A Very Tall (But True) Tale...And Our New Home!!

The story I am about to tell you may seem unlikely, but I am here to tell you that the series of unfortunate events which occured on our drive from Utah to Missouri really did happen!! However crazy it was, we did make it to Missouri and to our beautiful home!!! And so far we are really loving it here :) Pictures of our house are later in this post. But, now our crazy adventure must be documented...

It all began several days before we were scheduled to head out of Utah.  Ryan had taken our small car to the Hyundai dealership to get the oil changed.  So, naturally we thought we were going to have our car back in a few hours. However, this is where our first major catastrophe occurred.   The dealership noticed a recall on the power steering and decided to take care of that for us.  Though their intentions were pure...something went awry and not only did the power steering no longer work...but the car itself was not working either.  They told us it was going to take awhile to get the part in that they needed to fix it.  However, this would have set us behind in our travels and we wouldn't have been in Missouri to retrieve our household goods when the movers delivered it.  SO, we needed another plan.

The bright spot in this tale is that the dealership was super kind and helpful and came up with a plan to help us out.  They paid for a Uhaul for us to tow behind our large car. This was kind of a lucky break for me, because it allowed Ryan to drive in the same car as me which was ideal for many reasons...that I am sure you can figure out for yourself :)

So after loading up our nifty Uhaul trailer, cleaning the house and saying our goodbyes, it was time for another epic drive to commence. For 3 hours all was going well.  I was managing to keep the kids entertained and happy and we were making good time.  Then....we stopped for lunch and Ryan noticed  the tire on our trailer had a chunk out of it and needed to be fixed.  This little snag cost us three hours of drive time!!! Yes, it took Uhaul 3 hours to fix our tire :( We walked around the store of the parking lot we were stuck in about 5 times, watched a movie and ate some dinner. By the time we were finally able to leave the kids were tired and grumpy and ready to be done for the day.  But, Ryan wanted to get a little bit more driving in...being the hard core traveler he is!!

So, with as positive an attitude we could muster,  we were off, hoping to make up for some of the time we had lost.  Our next unfortunate set back occurred 15 minutes later when we were stopped dead in our tracks by a traffic jam caused by a semi truck that had been tipped over  and was blocking ALL lanes of traffic in both directions!!!  Ugh...So it seemed we were in for another long set back.  This is when we had to get inventive.  We weren't moving at all, so we let the kids get out of their seat belts and shimmy about the car.  Elsie, particularly found this to be quite amusing.  She loved to sit in the front seat with daddy and explore all the buttons and knobs at her disposal.

After an hour of waiting with nothing happening to clear up the mess on the freeway, Ryan decided to take matters into his own hands. To the side of the freeway there was a fallen, wire fence. Just beyond the poorly constructed fence and over a small field was a dirt road.  My crazy husband decided to take a chance on that road. So off we drove, over the fallen fence, through a small ditch and through the field to the dirt road.  I breathed a sigh of relief once we made it to the road... only to realize that we were heading on the dirt road up into the mountains.  Ryan's GPS was saying the road would lead us to a freeway entrance ahead...however, I was feeling like we were just getting more and more lost. And I was bracing myself to need to make camp in those mountains for the night...

To my relief, after going down some uncomfortably steep, dirt roads and after several fervent prayers...we made it to the freeway.  We all laughed and cheered once we realized we had actually made it!!! And because everyone else was still stuck behind the fallen semi, we had he freeway completely to ourselves- haha!!!  We ended up getting in some more good drive time and drove through some beautiful Colorado canyons. Once e made it to the hotel, we all slept very well that night :)

The next day, we did some hard core traveling that was luckily uninterrupted!! And we made it to our new house in Missouri at 10 pm and again...slept well that night :)

Now that we are here, we are really loving our house!! We feel so blessed to be in such a beautiful, comfortable home in such a wonderful neighborhood!! Here is our family room!! I love the tall ceilings and the large windows! Our house in Cali always felt so cave like to me.  This room has been the happiest, brightest and most un cave like room I could imagine :)  It is so nice to lay on the couch and watch the pretty clouds float past!

This is a view of our entry way from the office. This entrance has tall ceilings as well which I love!!

The view out our front window is so lovely. You can't tell from this picture, but there is a small lake right across the street that is so so pretty.

Here is the office!!

The dining room...

I LOVE cooking in this kitchen...I feel so so lucky!!

I saw some spiders crawl on this piano in Cali and was too afraid to really play it much...I know I'm lame and silly. But, here I play it all the time :)

Here is our bedroom. We still want to paint this room a light grey...but for now I still love it. I am a fan of color so this room makes me happy :) Ryan painted our bed this fin orange for me!!

And he painted this dresser for me!! This guy really has some major DIY skills!!

He made this toy bench that is in our family room as well...amazing right?!

Ryan and I painted this 18 foot tall wall this fun green to add some much needed color to the room.

Beckham's super hero room!

Ryan added the cool super hero embellishments on Beckham's bed!!

The landing upstairs

We painted the green wall all the way upstairs too! It as a lot of work but so worth it.

Elsie's very first full room!!

We painted her whole room white from the brown it originally was and I added the fun polka dots...painted by hand :)

I wish the picture wasn't so dark :( but Jane's owl room is darling as well with pink and purple stripes...also painstakingly done by myself!

Here is the staircase- I love the railing so much :)

We went with a yellow and green color scheme to add color to all the brown...

This will give you a good idea how tall this darn wall was that we painted!!!

