The move is on

After months and months of anticipation and wondering, we finally have a moving date set for the first week of September and I'll start work in Scottsdale on the 10th. For the longest times it has seemed so far away, and each day Scott or I say "Let's just move now", but now it is here and it's so real. I'm having mixed feelings about it. I am so beyond excited, but there is also a piece of my heart that is breaking when I think about leaving Price and all of our friends here. I'm so excited to meet new people and make new friends but sometimes reality sets in and I wonder if I'll ever see my Price friends again. I had a little breakdown the day I found out our moving date, just for that reason. Obviously I wouldn't let that stop me from moving forward because I know there are still thousands of people for me to meet in my life but it just makes me so sad. Sweet Scott said "This is the moment you've been waiting for for 4 years." Yeah, that's true. But I never thought I'd grow such an attachment to this place or to the people here.

One of Scott's Institute teachers always had a saying that he would tell new students... "You only cry twice in Price, once when you move here, and once when you leave." I guess that's true if you consider I cried most of the first year we lived here and probably the whole month before we leave.

I hate goodbyes and we had to say our first a week ago. Do you remember me talking about our landlords/friends/surrogate parents that live next door? Well Jeanne, the wife, moved back to South Carolina last week. Grady, the husband, will move back when he's able to retire in the next couple of years. These 2 have been a huge blessing in our lives, from plenty of dinners, to letting us live in their rental with our dog. Numerous priceless gifts they've given us to help us in our time in Price. Saying goodbye was super hard and what was supposed to be a quick 5 minute goodbye (so we could get on the road to SLC) turned into an hour and a half of chitchat putting off the moment. I hate crying in front of people so the whole time I was willing myself not to cry. I realized that in the 4 years we've lived here (and in the 3 years we've lived next door to them), I've never taken a picture of them, so I did, and here it is. Great people.

I'll miss the summer nights sitting with them and our other neighbors (that are 85), eating pie, enjoying the cool night and discussing anything and everything you can think of. I hope to have other friendships as great as the ones I've had here. When I moved here, I never thought I'd be crying as I left.

July update

Wow it's been a long time since I've blogged. My mom mentioned to me a few weeks ago that she hasn't seen a new blog post in forever and I didn't realize it had been that long, but 3 months is a long time for me to go without blogging. We have still be pretty busy. So here's what we've been up to:

• May and June consisted of being very busy at work. We took a little break and went to Scott's grandparents cabin to spend time with Scott's family. Scott was also able to go back to Missouri in May and attend some family events along with the dedication of the Kansas City Temple. 
• Scott has been working freelance every couple weeks up in SLC, which has been hard work but worth the paycheck. It also gives us more time to spend together when he is home. And it's been super helpful to have him home to help continue to pack things. 
• Our landlords took down our "For Sale" sign and put one in their yard instead. They weren't getting any bites on our house but they knew theirs would sell quick as it's one of the most beautifully remodeled homes in Price. We are so grateful we'll have somewhere to live until we move.
• We've been heaven blessed with rain the last week. It had been 3 months since Price had had any moisture and our local church leaders decided as an area we would fast and pray for rain on fast Sunday. After telling us we would be doing a special fast, the next week there were 2 massive fires that started near us, one north and one west. Our whole area was filled with smoke and ash. But on the Thursday after fasting we got a perfect rain storm that put out the fire that was creeping closer to our community. Since then we've had several rain storms which has been heaven sent. It has been so nice to have the smoke out of the air.
• Last week I got up before work and went to turn the shower on and our bathtub was filled with some sort of brown nastiness. Thinking that my eyes were just still sleepy, I had to take a closer look and it looked like someone had either thrown up in our bathtub or had a bad case of the runs. It was seriously disgusting. I woke Scott up and he came in and was just as shocked as I was. At first I thought it was dirt but it was a lot chunkier. We had had some friends over for dinner the night before and the girl had used our bathroom but we thought there was no way she would just puke in our tub and not tell us. So after some thinking, we realized that the night before we had made potato salad and had peeled the potatoes and sent them down the drain. Our sink had clogged, even with a disposal and we had to plunge our sink. Well apparently it is connected to our tub going to the main line and had gotten clogged farther down and had backed up into our tub. I was so grateful that all I was dealing with was potato skins, BUT it took more than 24 hours to finally get the problem fixed. Needless to say, by the end we both soaking wet and had come to the conclusion that no more potato peels were ever going down that drain. I could never be a plumber.
• After 3 months I finally got brave and got a haircut today. A couple ladies I know recommended a lady and she was great! She is one of the nicest people, and the color she put in looks amazing but I had a hard time communicating how I wanted my hair cut (I should have taken a picture) and I came home and cried on Scott's shoulder for a while. It's pretty short, shorter than I've had it since high school and just not what I pictured in my head. I am usually of the attitude that hair will grow back and it's nothing to get upset over which is why I laugh when people tell me they cried after a haircut but I'm struggling with this one. Scott, being the loving, sensitive husband that he is, told me he liked it and I just needed to get used to it, but I'm still struggling with it. It doesn't look too bad when it's pulled back. I told him that people with short hair wear big earrings, so he took me shopping and we bought some bigger earrings. He's so sweet! The good thing is that I shouldn't need a haircut before we move.
• We have a packed couple of months ahead. Our plans for moving are starting to solidify. I was able to talk to the big boss and he has it all planned out in his head which is good. He wants me to move down there when the center director moves down, to help him get things set up before we open the center. He is also going to send me to job fairs down there in the next 6 weeks which will be fun! I love getting paid to travel, especially when we need to find a place to live (always a stressful thing to have to do). But it will save us money to not have to make a trip on our own to find a place. Those little things are huge blessings for us. It is looking like we'll be moving sometime in the middle of September, but we are still waiting for exact dates. We are getting so excited. Every time I think about it I get butterflies.
• Scott and I are trying to take in all of the things that Price has to offer that we haven't seen yet, before we move. You would think that since we've lived here for 4 years, we've seen it all. Wrong. We are slackers. On the 4th of July we went up Nine Mile Canyon (it is so much longer than 9 miles) which has some really cool Indian ruins.

