Saying Goodbye to Friends

 The absolute WORST part of moving is having to say goodbye to all your good friends. :( I missed pictures of many of them, but here are a few.

Tina and I

 I met Tina the first week she moved to Clarksville(about 6 years ago) through one of our mutual friends, Linda Howe! We instantly became friends. Linda, Tina, and I were inseparable for the first year she was here. Then Linda moved and the ward boundaries changed. It was sad when Tina and I ended up in different wards, but it didn't matter. She will always remain one of my best friends. We've both been through good and bad times, but she makes me smile no matter what is going on. She is one of those people that I know I can talk to about anything and she will always make time for me and never judge. We have had a lot of good times together and I look up to her so much. She is amazing. I will miss her so much!

It was supposed to be a silly face, but it was still sad. 

Tessa with the Young family

Molly and Cassidy

This is one of the only pictures that I have of Molly, but I didn't want to leave her out since she also was among my closest friends in Clarksville. We served together in the young women program at church for about the last four years and spent a lot of time together in that respect. She is a hard worker, very motivated, humble, kind, caring, and spiritually strong. Especially the last year we lived there, she was a great support through all the moving and selling our house chaos. It's nice to have someone who is going through the same things and can relate to you completely during times like that. She always had good advice for me when I asked and was great at sending me that text of appreciation or support exactly when I needed it. She also kept me motivated to keep exercising even in the thick of things with the move and homeschooling.

 Cassidy Taylor has been a close friend of our family as well. Alex and Cassidy were very close friends before he left on his mission. Cassidy and I become close when we served together in the young women program and Eric was close to her as her bishop. The girls also became her friends. She is a great young women and has always been a great example for the girls.

A couple days before we moved, Jesikah went on a last outing to Holiday World with some of her good friends

More Holiday World

Leaving Holiday World

Jesikah, Isley, and Alyssa on the Turkey ride

One of the girls' last church group activities, the girls and leaders did a going away party for the girls that were leaving. All the girls wrote things they liked about that person on the chalk board and they got their picture next to all the words.

The gifts that the leaders made for the girls!

The whole group of girls and leaders together

Silly faces

Going away potluck

 On Tessa's last day of school, I went and got a few pictures of some of her friends.

Katie and Tessa

Brianna and Tessa

Zaden, Brianna, Tessa, and Katie

Tessa and her bestie, Tiffany

Jarem with his best friend, Josh

My good friend, Priya, and her girls left for India a couple of weeks before we moved, so we had a little photo shoot the day before they left for India. Priya has been one of my closest friends in Clarksville. Her daughters, Pramika and Divya, have been some of the girls best friends too. They were the first friends that we made after moving to the neighborhood.

Bracelets Jesikah made for all her friends to remember her.

Tessa and Divya being crazy like they always were. :)

My sweet friend, Priya

 Priya and I started walking together every day about 5 or 6 years ago. Through the years, we walked, we jogged, we hiked and we talked and talked. :) We walked through every type of weather: rain, snow, heat and bitter cold.We talked through everything during our daily walks. She knows more about me than almost anyone. She always made me laugh and gave me good advice and comfort when I needed it. She would go out of her way to bring me meals or whatever I needed when I was sick or in need. I always knew I could count on her for ANYTHING!   She knows the daily happenings of our lives. She has been there for me through the good and the bad times. I will really miss her.

Jarem bringing the scooters

 Jesikah wanted to do a remake of a picture I took a long time ago of her and Pramika. I will post the original at the end.

Best friends

I would be amiss if I didn't mention my good friend, Laura Richards. We served in Primary together when I first moved in the ward and later we served in Young Women together at church. We spent many hours talking together as she cut and colored my hair every few months. She loved, served, and helped our family on numerous occasions whether it was bringing a meal after Micah was born, dropping off a bunch of things to help me when Micah was having crying spells as a newborn, bringing chicken noodle soup and a green smoothie from Panera when the boys and I were not feeling well, or sacrificing her own time and lining up women to help me when I was drowning in packing and moving chaos and up against a deadline. She always knew when I needed a hug. I love and appreciate all the good times we've had. Even though there were a couple of rough patches the last year, I will always consider her a good friend.

Her husband, Loren, was one of Eric's best friends. He also served our family on numerous occasions no matter what we needed. He especially helped us with all our car needs. There was never a time that he knew of a need and didn't do all that he could to help. Thank you to the Richards family for all their love and service.

This is an old picture when Eric first got called to the bishopric and had to say goodbye to serving in the young men program with these two great men. However, these two men remained two of his best friends throughout our stay in Clarksville.

