block in the middle island. The streets are narrow, and the terrain quite san francisco at times. This compounds the fact that I really can't see far off due to the foliage and said terrain, and have no mountains or grid system for a safety net. Lets just say my directionally challenged direction sense is struggling but happy to be here.
In addition to all of the moving excitement, in the week we've been in Penn State we've survived a tornado warning, thunder, lightning, monsoon rain, an earthquake and soon hope to survive a hurricane. To say Pennsylvania has been eventful has been an understatement.
I realize this post is way long, but we'll work on that as we will have much less excitement in our lives day by day, and much more predictable developments.
As far as getting to Pennsylvania trip was pretty amazing. Amazing as in an adventure I'd not like to repeat, but looking back at it pretty incredible. Remarkably comfortable in the moving truck, the first few days felt like they went faster than they would in a normal car. The progression through Wyoming took forever, but reminded me a lot of southern Utah and some of my desert hometown.
As we made it into the midwest I discovered that there are a lot of bugs. At the first hotel we stayed at, I thought there was an oscillating sprinkler close. The kind of sprinkler that makes a loud tshhh sound. Apparently lots and lots of bugs at dusk can make that sound. Gross.
As we progressed east there were a lot more farms when we hit Illinois and Ohio. Except there was only two crops-corn and soybeans. Each corn stalk had a sandy-blonde single set of tassels at the top. There were so many that it made the entire field look like a sandy-blonde head of hair, the parts in the hairstyle being the long roads cut for machinery and farmers to pass through the crop. We saw lots of huge windmills, with blades as large as a semi-truck. and lots and lots of rolling hills. The surprising thing about rolling hills was the fact that you can't actually see that far over them. For some reason I believed that you would be able to look out, and see forever. Technically that happened at parts of the drive, but not once we got into the actual east coast. The last part of the drive totally blew my mind. I ran out of words to describe it. Literally, on the last stretch of road I asked Sam for synonyms for "so beautiful" and "amazing".
As a little girl, I believed there was beauty in every landscape, especially in the desert. The sunsets are beyond gorgeous. The wildflowers that transform the college heights hills into yellow carpets for one week. The rocky crags that morphed into hills and mountains on every side. The mountain evergreens, streams, creosote and sagebrush, bunches of purple wildflowers that at times came up to my waist. I thought it was so vibrant and green. I always will have a special spot in my heart for the specific smell of the desert after a rain. The soil after rain in Utah, elsewhere smells nice, but nowhere near the particular smell of Ridgecrest after the rain. That and the mountain sagebrush. The light blue-green scraggly brush smells so marvelous. I thought when I went to Montana, sawYosemite and the Sierra Mountains that I had seen green.
I had no idea. Even in Ohio it floored me. There were walls of green. Then we came into Pennsylvania, it was a whole different story! There are walls of green as soon as the fields surrender the edge of the crop. The only comparison I can think of is a rainforest. There are layers and layers of green. Even a little 5 year old that draws a tree can't capture it. The elementary design of a straight brown column and green scribbles on the very top doesn't catch the least of it. There are layers of grasses, shrubs, intermingled trees, and the large ones that tower 100 feet high. Not even the trunks are brown, they are covered in vines, so you can't even tell that the bark is brown! The same 5 year old would be better off taking a green marker and scribbling over the entire paper to try and mimic the same growth. I am still trying to process it. Duh-I knew this stuff existed, but thought it was out in the middle of nowhere where people didn't live. Literally less than 5 minutes of walking distance we have a gorgeous park, and a beautiful view of hills and hills of what looks like uninterrupted foliage for miles. Less than 2 minutes by bike is a just one of the trails that we have discovered. Paved and right next to the road, it at times is towered by a huge green walls on either side. I can't wait to see what that looks like in fall! It is so beautiful here.
