Blessed

As we are getting ready to leave the beautiful state of New York, I'm feeling so overwhelmed and blessed for the opportunity to have been here. I have so many mixed feelings about leaving. I love it here, I really do...now.

At first I had a hard time here, and I didn't know that I would love it. I felt like I had to call family every day just to make it through a day because I felt lonely. I didn't want to let myself like it here. I tried to keep myself from liking it by finding things wrong with it like the fact that the roads are too skinny, that driving everywhere is a pain, that things cost a little more here and that people are not nice, it's too humid, it's too hot, I have no family here, I don't have lots of friends here like in Utah and so on.

But then one day, I decided that I would just let those negative feelings go and open my mind to New York. I let it into my heart and well, it grew on me, and now I don't want to leave. I love the green all around. I love the people in the ward here, I love being so close to so many historic cities and in a historic part of the United States. It's cool to be here. I like being in a place where I can have more missionary experiences than in UT.

I have made some awesome friends here, and even though I haven't been able to do a lot of things with those friends during our short stay here, I feel like I could ask them for anything, and that they would help me out no matter what. I don't want to leave those friends behind. I'm having a hard time knowing that I'll most likely never see any of them again, and that makes me very sad, because I really love them all.

Now, I don't know if we'll be back to NY or not. It's one of our "options" but there's no telling until we see what else is out there for us. I would love to come back to NY even though I'd have a really hard time being away from all my family almost all of the time. But, we will go where we're supposed to go, and I'm not sure where that is yet.

So, thank you New York & people of New York, for giving my little family a great opportunity to meet some amazing people, see amazing parts of the country & historic places and for a fun summer of entirely new things.

I'll remember it forever & NY will always have a special place in my heart.

Life in New York

Life sure has changed since we moved to New York, but they're all pretty much good changes!

Because we came here with just what fit in our car, we were forced to ask members of the ward for help, and that's something that I don't really like to do. I'm the kind of person that likes to just do my own thing and not ask anyone for help because I am stubborn and like to think I can do lots of things on my own. It's certainly taught me a lesson though and I'm thankful we had the opportunity to be in this position. The ward here is so amazing. On our first Sunday, it seemed like almost everyone in the ward came to shake our hands and welcome us into the ward. It was very welcoming and nice to have that since we came here not really knowing anyone! Immediately, we got invited to dinner for almost every day of the next week, OK it wasn't really every day, it just seemed like it!

We have made some friends in the ward, and it makes me not want to leave here and leave our new friends! It has been so nice to feel so welcome!

Moving on with life here in NY. We didn't really want to spend a lot of time and money seeing things during the month of June since my parents are coming here for 2 weeks in July and we'll be doing a lot of things then, but we have seen a couple things around the state.

A couple weeks ago, we randomly took a trip to the Erie canal locks! We arrived just as a boat pulled into the lock and the lock man (I know they have an official title...but I just can't think of it...) opened the gate some and we watched it fill up. It was pretty cool and interesting. Then he asked me if I wanted to open the gates and of course I said yes, so I did! It was pretty cool and I never knew that we lived RIGHT by the start of the Erie canal.

David and I love to go hiking (you wouldn't know it if you were on a hike with me because I'm SO dreadfully out of shape) and we looked up some hikes in the Adirondacks and decided to give it a whirl. David found a trail that was about an hour's drive away so last Saturday morning we packed some lunches, packed the car and headed to Mt. Hadley.

We were hoping to head out of Waterford at 9, but had to make a last minute trip to WalMart to get some bug spray (and thank goodness we did because the bugs were TERRIBLE!) We ended up getting out of town just before 10 and we made it to our trail head around 11. We loaded Ellie up in the Baby Bjorn, grabbed our bags and water and headed up the trail. Oh, I forgot to mention that this trail was marked as "Moderately Difficult" so I knew to expect a pretty good workout.


The trail started with a straight up hike, and it continued that way until we were almost to the top! Talk about a difficult hike! I'd like to know who classes these hikes, because moderately difficult it was not! It was most certainly closer to the difficult category!


We took breaks about every 10 minutes because I was dying and I am SO out of shape!!! Ellie LOVED being outside and she loved seeing all the trees, rocks and plants. She was good the entire way! Not one peep of discontent! I was SO amazed. We had timed things right so we would make it to the top at about the time Ellie needed to eat, and after a long grueling hike, we made it! I fed Ellie and we took a nice little break before we decided to head back down.



The journey down was a bit better because it was all down hill, but because it was all down hill, it was really hard on my knees! On the way down just before we were finished, Ellie started to fall asleep and it was the funniest thing!