I believe that we are put in places for a reason. I'm so grateful for the people who touched our lives in Clarksville. This just brushes the surface of all the good people and friends that we had in Clarksville.

Salt Life

 Moving to Charleston, SC hasn't been too bad at all. :) It's the first time we have ever lived next to a beach. From our house to the beach is 7 minutes. It's AWESOME!! The first week we were here, (before Eric started work) we went to the beach twice a day. We went once in the morning to run and once in the evening. Now that Eric is working, the girls and I have been running each morning on the beach. Then about once or twice a week, we go and play at the beach with the boys too. Eric bought all the kids boogie boards, and they love it! There are a lot of shallow parts where Micah can run around and play. There are also little tide pools when the tide goes out that Micah loves to jump and play in. The sand is also fun for him.

Someone was fishing one evening we were there and caught this baby shark

Looking towards the pier

Micah and I built this sand castle 

The other kids came back from playing in the water and said it needed a moat.

They built a moat and made an opening to the ocean as the tide was getting near. They were excited when the water first started coming into their moat.

Then the water was getting higher so they were frantically digging deeper.

With their deeper moat, it lasted longer.

But eventually it washed away.

While digging, Tessa found a very pretty shell. Unfortunately, it had a critter in it. :)

Alex in Evanston, Wyoming

I haven't said much about Alex since he has been on his mission because I have another private blog where I post all his letters and pictures, but I figured I would give an update every once in a while on this one too. Alex recently got transferred to Evanston, Wyoming. He got a new companion, Elder Smith from Connecticut. He is doing great and recently received a new assignment as a zone leader. He is very excited to be in Wyoming again. He loves the people, the country, and the work there. A church member emailed me these pictures of having Alex and his companion for dinner one evening. This is the first picture we have of Alex with his new companion. 

Tessa's Instruments

This past year, Tessa has really accomplished a lot in music! She has been taking private flute lessons and has really made great strides in playing the flute! She plays beautifully with vibrato and all. She performed at the Nativity event at Christmas time and I accompanied her. I got goosebumps during certain parts of the music we played because her playing was so beautiful. She has also performed a few other times as well. Not only has she excelled on the flute(which is her strongest instrument), but she has learned to play the piccolo and the bari saxophone. Since she was the best flute player in her middle school, she got the "right" to check out the school's piccolo and keep it for the year. She also got to play the piccolo in the final band concert for the year.

She picked up bari saxophone so she could play in Jazz band because that is something she really wanted to do. The school had an instrument she could borrow for the year as well. She really did well on it and in the process learned how to play Alto Sax as well.

And she has continued to play the piano as well! :)

Jazz Band at Austin Peay's Jazz contest

Spring Band Concert

Tessa ready to play the piccolo

She had a hard time getting it tuned

Jazz Band spring concert

Tessa with the tenor sax...she did great!

Jammin to Jazz!

Manna from Heaven: Blessings in Boxes

It was about this point in time that my stress level had reached an all-time high. I was trying to homeschool Jarem in addition to dealing with a demanding two year old. Jarem wasn't making the schooling easy most days because he was uncooperative much of the time. Micah also wasn't making it easy because he wanted the attention away from Jarem and on HIM. Then there were a million end of school activities for the girls that needed to be attended to, paid for, etc, etc. The kids all wanted last sleepovers/lunches/etc with their friends that they were leaving behind. The laundry still had to be done and the kids still had to eat (darn it)! I was still chorister in Primary at church, which didn't take a lot of time, but was one more thing to do. We had a long list of little things that still had to be completed from the homeowner's inspection. I was trying to arrange/complete those before our house sale closing. Then there was the SORTING and PACKING which was looming over me like an impossibly steep mountain in which the treacherous climb required to reach the peak seemed completely unattainable.

We had made the decision to move ourselves. This decision was mainly for financial reasons. Hiring it packed and moved was just completely out of our budget. After spending the past 7 years as a practicing radiologist, Eric would be going back to a "residency type pay" and the new job didn't include any moving package. Boxing up everything ourselves and renting a truck was by far the cheapest way to go. That said, we hadn't moved ourselves for 12 years. In that time, we had accumulated 2 more kids and a much bigger house with much more stuff. In addition, we would be going from a 4200 square foot house to a 2000 square foot house. We had to really downsize!! So, it wasn't just packing what we had, but sorting through EVERYTHING. This included trips to Goodwill, the dump, and the sale of numerous things. 