We took a little breather towards the end of our trip to visit Sam's Aunt Mindy and Uncle Thad, but really for Sam to get a chance to check out Cedar Point. I will admit, after being a Six-Flags girl for most of my life Cedar Point is pretty cool! It is a great park that is smack dab in Lake Eerie, albeit an island of roller coaster oasis. So when you rocketed upwards and down it felt like you were flying off the edge of the Earth. Sam had the time of his life, and laugh-cackled like his life depended on it. For those that have never been on a roller coaster with Sam, he has this laugh (in the mentally disturbed, psychotic-like cackle-laugh) that he does extremely loudly. Sam's family got a huge kick out of his maniacal response. We also had an exciting river raft ride. Half of the people were fully clothed. Half were in swimsuits. Guess which half got hit with tens of gallons of water from a waterfall. Yup-for several hours all those people that were doused had sloshy shoes and left wet but-prints on every bench that was sat on.
Once we arrived in State College, everyone was amazingly friendly. We hadn't spent more than 5 minutes in the parking lot of our complex when a wonderful woman cleaning out her car came over with a treat and introduced herself and welcomed us to the neighborhood. Btw she was a non-member, but a sweet and very helpful woman. While the Mormon man muscle took almost an hour to show, she helped me bring in odds and ends up and down our stairs. All while her kids were taking a nap, and she could be doing something much more productive. She has some of the cutest kids I've ever seen. Probably has something to do with her little girl having big brown eyes, and big beautiful curls :)
We love it here, and still have a lot of adjustments. By we I mean me, Sam feels like he's back in his element. I literally will use my phone navigation to find things less than a mile away. I have no idea which was is north, and one-way city streets freak me out. It's like a two lane road, but they decided to shove a city block in the middle island. The streets are narrow, and the terrain quite san francisco at times. This compounds the fact that I really can't see far off due to the foliage and said terrain, and have no mountains or grid system for a safety net. Lets just say my directionally challenged direction sense is struggling but happy to be here.
Monday, August 8, 2011
The Big Move
This blog is an attempt to keep up to date with family and friends. I was thinking about sharing our PA experience through family with email. But I would have to include pictures, and write a lot to explain what is going on in our lives. So yes-I have caved and done the cliche thing and started blogging.
Sam and I are moving in 4 days, in reality packing everything up on 5 days, and heading out in 6 days. We're still debating on which day to say "we're outta here" so we are sticking to the 4 days until we spend our last night in our apt.
Needless to say, we are very excited. Every day I look at pictures of our new apt, and a video Sam made of it. I've been in super-planning mode for months, and especially the last few weeks. I know it's going to be very very different, but Sam and I are ready for a change, to move on from where we've been for the last few years. Provo has been full of great memories, but we're excited to move on. I've heard all about the east coast from Sam and plenty of other people, but I'm just anxious to experience it for myself now.
Everyone says it will be lonely, people won't be as friendly, and I will struggle with the change. Probably, but in all honesty I've had the same experience with Provo for several years. From Sam's time serving in the singles ward (where I was regarded as the black plague to all singledom) to all of our friends moving within months that we become friends; it's been lonely here. Granted we have loved the opportunity to hang out with my sister in Lehi, and watch my favorite niece grow. However we haven't hung out with almost anybody except family in a long long time. So it'll be exciting being a part of a community that has so much to offer, and so many new things to experience. We've felt that this move was the right decision almost from the get-go.
So just a few more days! Technically 141 hours and 28 minutes.
Sam and I are moving in 4 days, in reality packing everything up on 5 days, and heading out in 6 days. We're still debating on which day to say "we're outta here" so we are sticking to the 4 days until we spend our last night in our apt.
Needless to say, we are very excited. Every day I look at pictures of our new apt, and a video Sam made of it. I've been in super-planning mode for months, and especially the last few weeks. I know it's going to be very very different, but Sam and I are ready for a change, to move on from where we've been for the last few years. Provo has been full of great memories, but we're excited to move on. I've heard all about the east coast from Sam and plenty of other people, but I'm just anxious to experience it for myself now.
Everyone says it will be lonely, people won't be as friendly, and I will struggle with the change. Probably, but in all honesty I've had the same experience with Provo for several years. From Sam's time serving in the singles ward (where I was regarded as the black plague to all singledom) to all of our friends moving within months that we become friends; it's been lonely here. Granted we have loved the opportunity to hang out with my sister in Lehi, and watch my favorite niece grow. However we haven't hung out with almost anybody except family in a long long time. So it'll be exciting being a part of a community that has so much to offer, and so many new things to experience. We've felt that this move was the right decision almost from the get-go.
So just a few more days! Technically 141 hours and 28 minutes.
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