Once we got back down, we ate our lunch, cooled off in the car with the AC running, and headed to Jimmer's hometown for a quick drive-through before we went home.

Jimmer's hometown: Glens Falls. It's big and we had no idea where he lived, or else we may have gone to his house ;)

It was a good Saturday and a lot of fun! I look forward to many more fun Saturday's like this to come!

I'll edit the pictures in later...blogger won't let me upload them for some silly reason!

2,294 miles and we made it!

(I started this post before I got internet so I could hopefully get all the blogging done that I wanted to, but I didn't get very far! Also bear with me because this is a LOOOONG post and it may get boring!?)

Though I don’t have internet yet, I figured I should get around to writing about our trip to NY anyway! We had known that we were going to NY for several months, but we didn’t know exactly when we would be leaving. We had picked May 23rd to be David’s start date and we wanted to leave Utah on May 16th. In order for us to do this, we needed to get the security clearance from the Department of Energy. Well, May 16th came and went and we hadn’t heard from KAPL about David’s security clearance. After that day passed, we figured if we got the call we’d leave the next day. Well as it turned out, we waited day after day after day for the clearance to come and just when we wanted to give up hope and move back to Provo and have things the way they were, we got the call from KAPL!!

On May 24th, David and I were sitting at my mom’s house and decided we’d go to Rocky’s Place (local Roosevelt burger/chicken/shake place) for lunch. While sitting at lunch we were discussing what to do and if we thought KAPL would ever call. Much to our amazement, David’s phone started ringing and it was none other than an HR guy from KAPL telling David that his clearance had FINALLY gone through! (WHAT A RELIEF!!!!)

Because it was nearly 1 in the afternoon, we decided leaving the next day would be near impossible, so we had our minds set on leaving Thursday, May 26th. We did LOTS of laundry, lots of packing and late Wednesday night we were pretty much ready to go, minus the last minute things to pack. Backing up a bit, before we ever left Provo, we had mapped out how far we would go each day, and what cities/towns we would stop in on the way. Because KAPL is reimbursing us, we had to drive at least 350 miles a day, which meant that we would make it to NY on our 6th day of travel!

The day we got the call from KAPL, I booked all our hotels, since we knew where we’d be stopping, which saved us a ton of money. We had our trip planned as follows:

Day 1: Roosevelt to Cheyenne, WY
Day 2: Cheyenne, WY to Lincoln, NE
Day 3: Lincoln, NE to Nauvoo, IL
Day 4: Nauvoo, IL to Elkhart, IN
Day 5: Elkhart, IN to Findley Lake, NY
Day 6: Findley Lake, NY to Waterford, NY a.k.a. HOME

Day 1: Destination, Cheyenne, Wyoming.

The day we left was a bittersweet morning. As my parents were leaving for work, we said our goodbyes and of course many tears were shed. My dad tried to make a joke to lighten the somber mood by saying, "At least you weren't here very long so we didn't get used to having you around." Hah. Exactly! 1 Month of living there really did get us used to being around SO much family and it was hard for me to leave.

After they left, we loaded up the final things, took this picture:


and said Tchau to Roosevelt for the next 10-ish weeks.

We drove to Vernal and made a stop to get snack foods and stuff to make sandwiches on the way. After that, we made our way to good ole Flaming Gorge and stopped to take a picture.

Ellie was sleeping and it was SUPER cold, so we decided to leave her in the car while we quickly snapped the picture.

We had decided we wanted to take pictures of every "Welcome to blah blah blah state" so we had to stop on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere to get this picture:

It was super windy and cold still, and Ellie was STILL asleep :)

Because Ellie’s still nursing, we had to stop about every 2-3 hours for nursing/changing/stretching/playing all that jazz. On the first day, we were able to just make ONE big stop in Rocks Springs (I think? haha!) and eat lunch, feed & change Ellie, stretch and rest for a bit.

Letting Ellie play and drive the car for a bit ;) :

Proof that we were in Wyoming:

We got back on the road and about 3 ish hours later, we make it to Cheyenne. We found the local target, bought some essentials (Swimsuit for Ellie, pool floaty, and swim diapers) then headed to find a place to eat! We wanted Texas Roadhouse, but the line was wrapping around the building (On a Thursday???) so we hit up Chipotle instead. Super tasty!

After dinner we headed back to the hotel and went for a swim. Check out Ellie's new swimsuit:

She kinda doesn't know what's going on, but she had fun playing on the bed and being out of her car seat!! She didn't really know what to think of swimming. She had a blank face the entire time and wouldn't crack a smile for ANYTHING! Maybe she'll decide she likes swimming better when she's older?


That's more or less day 1!

