Moving is such a pain

Moving is such a pain. Not only do you have to collect boxes and newspapers, and pack all of your worldly belongings, you have to have a place to move too and people to move into the place you're leaving. On top of that, when people are coming to see your apartment you have to basically make it look like no one actually lives there and it's spotless all the time.
However, in the end, it will all work out. We have 3 people coming to look at the apartment today, 6 scheduled for tomorrow, 2 for Thursday, and 1 so far for Friday. The good news is when one of these 25 people we have referred to the apartment complex signs a lease, we get out of lots of fines and paying double rent. (The fines are because we're moving before the lease is up).
I just want to be done with this mess. I'm tired of answering people's whiny, sometimes completely stupid emails, sending pictures, dealing with the leasing office, all if it. I wish I could just start putting stuff in boxes and move out today...but I have made it this long, I will make it 3 more weeks. And, the prospect of our new apartment keeps me going.
Ok, that is the end of my rant.

Updates from the Great Plains-But no pictures!

Well, we haven't updated much on what we are actually doing these days. First off, since this is the most frequently asked question I get- Steven, Me & Baby D are all doing pretty good. The baby is growing big and strong and I am feeling pretty good 95% of the time! Moving on-there are really 4 main parts to our lives: Church, School, Work, and Family so I will update in that order.

Church- Well Steven is still calling-less. But a lot of the ward is either gone for the summer and the military families are all being reassigned to a different base so I'm hoping he will get a calling soon! I am still doing the RS activity board and primary music leader. The last 2 weeks I have had to do both Junior & Senior primary. Wow was it a lot of work!! I had no voice at the end of the first week and the second week I only made it through Junior primary with my voice in tact. But, we are learning and having fun. I went to a Stake leadership training and got lots of good ideas that I'm excited to try out!

School- Someday we will graduate and look back at these posts and think "Wow life was so much easier when we were in school" At least that's what people keep telling me...Steven is taking one summer class right now and will be taking 2 more starting in 4 weeks. He is also finishing up his flight stage check from last semester. When that is finally over he will get his Instrument Rating- he's been working on it for the past 2 semesters+ so we're excited to see some progress. This summer he will do the commercial class and then in the fall is multi-engine! UND likes to make random hoops for us to jump through but overall we like the school.
As for my school, well I'm still going and getting good enough grades. It is hard to focus on hard classes when I have the baby brain thing going on, but so far so good. I will be done with 5 of 12 classes required to graduate at the end of my semester in 4 weeks. This time next year I will be DONE DONE and you can all call me Master!! *Granted the baby cooperates and I actually write a thesis...*

Work- Well, this area of our lives has not improved. We are managing ok, but just waiting to see what Heavenly Father wants us to do. Right now the biggest priority is the baby so we are just waiting for the inspiration to come and we will follow it. Steven has applied to a few work study jobs for the summer so we will see if we hear anything about those!

Family- Well as of Saturday, my family will be in 3 different states and 2 different continents. My dad leaves for Australia for six months on Saturday. My sister Talia and my brother Jaden are living in Utah for the summer. My mom, Kayley, and Dakota are living at home and me, Steven & Baby D are stuck here in ND for awhile. I mostly feel bad for my mom who will now have to juggle everyone's different time zones to keep in touch with everyone.
Steven's family is doing good too! Nate just graduated high school officially last week and Andrew promoted from junior high. That combined with the parent's anniversary and Nate's birthday made for quite a few parties in 2 weeks! We were sad to miss it! Greg & Caitlin are doing ok too as far as we know. Caitlin is taking classes and Greg is working for her grandma. They celebrate their anniversary next week-has it really already been a year?!

As for our little family, we are doing good. We are making new friends and reconnecting with old friends too.
We try to go on lots of walks together. Steven didn't believe me that most days my feet and legs just hurt because of the extra weight of Baby D. Then, he went to his physiology class and they talked about how hard it is for pregnant women to have circulation to their limbs. He came home that night, propped my feet up on pillows and I got the best foot rub of my life. He wanted to make sure I was circulating the blood flow or something. Now, if I could just get him to get reminded of that every day at class, I'd be even better!!
Steven has really been excellent with me being pregnant! He says the biggest thing he didn't know about what happens when you get your wife pregnant is that you have to become her live-in gourmet chef. I don't know why but the food is just better when he makes it!! At first I didn't help because the smell was too strong- but now, I'm the sous chef and he's the head cook.
I started feeling (and recognizing) the baby kick last week. I still don't feel it every day, but I feel it now and they seem to be getting more frequent. It is the neatest little thing ever! Steven is a tad jealous but I'm sure in a few months we'll both be ready for the baby to be out and kicking in his/her crib!
The only other update we have is that we're moving! I wish we were moving home, but that is a few years off still. We are finally moving into on-campus housing. We went and toured one of the apartments like the one we will have today. It is not a ton bigger, but it is more open, there are closets and lots more storage!! Also, we have reserved parking and it will be close enough for Steven to walk to classes! We are moving out at the end of June and are very excited! We found out yesterday that if we find someone to rent out our current apartment we will not have to pay out all the fees they make up. The lady didn't think we would have any luck but we posted the information on craigslist and on the UND Underground (it's like the school's craigslist) last night and we've already had about 10 people email or call. I think 5 have already talked to the leasing office and one came to look today and another will be looking at it tomorrow. It will be such a blessing if one of these people apply and get approved and get to move in!! Either way if we find a renter or if the leasing office does, we are excited to move out into a better environment for us and Baby D!
We haven't taken pictures of anything recently but we will take pictures of our adventures this summer!! The next post will probably be the pink or blue day post!! Hopefully the baby will cooperate with us enough to let us see the gender! A week from tomorrow-we are soo excited to get to see our baby again (and hopefully start shopping for appropriate-colored clothes!)
Stay tuned to share in our excitement :)

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 :)