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!

Master Bedroom

 

Adilynne's Bedroom

 

Office/Craft Room

 

Family Room

 Family Room, Dining Room, and Kitchen

 Dining Room

 Kitchen

7 Months!

Adilynne is 7 months old! So is getting so big and grown up. I can’t believe how much she learns and changes in one month. She has adjusted really good to the time change and a new house, which we are so grateful for.

She sat up by herself for the first time a few weeks ago. I love seeing her sit and discover new things. 

I love this picture. Being silly. 

 She feels like such a big girl sitting up to play with her toys.

Pretty girl!

Extras

She is about 17 pounds and has the cutest rolls on her thighs.  Sometimes I just let her play with no pants on so I can see her cute leg rolls.

She is getting such a fun personality. She loves to talk. David and I can have a “conversation” with her.

She rolls ALL OVER the place. She can roll to her right and left now. We love watching her roll in the family room because she knows with the hardwood floor that she has to roll from her belly to her back slowly so she doesn’t hurt her head but then she rolls from her back to her belly super quick and she will do that all the way into the dining room.

She is starting to army crawl to get to something that she wants to play with.

She has decided that she doesn’t like sleeping in her swaddle blanket anymore. One night she wiggled all the way out of it and slept on her belly and ever since then she won’t let me put her in it.

The past two days she hasn’t really taken any naps. I’m kind of getting worried that she won’t be a good napper anymore. She is perfectly content lying in her crib talking to herself for 2 hours though so I just leave her there and do my thing.

I have been calling her a fish-out-of-water lately because she’ll just be sitting or lying on the floor and open and close her mouth over and over again. I don’t know if it’s part of teething but I get a kick out of it.

She is doing really good with baby food. I made squash for her a few weeks ago and she was not a big fan of that. We are mean parents but we got a kick out of all the faces and noises she would make with each spoonful that we put in her mouth. We have been giving her a little bit more of it each night and the past two nights she has eaten a whole container of it without any faces or gaging.

Exploring

     This afternoon we spent a few hours exploring our new location.  On Friday we met with our insurance lady and she told us a few things in Lynnwood that are neat to see.  There is a mall there so we headed there first.  It is a big mall!  It is nice to know where a mall is.  :)  (David was super excited when the insurance lady told me where it was...not).  Next we saw a park on David's GPS that sounded neat so we headed there.  It was called Stamm Overlook Park.  We were a little disappointed when we got there.  It was just two park benches but it was a pretty cool view. 

     Next we headed south down the coast and found a ferry terminal.  We happened to get there right as a ferry was coming in.  

     Sometime when we have more time and it is a little warmer we are planning on riding the ferry and finding out what is on the other side.

    Adilynne riding a wooden Orca.  Adilynne loved being on the beach and seeing everything.  Every time the breeze would blow it would take her breath away and she would giggle.

6 Months Old!

     Adilynne Anne is 6 months old today!  She is getting so big.  Here are a few pictures that I took of her today.  I didn't get as many as I usually do since we were hurrying to get to her doctor check-up and we were busy finishing packing and cleaning the house before the trailer was picked up. 

15 pounds 26 1/2 inches long

The pediatrician kept saying that she is just long and lean.

She was having fun moving the board back and forth.  Something new every month!

Smiling at dad behind the camera.

She balanced long enough to snap this cute picture sitting up all by herself.  Shortly after this she face planted to the side.  She'll figure out how to sit up soon!

Watching dad.

First experience with baby food.  We tried peas tonight.

She seemed to like it.  She would lean towards the spoon and try to grab the spoon if you weren't giving it to her fast enough.  

Playing with cousin Garrett.

Adilynne, Garrett and Cooper.

We sure will miss these guys while we are in Washington.  Thanks for the fun get-together tonight!

On the Move!

     Adilynne has been on the move lately.  About 2 weeks ago she figured out how to roll across the room and pivot on her belly and roll the other way to get where she wants to go.  Her newest trick is scooting/crawling backwards.  She has gotten herself stuck a few times when she backs up underneath something.  But she looks so cute when it happens!

Stuck under the couch.

Stuck under the end table.  She is happy when we come "rescue" her.

     She is getting soooo close to crawling forward.  I bet in the next 2 weeks she has it figured out.  I'm not so sure how I feel about that...I will really have to watch her all the time then.

Grandpa Evans gave Adilynne this dinosaur ball popper for Christmas and she is in love with it.  She gets so excited when she sees it and will roll and work her way over to it to play.  She has figured out how to work it all by herself.  So smart!  (Don't mind the boxes and bags all over the place.  I'm running out of room to store everything we have boxed up to move).

She always wants the toy that is on the floor, not the one on the tray.

Adilynne loves being on dad's shoulders.  They always play this game when dad gets home from work.