Below are some of the only pictures I've taken in the last 3 months so that's all you get.

Cosmo with his cousins Joseph and Makayla. Cosmo had a great time at the cabin, even though his face may say otherwise. 

 The fam at San Rafael Swell aka The Mini Grand Canyon

 San Rafael Swell

 Petroglyphs in Nine Mile

 The Great Hunt pictoglyph

 Nine Mile Canyon

It is upon us

Well, the move is upon us. Scott and I think it is coming quicker than we anticipated. As you can see, our house is for sale and there are some people that are interested in buying.
Everytime I see the "For Sale" sign I get a pit in my stomach. Our landlords/friends are ready to move on to the next phase of their life (much like us), which is moving to South Carolina and are trying to prepare for that so this wasn't a huge surprise that they wanted to put our house up for sale. But it is looking like it could possibly sale before the Phoenix branch opens for my work. So we may end up having to move before we move. There are pros and cons to this. Seriously, who wants to move twice in 6 months, but it could make the "big" move a little smoother. We are just praying that if we have to move before we move, that we can find a place that won't make us sign a lease and that will let us have Cosmo. We've toggled with the idea of moving to SLC until we can move to AZ, but my office here has a plan to transition our entire center to CaptionCall in the next 90 days (we currently have 2 different departments), which they want to do before I transfer centers so I know that we need to stay here in Price until we make the big move. It's going to be a very long 90 days.

My heart is a little sad though. Sure this house isn't much to look at but this is our home. This was our first home as a family of 3. Our friends gave us a huge gift for the last 3 years by letting us have our sweet doggy live with us. That in itself helped me get over the dislike that I had of this town. Once I had Cosmo I could finally enjoy being here, instead of just wanting to be up north.

Luckily, no matter where I go, I'll be with these 2 and that's all that matters. I'm so glad that they like each other. :) They are bff's.

In other news, our basement is finished. It looks a lot different from what it did. It is now one big room which is pretty nice.
The remodel has helped us a lot to get more organized and to put things aside for a yard sale. This move will definitely be different from when we moved to Price. When we came here, we just put stuff in boxes without organizing it, and decided that when we got established we'd go through it then. This time we are going through everything very thoroughly and deciding what we do/don't need. I can't believe how much stuff we've accumulated over the years.

Well that's all for now, I'm going to spend the rest of my day with boxes, packing tape and this...
Oh, and this cute guy (never too far from his Eeyore toy that he got for Christmas from Grandma and Grandpa Westwood, it's his favorite by far).

Busy Busy Busy

Did I mention that life is crazy? Things are still hectic around here for us. Work has been busier this month than the past few which puts stress in every other aspect of life. But here is a recap of what has been going on lately...

• January and February went by so fast that I don't remember much about them which is fine. They happen to be my least favorite months, I hate winter.
  
• Speaking of the winter season, Cosmo has a bit of cabin fever. I suggested getting him one of those lamps that simulates real sunlight, you know, the ones for seasonal depression. Scott laughed... I was serious.
  
• We had to go through everything in our basement and compile/pack it and move it up 2 flights of stairs (equaling about 30 steps). This included ALL of our food storage. We have SO much stuff down there and it took a couple weeks to get it all moved and cleaned out. Our landlords/friends are redoing the rotted floor in the basement that had some termites. The good thing about all of this is that our food storage is now all in order so we are rotating better. And a lot of our stuff is organized.
  
• Scott is probably going to book a ticket to Missouri for the first part of May for a couple family events. I'm excited for him to get to go home but a little jealous. Unfortunately we can't afford for both of us to go this time.
  
• We are moving. We don't know when but probably July or August. If all goes right according to our plans we'll be moving to the Phoenix area. If not, we are still moving because our landlords are putting our house on the market in April, and Scott can't do the schooling that he would like here in Price. I have mixed feelings about this. I'm ready to move on and go somewhere I've never been but I'm sad to be moving from my friends and our awesome ward. I'm also worried about the timing working out. I'm hoping our current home doesn't sell before we have arrangements made elsewhere.
  
• Cosmo has been a little under the weather the last few days. I'm surprised it didn't come sooner with all of the power tools that were being used in our basement. They make him nervous and he gets a sick tummy. But I do love that he wants to be held all the time. He snuggles on my shoulder like a baby and when I try to put him down he grips onto me and snuggles his head in my neck. Sometimes I think that Heavenly Father new 6 years ago when I went to look at a litter of puppies that one day I'd need that feeling of being needed. Yeah, so he's a dog, I get that, but it's better than having empty arms.
• It turned from winter to spring so quickly. We only had about 2 real snow storms this year. It was awesome! But it has still been very cold and windy. The other day as I went outside to let Cosmo out, it was so beautiful and I remembered how much I enjoy the feel of the sun on my face. I am looking forward to summer immensely.

Well there's the update, hopefully next time I'll have something better to post about, with pictures, because really everyone loves a post with pictures.