We needed boxes! I had put out a plea for boxes on Facebook, but no one had any. Some suggested places to check, but I didn't have the time to just drive around and keep checking back for a box here and there. I knew I needed some boxes to get started, but they were so expensive. I had purchased 10 medium and 10 large boxes at Lowes to get started. The juggling act of the cart, the boxes and the boys was almost impossible to handle. The boxes didn't fit in the cart well, so they kept falling out. Micah was crying. I couldn't see where I was going. And then when trying to check out, the boxes all fell out of the cart and I was trying to get them back in with a crying baby. Jarem was trying to be helpful, but the boxes were really too big for him to handle alone. After that one incident, I swore I would not be back for boxes again without help. 

Although Eric wanted to help, his work schedule and church responsibilities as bishop had rendered him almost completely unavailable. Because of the way the Army works, they get new "people in payback" every July. However, the departing "payback people" always get terminal leave, which means they get all the vacation days, sick days, paid out at the end of their payback time. This basically means the previous payback people leave in April or May and the new guys don't come until July. This leaves them very understaffed in April, May, and June. Thus, Eric's work schedule was horrible because he was one of 3 covering the work for what normally was done by 7. He had been working late most days and on-call almost every weekend (His call means he works a good chunk of the day Saturday and Sunday). We didn't want him to take days off because his new job didn't start until July 1, but we had to be out of our house June 1. With his terminal leave, he could make it work with just working the first few days in June but couldn't take any time off until then. Every night was busy with something: Band concerts, Awards assemblies, soccer games or end of year parties, etc. 

How was this all going to be done in 2 weeks when we still didn't even have boxes? We would pick up the truck in TWO WEEKS! At that point, everything had to be neatly waiting to be loaded and taken to South Carolina. I prayed for help to get through this crazy mess.  

Friday morning, May 8, I woke up with all this on my mind. We got up early to do our regular family morning scripture study before Jesikah left for seminary. When Eric returned from taking Jesikah to seminary, I started pouring out my troubles to him: everything we had to do, how we didn't have enough time, I was spread too thin, and WE DIDN'T EVEN HAVE BOXES!! 

Eric responded, "You know that house that people just moved into two doors down, they have all their moving boxes lined up on the curb for the trash guy to pick up this morning". 

I leaped out of bed, "What? Did you get them?"

"No, I have to leave for work, but you should check into that." he replied.

I pulled on some clothes and started down to the neighbors. Realizing it was only about 6:30am, I wasn't sure how to handle this...but the trash guy would be coming. This couldn't wait. I didn't want to knock so early and I didn't want to just take the boxes without saying anything either. Hmmm...

As it turned out, God was looking out for me. As I walked towards the driveway, a man walked out of the garage. There in the gloriously bright morning sunlight was a whole driveway full of boxes: wardrobe boxes, dish packs, mirror and wall picture boxes, boxes of all sizes for everything we could possibly need, packing paper, heavy paper, and many of the boxes hadn't even been broken down. I asked the guy if I could have them. He gladly agreed. He was relieved to get them off his hands and put to good use. Then he opened his garage and said, "And I have more too!" Oh blessed day!

It was an answer to prayers: a glorious day! I ran home and got Jarem up. We happily walked all those boxes back to our house. I couldn't have been happier or more grateful. In Jarem's daily scripture study, we had been studying Moses and the Israelites in the wilderness. God dropped down manna from heaven each day. All they had to do was pick it up and they had food. I couldn't help but make the correlation to my boxes. It was as if God had dropped the boxes down from heaven and all I had to do was go pick them up. It was a turning point in my perspective. I could now visualize how I could climb that impossibly steep mountain. The climb was going to be treacherous, but it now seemed attainable.

This picture really doesn't show they extent of the boxes. There were so many. Some were broken down too. And you cant see all the packing paper either. It was amazing.

No More Car Payments!!

As if May wasn't crazy enough already with all the kids' end of year school activities and us moving, Eric decided to trade in his beloved truck! We both felt it was a good choice, but he was sad to let it go. The awesome part about it was: we actually had $15,000 equity in the truck after the loan was paid off. This allowed Eric's to get a beautiful black 2010 Acura TSX with only 35,000 miles on it and we paid cash out of pocket $2000 after the truck equity! And the best part is: this is the first time in the 21 years that we've been married that we will not have a car payment on any of our 3 cars!

It was a nice easy transaction and we had completed it in a few hours! The truck just was not practical for the narrow streets and small parking places in Charleston. It's an old city with not much room for big vehicles. Eric will miss his truck, but he loves his new car already!