Washington Trip

     This post is a little late but I have had issues with Blogger uploading photos lately.  I finally figured it out.      
     The first weekend in January David and I headed to Washington to find a house.  We had a few memorable moments that we wanted to blog about to remember them.  We figured it would be about a 13 hour drive to Monroe so we left Thursday morning at about 7:15.  We planned on driving straight through and getting there about 7:30 their time.  That wasn't meant to be.  Everything was going good, we had been driving for about 9 hours and we had about 4 hours to go when all the warning lights on the dashboard turned on.  We were kind of in the middle of no-where Washington so David hurried and called my dad with my cell phone and I used his phone to google the nearest Auto Zone.  My dad said that could be caused my a number of things and luckily the nearest Auto Zone was only about 5 miles away...We just hoped the car would keep running until we got there.  We made it to Auto Zone in Toppenish, Washington, and one of the employees came out to test the car.  They can't test the alternator while it is still on the engine but he checked the charging system and according to the readings the alternator was going out.  They had a new alternator and David started taking the old one off.

     We were hoping it would be easy to change but that wasn't the case.  In order to get it off David had to take off the radiator...I was the official flash light holder. :)  We were just glad that when they tested the alternator in the store it was bad.  We ended up being in the Auto Zone parking lot for 2 1/2 hours.  We were definitely the minority in this town but everyone was really nice.  When we finally finished getting the car put back together it was about 6:30.  It was frustrating knowing that if we wouldn't have had car issues we would have been about an hour and a half away.  Oh well, at least it wasn't anything too major and that we were able to fix it on our own and be on the road again.  We drove for about an hour to Ellensburg and decided to stop and eat dinner and get a hotel for the evening.

     We left the next morning at about 8:45.  To get to Monroe you have to go over Snoqualmie Pass and it was snowing/raining and really slick for the next hour and a half or so.  The 3 lane highway was down to 2 lanes and moving really slow.  We got stopped for avalanche control but we only had to wait for about 5 minutes till we were moving again.

     We had an appointment at 1:00 to see a house that we found on Craigslist.  We met the wife and we loved the house and are hoping that they will let us rent it.  We found out last Saturday that we got the house!  We are so excited.  The house is super cute and really clean.  Its out in the country and takes about 15 minutes to get into town.  It will be an adjustment for us but we are excited.  

     Friday afternoon we met with a realtor who gave us a few other options but right now there really aren't a lot of options to buy or rent in the Redmond area.  Friday night we talked to the husband that owns the rental house and he wanted to meet us and talk in person so we set up a time Saturday morning.  After we talked to him Saturday it sounded promising and since we didn't have any other houses to look at we decided to head home.  It was 11:45 when we were on the road back home.

     At about 12:30 I told David that I needed to go to the bathroom but that I could wait for a little bit.  We were getting close to the pass again and this time the road was really bad and it was snowing pretty good so I was ok with waiting till we got over the pass and into some better weather.  When we finally got out of the snow David just kept driving past town after town.  I reminded him again that I needed to go to the bathroom and asked him to stop at the next town.  We went another 40 miles, again he kept driving, another 40 miles, still kept driving, by this time I was getting frustrated but it was also funny.  He really wanted to get home!  Finally, 4 hours after I told him the first time that I needed to go to the bathroom, he pulled over.  Here's the funny part...about 5 minutes after we got back in the car I told David, "Just so you know, I'm starting to get hungry so we might need to stop soon."  He just laughed and of course we drove for another 3 hours before he finally pulled off the freeway to get dinner!  Love him!!!  We ended up driving all the way home and got home at 2:30 Sunday morning. 
     Another thing that happened when we were driving over the pass was that the windshield wiper fluid squiter thing on the driver's side froze.  Of course it was the driver's side that stopped working.  David would squirt the wiper fluid for a few minutes so that the passenger side wiper would push some of the wiper fluid over to the driver's side.  As soon as we got out of the pass the drive'rs side started working fine again.  Washington doesn't use salt on the roads like Utah, they use sand instead so this is how clean the car looked by the time we got home.  We need a car wash!

     My parents watched Adilynne for the weekend while we were gone and they said she did great.  She was happy and slept good.  The first day that we were gone she figured out how to roll over from her back to her belly.  By the time we got home 4 days later she was a pro at rolling over.  When we went over Sunday afternoon to pick her up she was playing with her feet and they were so cute I couldn't resist taking a picture.  

Goodbye 2012

     2012 was a big year for us.  Here is a little review of what happened to our family in 2012...

• In January I started my last semester of college.
• What a crazy and stressful few months that was.  My time was spent studying for boards, taking boards, finding patients for clinic, finding the perfect board patient, stressing out when my board patient tried to cancel on me the morning of my clinical board exam (luckily, with the help of some Spanish translators he showed up on time), and in the end passing all my boards.
• On April 20, 2012 I graduated from Weber State University with a degree in Dental hygiene.

• The spring and early summer months were spent preparing for the arrival of our sweet baby girl.  We were blessed with lots of baby gifts from friends and family.
• July 21, 2012 was the best day of the year! Our sweet Adilynne Anne was born. Our lives have never been the same since and we fall more in love with her each day.

• In August David started his last semester of college.  Hooray! 
• August through December David was very busy with working full time, going to school full time, doing homework and projects and spending time with Adilynne.
• In September I turned 25!  
• In October David turned 29! 
• In early December David received a job offer from Terex in Redmond, Washington. 
• On December 14, he accepted the job, signed the contract and faxed it to Terex.  He had a career before graduation!
• On December 14, David graduated from Weber State University with a degree in Mechanical Engineering Technology.
  

We can't wait to see what 2013 will bring for us!