Day 2: Destination, Lincoln, Nebraska.

The next day, we got on the road earlier than day 1, which was what we wanted! We got up and met a couple going on a mission back east and found out that they have a daughter who lives in Ballston Spa, which isn't too far from Waterford! Crazy small world!

Just before we left Cheyenne:


Anyway, the second day was our longest day of travel, totaling 7-ish hours of drive time. It was also the most boring, I'm afraid. Wyoming is ugly, and frankly Nebraska is boring!

See?

(Wyoming right before it turns into Nebraska)

I kept myself entertained by taking pictures of things as we were driving and luckily we got a picture of getting to Nebraska:


Ellie did really well through all the boring Nebraska Wyoming nonsense!


We made more stops this day than the first day because it was longer, but Ellie decided that she wanted to stretch more...so we stopped at this random little thing (??) and stretched, changed Ellie and took pictures!


We stopped at a Veteran's memorial park for lunch in Nebraska (I don't remember the town) and it had a few fun things to see. Ellie liked laying out on her blanket while David and I ate lunch.


This is some random train car turned into an information booth:


And here is a cute little picture of Ellie (She hadn't learned to sit up yet, so we had to snap the picture at just the right time haha!)


Here's Ellie visiting the memorial:


After our lunch break, we got back on the road and got to our destination a little over 2 1/2 hours later (after having another break about 50 minutes from Lincoln).

We went to dinner at Ruby Tuesday and Ellie did NOT cooperate. She didn't like sitting in her seat ANY longer than she had to, so we got dessert to go and headed back to the hotel.

Here's the special little crib Ellie got to sleep in that night! The front desk lady insisted that we put towels over the hinges that might pinch Ellie (ya know since Ellie can stand up and even get close to them hah!)

End of Day 2.

Day 3: Destination, Nauvoo, Illinois --Please look for a separate post about Nauvoo. LOTS to read about and see :)

The next day we got off to an earlier start, leaving at around 7 a.m. We made our first stop in Oskaloosa, Iowa, and found an awesome park with a way neat playground. We ate lunch, fed Ellie and played on the playground.

This is David being artistic with the camera:

Ellie LOVES to swing and had such a fun time with Daddy on the playground!

Daddy had a fun time on the playground, too :)

We weren't far from Nauvoo at our lunchtime stop, so it only took us about 2 hours to get to Illinois, and we were VERY happy to be in Nauvoo! What a beautiful place!! As I said before, there will be a whole new post all about Nauvoo!


End of Day 3.

Day 4: Destination, Elkhart, Indiana.

It was Sunday, and we had planned to go to church in Keokuk, Iowa, where we stayed and we slept through our alarms!! Also, Ellie Slept through the night! Woot Woot! Since we had already missed church, we decided to just go back to Nauvoo to see more things, since the tourism stuff closed before we could see it all on Saturday night. We left Nauvoo around 1 p.m. and headed to Elkhart. We had a pretty good trip, but it was much later than we wanted to be out on the road and we didn't have much energy by the time we finally got to Elkhart. I don't really remember the stops we took, other than this one, where we had a picnic, watched some birds play, and stretched.

We rolled into Elkhart at I think 8:30 p.m. and we were all beat. I ordered some dinner from Olive Garden To Go and we ate dinner in the hotel. The first room we were given had some gross curtains that smelled mildewey so I had David call down to get us a new room. Little did we know, in the new room, our air conditioning didn't work. We didn't figure this one out until about midnight, and Ellie was sleeping so we didn't want to have to change rooms and wake her up. Around 1 a.m. I got up and noticed that there was a thick smell of fresh cigarette smoke, and nearly puked right then and there. Seriously that's one of my LEAST favorite smells, and it was billowing into our room at a compeltely NON-SMOKING HOTEL! I was pretty irate at this point, but I didn't feel like calling the front desk and complaining to move rooms for the second time!! I figured out that it was coming in from the bathroom so I shut the door and it was a little better. David found some odor eliminating spray from the little housekeeping cart left in the hallway and he sprayed it, but it just made it smell worse! I got Ellie to go back to sleep, but she was up not very long after, like maybe an hour. She screamed and screamed and screamed until finally she threw up! It was so sad and so gross! She felt warm and sticky and gross so we went outside. And what does she do? Scream some more and throw up some more! NO GOOD!

So it's nearly 5 by this point and David and I being first time parents and dealing with Ellie being sick and throwing up for the first time freak out and I call my mom at 3 a.m. Utah time (sorry again mom!!!) And we decide that she's not doing well with teething, she hasn't had enough sleep and she's too warm.
So here is travel day #5!!

Day 5: Destination, Findley Lake, NY.

