Endings & Beginnings

It's hard to think that exactly one week ago from today we were packed up in the U-haul, saying goodbyes to friends and family and headed into the unknown.

We are *mostly* settled in now so we figured we should hold true to our promise. Our new years resolution: to blog once a day for the entire time we are in Grand Forks, ND. Why? Well because it will be a good way to MAKE ourselves write down what we are doing. AND it will make our mom's more at ease if they can see what we're up to.

So in this blog, we'll give ya a run down of our last week- which could possibly be our most busy week yet. Therefore, it's a tad bit on the longer side. Read as far as you want & keep in mind all of these pictures are from long days of driving, I was sick and we were both very tired :)

We started our moving road trip last Wednesday, December 30th, 2009. We got off to a late start, but all was well. We simply ran out of time the night before to try and finish everything. We drove about 12 hours. It probably would have been less time but we drove through almost 8 hours of weather. YUCK! We finally made it to Amarillo, TX late that night.

Thursday, December 31st, 2009-

We woke up to a light snow fall. We decided to head out and hope that we could beat the storm that was supposed to head in the direction we were driving. The odd thing was, the worst weather we had was in Amarillo, TX and just outside of Albuquerque. We had no weather after we got out of Amarillo.

We took the opportunity to stop at the Oklahoma City, OK temple. It is very small and it was our first taste of the cold weather. The stake center it was next too was almost as big as the temple. But, like all temples it was beautiful.

We got all the way through Oklahoma, and Kansas and we ended up in Lincoln, NE. We checked into our hotel about 45 minutes before the new year. Steven was sad that the ball had already dropped in NYC (he forgot about the time difference). I was still feeling very under the weather (nothing like waking up the morning of a long road trip with a terrible cold), but we resolved to celebrate nonetheless! Steven cut his hand open while trying to open our bottle of Martinelli's, but nothing would stop us! We enjoyed our sparkling cider watched some Food Network (that is our official hotel room entertainment) and crashed.

Friday January 1st, 2010

We allowed ourselves to sleep in because we knew we had a shorter drive, it was cold, and let's face it, we were EXHAUSTED!! Luckily the hotel manager was very chill because she let us check out a few minutes late.

We headed up to Omaha, NE because we wanted to stop and see the Winter Quarters temple. Turns out there is a visitor's center there called Mormon Trail Center and a pioneer cemetary. We took some pictures and had the tour of the visitor's center. It was very neat. We left in awe that pioneers lived there for winter- we were freezing and we had on coats and lots of layers!! They lived in log cabins with sod roofs!

After stopping for some lunch, we decided to put some road behind us. We traveled and traveled and traveled. In some random town in Nebraska, we stopped to get gas and they wouldn't let us pay before we pumped---in fact they couldn't even do that. It was all on the honor system and you paid after you got your gas. Also, we saw two people come and park their cars, leave them running and unlocked and go inside into the gas station...small towns I guess. After a lot of endless miles of snow covered surroundings (but clear roads) we ended up in East Grand Forks, MN in our hotel.

10 states

3 days

2 drivers/sore butts

1 cause

Saturday, January 2nd, 2010

We woke up to the coldest weather either of us had ever experienced. The first sign should have been that the car wouldn't remote start. That is problematic seeing as how it was close by our room and it's almost brand new. We walked out to the car to find almost everything FROZEN!! and when I say frozen, there is NO exaggeration. Steven had left his leather coat in the back seat, in a pile. When we took it out, it was still in the same form, crumpled up, frozen. The i-pod dock cord was frozen in almost a horizontal line. Cords are supposed to bend. We could go on and on, but it makes us shiver.

We headed from the hotel back into Grand Forks* and to the apartment leasing office. Then, we followed the leasing agent to our new home sweet home. And then the fun really began. We unpacked and unpacked and we are still unpacking. Luckily, one of the guys from our new Elders Quorum showed up. A BIG shout out goes out to Mike Smith. We would never have made it without you. You are the ultimate EQ 1st Counselor. It was the coldest day in history (at least in mine and Steven's history) and you were helping us move!

After having all of our boxes INSIDE of our new apartment, we headed to the thrift stores to look for some furniture (we left most of ours at home). We didn't have much luck, but we did find a sweet deal on a down coat for Steven.

After this, we decided we were very tired of pulling the Uhaul, so we returned it. We went to Wal-Mart and bought some storage stuff (aka our dresser) and some groceries.

We headed home and unpacked the kitchen. We're happy to report that all but 3 cups *that we are not particularly attached too* made it through the move. A BIG thanks to Mom & Dad Dorn for helping us pack up everything! We unpacked the kitchen, and had a little picnic on some moving boxes in our living room/ dining area.

We were going to watch a movie (the first thing Steven unpacked was the new TV...after all he did wait to open it from Thanksgiving to Christmas and he didn't even get to use it until we moved- I know I'm mean) BUT we were exhausted. After dinner, we set up our matress on the floor with the flannel sheets, electric blanket and down comforter and finally headed to bed!Steven said "I'm gonna go shower and then I'll come back and we can say prayers together and go to sleep" Well, I said my prayers and I was OUT before he even got out of the shower. Tired does not even cover it!

January 3rd, 2010

Well, we were sore as heck and we slept like bears in hibernation underneath our warm covers. If it hadn't been for the people running up and down the stairs (that are above our bedroom) we may never have woken up. We did however wake up...at 10:30am. Which is not that big of a deal normally except that church started at 10. So, we frantically threw open a few suitcases, found some clothes and got to church by 11:30. Did we mention it takes 15 minutes longer to get anywhere here because you have to wait for the car to get warm enough to use the power steering? It's great, trust me.

