Monday, August 22, 2011

Moving to ND

On Thursday, July 28th, early in the morning, Matt and I hopped in our Penske truck and began our drive to Indiana.

Have you ever seen a white Penske truck before??  I hadn't but now I see them all the time.  We were lucky because our truck was pretty new.

Here we are with our truck and car all loaded and ready to go :)


Just a minute or two before we drove away - this was so exciting and scary!

Haha.

Matt and I in the Cab where we would sit for the next few DAYS!

My mom was so great to help us get all our food ready for the trip, here is Matt eating a snap pea :)  We didn't really stop at all to eat - no time!  I would just make the food and hand it to Matt to eat on the road.

We surprisingly really enjoyed the drive out there.  Our audio books were kind of a bust, but we enjoyed the scenery and the adventure anyway.  One of my favorite parts of the drive was the gorgeous sky!  Check out these clouds!


And then we came upon the dreaded Nebraska... :)  We actually liked this part of the drive - could have been because we stopped half-way through.  As my sister-in-law said, speaking from experience, "Nebraska is an annoyingly wide state."  :)

I had to snap a few pictures of the fields of Nebraska to prove that it's not as ugly as people say it is.  :)  There may be nothing but fields in sight, but they were pretty none the less.


And I had to snap a picture of the Mississippi as we passed.  Matt loved the houses on the banks.

And on Saturday morning we finally reached Indiana!!

We arrived in South Bend around 10:00, returned the car trailer and picked up the keys to our apartment just in time for the elders quorum to show up at 11:00 to help us unpack our truck.  When we stepped in to our new place I wanted to cry (I might have actually cried) because our apartment smelled like an ash tray... literally.  The carpets were GREASY from the smoke.  It was disgusting.  We went back to the apartment office and they said they didn't have any more apartments like that one available and couldn't get us in to a two bedroom that day.  We made a spur of the moment decision to move our stuff in and see if we couldn't get the smell out (I wasn't aware of the greasy carpets until I spent the night there).  We unloaded all our stuff and Matt started helping me unpack the kitchen.  Suddenly we both sat on the floor and decided we didn't want to live there for three years!!  So, we stayed there until Monday morning when we moved into another two bedroom apartment.  It was frustrating that we had to move again and pay a lot more than we were planning to in rent, but we are SO glad now that we did.  The ward was so great to help us move TWICE and we were invited to dinner on Saturday and Sunday nights by some kind friends.  We love our new place, the location, the layout, the clean carpets, and that it smells good in here.  So worth it.  

While we were staying in our first greasy apartment and didn't have a place to sleep, we made a little makeshift bed with the couches.  Matt thought it was kind of like a fort and we loved it.  We set up our laptop with a movie at the end of the bed and had yummy treats.  I guess all you can do is make the best of a frustrating situation sometimes.

More on how much we love our new place later!! :)

4 comments:

Ryan, Melissa, and Family said...

Uggh that would have sucked! I think I would have cried too! I am so glad you got it worked out and you arent living with greasy carpets...oh.my. that is so GROSS! Love ya!

Ryan, Melissa, and Family said...

I love the pictures along the way...SO FUN! BTW..I LOVE the 2 couches together hehe:)

Bryan and Sarah said...

I love your moving photos! I'm glad that you got a better apartment. That sounds so frustrating. I can't wait to see more!

Katie said...

HAHA! I love that thumbs up picture. Those are some pretty pictures you took along the way. Those clouds almost look fake they are so perfect. I can't wait to see pics of your new place.