There is still a lot we want to do to the house.  There is a 1500 square foot basement we are already in the process of finishing. And we are also in the process of landscaping our yard and I have a lot of inside projects that might need to wait until furtherer down the road.  We are super excited to have this lovely home and to make it our own :)

My Long, Dreamy Hiatus...

For over a month I got a long, dreamy hiatus from real life!! Since the house we were renting in California was sold, we had to work out a temporary living arrangement for the last month of our time in California. We decided that I would stay in Utah with my mom for  the month while Ryan stayed with friends in Cali and finished up his residency.  This option saved us money as well as allowed me a much needed visit to home :)
Saying goodbye to Ry for so long is never easy...but we were all very excited to spend time with family and friends and to enjoy beautiful Utah...so leaving wasn't so bad.

Luckily, my dad came out to drive home with us.  We drove the whole 12 hour drive in 1 day...so I was immensely grateful to have my dad there with me. But when we got to Utah we had the royal welcome.  We walked into my moms house to see welcome signs and balloons :) and Ryan's dad was super sweet and stopped by to see if we needed anything.  He ended up buying us dinner and a few groceries!! I have been so blessed with such great family members who do so much for us!!

While there in Utah, we really lived it up and had a large list of Utah fun we checked off!!  I am super mad at myself for not getting more pictures of all the amazing Utah adventures we had:( But I was just busy having too much fun I guess.  Luckily, I took at least a few pictures...

Of course I spent as much time up beautiful Provo canyon as much as I could- I just have so many wonderful memories of Provo canyon!!  We had to visit Bridal Veil Falls :) the kiddos had so much fun climbing up rocks and playing in the water...

I was so so excited when my favorite person ever, my sis :) said she was coming to Utah as well!! We tried to spend every moment we could together while we had the chance!!  I just love that gal and don't see her enough :( Again, I am so angry at myself for not getting a picture of me and my beautiful sis together...

One day we went up Provo canyon again to Sundance to ride the lift around the beautiful mountains!! The kids spotted a butterfly in the parking lot and just had to give it some love :)

Here are the kiddos (minus Harper) at Sundance!!

Ryan's mom was so so sweet and took us all to the amazing kids museum at Thanksgiving Point!!  All the Kids had a blast and didn't want to leave :)

the water section was a clear favorite...

We came a second time to the Kids museum with Ryan's sister and her darling boys!!  The kids had a blast feeding the fish!

We were able to celebrate my niece's 6th birthday with them.  She has a My Little Pony party so that was right up our alley. It was so neat to be all finally together to celebrate a birthday.  It has been a long time since we could do that!

These cute cousins played and played and played so well together!

Elsie became very interested in dress ups while we stayed there at my mom's house!! It was so cute and made her seem so grown up.

Elsie and her cousin, Harper seemed to be pretty good buddies!! Elsie love Harper and tried to hug her every time she saw her :)

Jane and I got to have a mommy, daughter date. This little gal is growing up so fast so I love when we can have special moments together like this. Jane wanted to get a pedicure and then get a treat!! The girl knows how to plan a great date...

One of the highlights of our Utah trip was being able to go to the Stadium of Fire with Ryan;s family and hear Journey!! It really was an amazing show and we all LOVED it!!

It was really special for me to spend some special time with my awesome parents!! And clearly my kids loved it too!! I got to go to several movies with my dad and he was so sweet and even came with the kids and I to Park City one weekend to ride the Alpine Coaster- which the kids loved!!! I loved having special adventures with my dad.

My mom was the most gracious hostess to us and went out of her way to make our stay so nice!! My kids wouldn't leave her alone, they loved her so much! She allowed them to watch her get ready for work in the mornings and lay with her in bed at night. They were able to really spend some special moments with her :)

On one of our many trips to Costco Jane and Elsie got some matching My Little Pony dresses!

The kids spent a TON of time in the yard at my moms house playing in the sand and water!! What a delightful mess we made:)

We definitely had to try out the new splash pad by my moms house!

Once Ryan finally joined us in Utah we spent a lot of time with his wonderful family. One Saturday, a large part of Ryan's dad's family as well as all his sisters and their families got together for a picnic at a park in Logan! The main reason we did this was so that Ryan's grandma who lives in Idaho could see everyone. We haven't been able to see her in a very long time- so it was so neat to see her!!

Everyone helped me out a ton with Elsie!!

This little daddy's girl got pretty close to mama while daddy was away :)

We were able to recreate a favorite Utah outing that we used to have all the time when we lived there- and go to the new and improved Bean Museum and then get lunch and ice cream from the BYU creamery!! Fun!!

The kids were so lucky to get so much love and attention from Ryan's sweet sisters who we don't see enough of!! Here is Jillyn playing a game with Beckham! the kids absolutely spending time at Grandma Dick's house with all their cousins and aunts!! What a special time!!

And sweet Elsie got so much love from everyone!!

We did so much more fun stuff and I didn't get near enough pictures...I will always regret that :( And I couldn't get all the pictures that I do have on the computer to put on the blog. I was lucky to get the ones that I have. However, my stay in Utah was just so dreamy :) I LOVED every second of it and was so so sad to see it end.  I am pretty sure I could have stayed for a while other month...But, needless to say, I was very excited to get to Missouri and start life in our beautiful new house:)

The drive to Missouri was quite eventful...and a bit crazy...but that is a story for another time!! Here is a sneak peak into that crazy tale... I'll explain later...

Luckily, we arrived in MO safely, Our house was still in tact and beautiful, we have gotten all settled and are loving it here so far!! Let the mid west adventures begin!!!