The Big Move!

Monday the 7th- Tuesday the 8th: Packing, cleaning, loading the truck, family pictures, and saying goodbye

Thanks to everybody who helped us pack and clean so that we could get out of here on time and still sleep at nights. :) You are all great! (Thanks especially to Robin who helped a million times in the past few weeks, and to Bethany and Elizabeth who spent all Monday night scrubbing things.)

For someone who thrives on routine and order, the week or two leading up to these two days were very stressful! I felt like my house was a giant slide puzzle; to get anywhere I had to slide boxes into the tiny bit of open floor space and slowly make my way across the house.  

Thanks to David and Curtis for helping us pack the truck

Thanks to Doug for making everything fit when we thought we were out of room. 

Ah. Much better. Ready to go!

Visiting Bryan's family Tuesday night 

It was hard to say goodbye to everybody but it's much better than, say, an LDS mission, because we can call and Skype whenever we want. Besides that we'll be visiting Utah at Christmastime.


Wednesday the 9th: Leaving Utah, my parents driving the truck, and spending the night at Circus Circus in Reno. 

Saying bye to uncle David before he left for class Wednesday morning.

We met up with mom and dad for pizza in the-middle-of-nowhere Nevada when we needed to change a giant, terrible diaper in the back of the car because nobody had restrooms with changing tables. Good times. The pizza was actually delicious. They served cheese sticks with honey mustard... interesting.

Yay for cheap, week-night rates at casinos. :) 

"Give Lincoln kisses!"

Thursday the 10th: Driving through Donner's Pass, arriving in Redwood City, spending the night in a dumpy motel, running errands on Stanford campus, snooping out our new place, and how co-sleeping is DEFINITELY not for us.

Thursday morning we left Reno and drove to California! I drove the whole time today and it was kind of fun driving through the Sierra Nevadas, but I am definitely convinced that we will not be driving back at Christmas time; it was not a relaxing drive even in great weather.

We spent the night at a cheap motel in Redwood City... things are so expensive here; we spent $45 on our awesome Circus Circus room, and $150 on the one Thursday night. They didn't have cribs, so that was fun. Lincoln shared the bed with me because Bryan finally gave up and slept on the bedspread on the floor. Lincoln does NOT enjoy sharing his sleeping space and does not enjoy snuggling or anything like that, so that was fun. It took forever for him to fall asleep, he woke up tons, and he spent most of his sleeping hours forcing me off the side of the bed. Definitely not for us.

But, before the lovely co-sleeping adventure, mom and dad watched Lincoln while Bryan and I ran down to campus to get ID cards and parking passes. We were told what building we would be living in but we didn't know the unit. I decided to snoop the building out a bit and was pretty sure I figured out which unit we'd be in (the only vacant one in that building haha). I really hoped I was right (I was) because it was an end unit and was also shaded pretty well by some giant trees in the 6 pm sunlight.


Friday the 11th: Waiting around until our check-in time and unpacking the truck

They said we couldn't check in or even find out our apartment number until 1 pm... so we had to park the truck and wander around to try to find AC until then. I went in and tried to convince them to at least tell us the unit number so we could know where to park our truck. I thought that maybe if I could get that far I could get them to just check us in early since they already knew the unit number. No luck. They wouldn't because, "we can't until 1:00." Well, we went back at 12:45 to beat the crowd getting in line. They asked us if we'd like to come in and wait inside. We went in and suddenly the same guy had our paperwork and keys out. We finished checking in at 12:50... Not sure why that was so different from 11:15, but whatever.

We met a few people in our neighborhood that also go to our church because they saw our truck and came out to help us unpack. It was nice of them, especially considering how hot it was.

This is the only really good picture I have of where we live (mostly because our apartment has been a disaster and I haven't taken pictures). Our back door opens up to this fenced-in, grassy play area. Our apartment is on the right, off the camera. They're two-story condo-like apartments. The first floor is a small kitchen and dining area and a living room. The second floor is two bedrooms and a bathroom.

Thank goodness he's not super mobile yet... there are benefits to having a child skip crawling and want only to walk, but not be able to do it himself yet. 

Saturday the 12th- Sunday the 13th: Unpacking, organizing, exploring campus, and going to church.

Thanks to mom and dad for all your help. :)

When we went to church Sunday morning (we're in the Menlo Park ward) we were welcomed with open arms. It was awesome. We were also met by a surprising number of BYU graduates and BYU football fans who loved that we were too. :) Small world: there are at least 2 other people in my ward who were MathEd majors or minors at BYU. Fun.

So far we really like living in Escondido Village. It's fun. There are lots of people in our same situation and Lincoln has lots of kids his age to make friends with.

Here are a few pictures from our afternoon of exploring on campus:

Can I just say how great these perfectly-trimmed bushes are? I felt like Monk (the OCD TV detective) with how happy they made me. :) 

The building where Bryan's department is based. I teased him that he's in the only building on campus that doesn't look unique to Stanford.

Monday the 14th- now: the next blog post. :)