Change of Plans

We've decided not to move on August first, but to stay here until August 17. However, we still had to be out of our house by today, actually, so we are homeless, sort of. While deciding whether or not we should stay here or just head down early, we decided our main dilema was a place to stay. After we weighed all our options and tried to find a place that was dog friendly with a fenced in backyard, close to our jobs and had room for us, we finally settled with my family. The only drawback was that they are not necessarily dog friendly. My mom has never liked dogs but she was willing to try it out if it meant having me and Brody there.

Yesterday, we spent the day moving all our stuff to Brody's sisters garage to store it for a few weeks and cleaning out the empty house. I wasn't as sad as I thought I would be, but I'm sure the sadness will come when we actually get ready to leave Logan. We loved our house, especially the fact of having a place to ourselves with a fenced in backyard for Sal and where we didn't have to worry about how loud our music was-- but at the same time it will be nice to not have to worry about yard work and repairs, and to not have so much extra space to clean.

So, at about 4:30 yesterday, we moved in to our temporary home and believe it or not, the dog situation has been great! My brother's and sister have loved taking him for walks and playing with him in the backyard. He hasn't barked much at all (a little whimpering when he's outside by himself, which he's not used to, but that's it) and hasn't dug any holes, so my mom is totally fine with him. It's only been 24 hours though so hopefully it'll stay this way! Thanks so much to my family and mom especially for letting us stay with you! We love you! (Sal does too) :)

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On another subject, I've really been bad with documenting stuff through my blog. I talked about this in another post, but I've recently decided that another reason for this lack of blogging is the fact that I have a program to print out a book of pictures and writing but I have to put it all together by hand, so I've just been doing it along the way, so rather than putting the information on my blog AND in the book, I've just been doing the book. But I've realized that the website my blog is on will be there forever, even if our computer gets ruined somehow, and maybe it'll be fun for my kids and grandkids to look at it someday, so I guess I'll start doing better from now on. I'll probably catch up from all the things I've missed down below this post and not as a recent one, so if you are interested, be looking for new things down below...

Catch Up

Here's a quick update of recent happenings. I don't feel like posting any pictures, so I'll just tell about stuff.

First of all, we sold our house-- sort of. We're doing a rent-to-own deal with a family in our ward. It just worked out the best that way for both of us. We'll be moving all our stuff out on Thurs. July 29, leaving the truck parked somewhere, going to Bear Lake till Sunday, then moving to AZ on Monday Aug. 3. It'll be a hectic few days, but I'm sure we'll make it through!

It's finally hitting me that we're actually moving away from Utah to be completely on our own with no close help and support from our families for longer than I've ever been away from home before. I'll be sad to leave our house, our families and just Logan and Utah in general. I hope I'll adjust quick down there and that I can look at it as a positive experience. (Although, it should be easy to adjust since I've already lived there before, so we'll see).

We're starting the whole packing business which I'm dreading but also looking foward to. As long as we can get a good head start, it'll be nice to organize our stuff and throw out things we don't need.

In between our work schedules, Brody and I have been trying to squeeze in every last little trip, adventure and visit that we can. I know we won't do everything we want to but the stuff so far has been a lot of fun!

A devastating mudslide

Those who live in Utah have probably heard about the devastating mudslide/flood that happened in Logan on Saturday but for those of you that haven't you can read/watch it on this link.

The canal that broke is just a block from my house and just a few days before this happened, we took Sal up there to swim in it. It was so deep he couldn't even touch the bottom and now it's completely empty. All that water ran though the streets and houses close by and drained into the Logan River which is located behind the houses just across the street from us. Since our house was on the other side of the street and higher up, the water only made it about 2 feet up on our grass and driveway, but it drained through the houses of our neighbors directly across from us. I, along with many others in my neighborhood, spent several hours on Saturday working to stop the water from doing more damage, and cleaning up all the mud left behind after all the water was gone. Brody was one of the many volunteers that helped on Sunday but sadly, I had to work. We were so lucky that our house wasn't damaged, but so many houses in our ward and neighborhood are flooded and covered in mud. I feel especially sad and heartbroken for the family who lived in the house that was collapsed from the canal. My thoughts and prayers are with their family and loved ones.

Here are the pictures that I took on Saturday:

This was taken from our driveway

Again, from our front yard

Looking up the street from our house

Walking on the sidewalk

The intersection of 200 n (my street) and Crockett

A house on Crockett

This next picture was taken on Sunday when Brody was helping with the cleaning-- He found this picture on one of the news websites' photo gallery... he was looking at the crushed house.

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Here are some pictures I took today (Monday) of all the mud left over:

These two show the line where the water came to (don't mind our ugly yard, we're moving.)