Church was great as always. The experience was much more welcoming than our first impression. We got to go to adult sunday school together for the first time in 2 years. That is a miracle by itself. We met several other ward members and the weather really wasn't anything compared to what it had been on Saturday. You would be surprised how many people from Arizona move here. crazies.

After church, we came home and worked on unpacking some of our living room and bedroom. We took a brief nap and woke up to go eat dinner with some ward members. Remember Mike Smith, the guy who saved us by helping us move? Ya well him and his sweet wife Jolene invited us to their house for Sunday dinner because they knew it would probably be hard to find things to cook with. They are a sweet, sweet family and we hope to get to know them better. They have 3 ADORABLE kids that were tons of fun to watch and play with. They had also invited another young couple from the ward, the Jacobs. Mike is an A&P (Airplane mechanic). The husband of the Jacobs, also named Steven, is going to school for ATC (Air traffic control) and my Steven is the pilot. It was fun to see all three angles of different things they were talking about. We enjoyed delicious lasagna, salad, bisuits. Best of all, was dessert. We made our own waffle cones and we had home made ice cream. And I'm not kidding. It was negative somethin degrees outside and we were eating ice cream! At first when they offered we laughed because we thought it was a joke...but turns out it wasn't and we were glad it wasn't. Those were some good waffle cones and REALLY good ice cream!

We left and came home to Skype with our moms. We talked with Steven's mom first and gave her and Andrew the tour of our new house. Then, we called my mom and walked her through setting up her own SKYPE so we could give her the tour. We are super greatful for modern technology and I'm pretty sure our mom's are too.

We ended up staying up late enough to watch our movie. The commissioning movie for the new TV- well Transfomers of course.

Monday, January 4th, 2010-

This was a rather productive day. We set up our bed, organized our living room, built our desk, filing cabinet, and bookcase (we bought them on Saturday) and unpacked all of our clothes (which was about 5 suitcases-no small feat!)

After everything was mostly out of the boxes, we were able to better assess what storage needs we had. So, we set out on adventure to Target. At Target, we found a new kitchen table, storage drawers for the bathroom (that match our shower curtain colors PERFECTLY). A rack to hang all of our coats and jackets on and curtains for both the living room and the office. We got a killer deal on everything!

We also went back to Wal-mart to buy another 'dresser' to match the one we bought on Saturday. We also had to buy a heavy duty extension cord. Steven got the car all ready for cold weather. Everyone here uses a block heater- basically you plug in your car to make sure it doesn't freeze and die. The extension cord we had snapped in pieces because of the cold. So, we bought a heavy duty one that is supposed to work up to -40 degrees. We hope it doesn't have to test that limit!

We came home from our shopping adventures and went to work settling in. We got a text from my mom saying my siblings wanted to see our new house too. So we Skyped yet again and it was good to see the brothers. They liked that they could get the tour of the apartment virtually.

After, we got almost everything but the office unpacked and decorated & decided to treat ourselves for our productive day by watching My Sister's Keeper- it's a sad sad movie, but a good one.

Tuesday January 5th, 2010

Happy 2 year anniversary to us! Since this post is about what we have been doing, we'll just stick to that for now. Maybe tomorrow will be the 'here's us on our wedding day, here's us now- still in love' type post. BUT today-

We woke up and ate breakfast together. Then, we got all of the last minute school stuff taken care of for Steven-books, double checking classes, etc. Then, Steven worked on hiding all of the boxes- under the bed, he's a genious I tell ya! and I worked on organizing the bathroom stuff. Afterwards, we went to work on the office. If any of you saw our office in AZ, you'd be so proud of our office here. It's almost spotless!

While I was unpacking and working on stuff, Steven made a trip to the dumpster...an otherwise irrelevant detail, except that while he was gone, he walked down to the chocolate factory and bought me some chocolate covered cinnamon bears. He's a keeper...

I'm kinda excited to go back to work next week and work in our office. And, I really like the curtain. and, it's my office so Steven lets me do whatever I want as far as decorating, organizing, etc.

And then, the most daunting task of the day- Laundry. We googled to find a laundromat here in GF. They all have very odd combinations. A few were laundry & tanning. One was laundry and a car wash. The one we went to ended up being laundry & re-upholstery shop. Figure that one out. Is that normal pairings for laundromats? Anyways, we did laundry. It took about 5 loads. Keep in mind we were washing some new towels and about 1 1/2 weeks worth of clothes. It's pretty amazing how fast the cost adds up when you're paying in quarters. I think it stung more because we're not used to paying to do laundry. Anyways, we read and talked and hung out doing laundry. It was kind of fun actually.

After our laundry adventure (there's not really an adventure but I think everything seems more exciting when you call it an adventure), we came home to get ready for our anniversary dinner. We went to a steakhouse called Ground Rounds. It was delicious and our server was very good. Steven had some steak and shrimp and really good fries. I had this delicious tortellini in a creamy sauce. Yum- almost makes me want to eat the leftovers right now! Anyways, after dinner we came home again and started this blog. Which is taking forever, and we hope you all appreciate this....

After getting through the first few days via blog, we left to go to the movies. We saw "The Blindside". We wanted to see it awhile ago, but didn't get to and it was well worth the wait. If you haven't seen it, we highly suggest it. Especially if you like "Remember the Titans" or "The Express".

And now we're here. Home, happy & still madly in love. Stay tuned for tomorrow's posting of our new adventures.

*East Grand Forks, MN is across the street/ Red River from Grand Forks, ND. We live in Grand Forks. The towns are often referred to as one big town. We'll try to distinguish even though it doesn't particularly matter :)