David, Whitnee and Adilynne: Adventures of Moving to Washington

We are finally pretty settled in to our new house in Washington. Here is the story of our move...

David got a job offer from Genie in Redmond at the beginning of December and on graduation day, December 14, we accepted the offer. His start date was January 28 so we didn’t have a lot of time to do all the holiday celebrations, pack and find housing, but we made it all work. We decided to use ABF Trucking to move all of our stuff. They dropped off a semi-trailer in our driveway on January 17 and we had the weekend to load everything. On Saturday the 19 we had family and some friends come and help us load the trailer. It was sad to see our first house empty. It was a fun house and we made a lot of memories there. We always thought we would be there for another 4 or 5 years. Life changes plans quickly. We spent the next few days running around like chickens with our heads cut off as we finished packing, loading, cleaning and getting everything together to move. Monday evening ABF picked up the trailer and it was supposed to be on the road to Washington Tuesday.

We hit the road on Wednesday morning for our long 13 hour drive. David, Adilynne and I, plus the 2 dogs were in the 4-Runner towing the trailer with everything we couldn’t fit on the semi-trailer and my parents were driving the Accord with more of our stuff. It’s amazing how much stuff you have once you start packing and loading it all. We stopped every 4 to 5 hours to feed Adilynne and get gas. On Wednesday we made it to Pendleton, Oregon and spent the night. As we were coming out of the mountains into Pendleton we drove through some of the thickest fog I think I have ever seen. It was dark and David said the only thing that was keeping him in his lane was the guardrail on the left side that he could barely see. I was glad to get out of that.

Thursday morning we were back on the road to complete our journey. We made it to Monroe at about 3:00. We were planning on the ABF trailer being delivered to our new house Thursday afternoon or sometime Friday but we got bad news when we called Thursday morning to schedule the delivery. They told us that the trailer wouldn’t be delivered until Monday. We were pretty frustrated since we wouldn’t have our stuff all weekend and since my parents had drove up with us to help unload the trailer and now they would be gone when the trailer did get there. When David called back to see what happened and if they could expedite delivery we found out that the trailer was still sitting in Salt Lake and that it had been delayed because of an ice storm. We were really frustrated then because we had just drove through an ice storm that morning and made it fine. Later that day my mom talked to her brother and we found out that there really was an ice storm in Utah but the trailer should have left before then so we were still frustrated. We spent the weekend cleaning the house and getting ready and doing what we could to be ready when the trailer was delivered Monday.

This was our bed for 4 nights. Not too comfy. Adilynne loved sleeping on the floor with mom and dad. We were glad we put the sleeping bags in the car with us and not on the moving trailer. We were most excited about getting our bed off the trailer Monday.

We finally got our stuff Monday morning!

David was at work when the trailer was delivered so the driver was nice enough to take down the bulk head for me so I could get the vacuum and a few other things out of the trailer. I spent Monday afternoon vacuuming the house and putting away the boxes that were in the back of the trailer. Monday night some members of the Elder’s Quorum came and helped us unload everything. It was weird having to depend on people that we didn’t know to move everything. We are so used to having family close and willing to help. We were very grateful that the Elder’s Quorum was willing to come help us out.

Here are some pictures of our new house. We are really liking it.

The house is on 3/4 of an acre and a lot of it is just trees and bushes. We have a lot of wild blackberry and raspberry bushes so I'm super excited to have those to pick and eat. YUM!