So David and I load up, eat breakfast and head out at almost 6 a.m.!!! We bought some pedialyte at Walgreens before we left town, and I got Ellie to take some tylenol and drink some pedialyte. She was so sad and miserable that it made me cry. We stopped about 1 1/2 hours into our trip at a little gas station and I finally got Ellie to eat from what I had pumped earlier. She cried and cried for another 30 minutes, and we were getting pretty tired and sick of it! I got her to fall asleep while holding her and let her sleep for a little bit before we decided we'd better just get back on the road. Luckily, Ellie slept some more, and we felt better about her condition. We gave her tylenol faithfully to keep her from screaming and she was able to get enough sleep to feel better.

Our stop was in Ohio, and here's the "welcome to..." sign:


The poor little baby was so tired and sad she was trying to suck on her binky and her fingers at the same time. :(


We took a lunch break at a random gas station in PA and MAN it was HOT that day!!! Seriously a scorcher in like a gazillion percent humidity. I thought I might die! Ellie was doing much better by this point which gave us hope for the rest of our trip...even though it was almost over!


We made it to NY, and not long after, we made it to Findley Lake, a town with well, not much of anything! The hotel we stayed at was super nice, and we enjoyed getting there at 1 pm!!

We looked at the Welcome to New York sign, and we knew that we were in a state where people aren't as nice as other states...their sign was just not very welcoming! HAH!

Though, Findley Lake is a beautiful place and it's only about 10 minutes away from Erie, PA.

Because we got there so early, we took the time to go swimming and shower and what not before dinner, which was nice. After going to dinner at this place in the middle of the woods (SUPER tasty burgers, by the way. It was called something about the Pines...I'll have to try to remember what the name was. I just know it had the word Pines in it!) we checked out Findley Lake. Beautiful lake and very fun to look at!


It reminded us a lot of a town we stopped at while on our honeymoon in Colorado. It's called Grand Lake, Colorado, and it's beautiful and fun there, too!


We headed back to the hotel and got us some good rest! We were SO ready to be finished with this cross-country trip!!

End of Day 5.

Day 6: Destination, HOME! (Waterford, NY)

We were SO excited for day 6 to come, and guess what? I didn't take ANY pictures of it! We made I think 2 stops, and we rolled into our new home at about 2 ish p.m.?? We went to the housing office to sign our contract and pay our dues so we could move in! We got that all squared away, then went to meet David's mentor, Justin, and his family at Chili's. After dinner, we went to a member of the ward's house to get a couch bed and a chair for our little apartment. Then, we decided to get a hotel for the night since we didn't have the crib for Ellie yet, and we'd still get reimbursed from KAPL for the night since it was the night we made it to NY.

WHOA! Longest post ever! I am glad we had the experience of traveling across the country, but I am more excited to be DONE with the traveling until August! We're probably going to cut out a day of travel on the way back, but we'll just have to see how Ellie's doing and how it goes! We love it here so far and can't wait to get out and do and see all there is to see in the area!

Life lately...

Not much has changed lately around these parts, other than Ellie growing up, of course!

She's becoming quite the cutie! Well, she was already super cute, she's just getting even MORE super cute!

She's started to smile and we can make her happy by talking to her in silly voices, tapping her nose with her binky, or touching her cheeks.

She's the best thing that's ever happened to us, and she's just SO MUCH FUN!

Sadly, my fun with her is being cut back by about 30 hours/week. I'm returning to work tomorrow, and I am just not looking forward to it at all. I don't want to go back. It's not that I really really hated my job before (ok, maybe I DID really really hate my job), but the part that gets me is leaving little Ellie with someone while I have to work. I hate it. Thankfully, we found a great babysitter and we really like her, so that will make it a tiny bit easier.

I have to stop thinking about it, or else I'll just get more depressed that it's going to happen no matter how hard I try to make it not happen.

In other news, I think I found a few GREAT places for us to live in NY!! Hallelujah! I have tried for a very long time to find something that allows us to have a short-term lease, and I just couldn't. After going back through the apartment guide booklet for the Albany area, I stumbled across a complex that I had put an "X" through, signifying that it was too expensive.

After thinking about it more, and looking at the bullet points on this particular ad, I saw that it said, "Short-term furnished apartments available". So, I shot an email to the manager and found out that it will probably be a perfect fit! Hoorah! I'm still waiting to hear back about the availability of the units and we'll be in business!

I really have no more to say at the moment. It's past my bed-time and I need all the sleep I can get to deal with my bound to be rough day tomorrow.

I almost wish I wouldn't have tried to blog tonight because it's so random and bleh. Sorry for the disappointment!