So by now most of you know that Andy has been promoted to Senior Vice President of the Rocky Mountain Region of Genesse & Wyoming Rail Road. His new office is located in Provo, Utah. He started his new job on Monday, June 1st. We only found out that he was offered the job 2 weeks before that. During our conversations this week, he's been telling me how much he likes his new job and you can hear in his voice how appreciative he is that he's been given this opportunity - especially in this economy when all I hear about is people losing their jobs. He's excited about the opportunity and the impact he can make.
So now the rush is on to get the house ready for sale...We emptied out the garage into a storage unit. For those of you who have seen our garage here in the Sunshine state, you won't believe that I actually parked my suv in the garage tonight! We are signing the contract with an agent tomorrow...Andy will sign via fax. We are hoping and praying that God will take care of things on this end. We feel that this is God's calling to move to Utah and know that we have to trust him to take care of all the issues that arise.
I've been keeping busy with cleaning out closets, a very successful yard sale, trips to storage, trips to Goodwill, touching up paint, cleaning windows, scrubbing floors, planting flowers, mulching the gardens, oh and taking care of two kids and a dog by myself! No sweat!
We got the reports from two different agents regarding the sale of our home...it's a worse situation that either of us realized. We will end up taking a considerable loss on our beautiful 2 year old home. But we know that some way, some how, things will work out. A woman from the moving company came to do a survey to judge how much we have to move and she's also in the real estate biz. She called me today to ask when we're going to list the house because she has a client who has already driven by and can't wait to see the inside! Could we be that lucky? I will stay here with the kids in Jax until the house sells or school starts. We're hoping that we will have some divine intervention and our home will sell quickly!
My goal during all of this is to make the time to do something "fun" with the kids every day. So far we've gotten ice cream from the ice cream man, met friends for dinner twice, went to the pool and the beach. Tomorrow will be another trip to the beach with friends if the weather holds out and Sunday is a birthday pool party for one of Kendall's friends.
One of Riley's biggest gripes about moving is that there is no beach in Utah. So I've been trying to explain to him that there are other beautiful and fun things to do in Utah. I told him that he can learn to ski in the winter and we can go camping in the summer. That got him interested. He's since been trying to convince me that my next vehicle should be an RV camper. I tried to tell him that it would be rather difficult to navigate the grocery store parking lot with a vehicle that big, but it fell on deaf ears. He was excited to show me where Utah was on the map though. His Leap Pad has a map of the US and it tells you how many miles apart any two locations are...Boy was he excited to see how far it was between Fl and Ut! When we first told him we were moving, he was very upset over leaving his friends. I think of all his wonderful friends, he's going to miss Madison, Nick, Garrett and Ford the most...He has been so blessed with wonderful kids to play with and I know that God will provide him with good friends in Utah as well.
Andy will be coming home next weekend. It feels like it's been FOREVER since I last saw him. He will only be home for 3 days before heading back out west, but I'm grateful for any time he can spend with us. Some friends of his from work are throwing him a good bye/congrats party next weekend so that should be a good time. Unfortunately Andy won't be home for Riley's surgery next week. I'm grateful for my wonderful friend Kerri who has graciously offered to go with me or at least watch Kendall for me. What a wonderful gift. Can you imagine me having to deal with that by myself?
I am also lucky that my best friend from college lives just south of Salt Lake! Could I get any luckier? Kevin is giddy as a school girl (sorry Kev!) and that just makes this whole move so much easier. I can't wait to be able to see him all the time again like the good ole' days! One of the conditions for Andy when we started dating is that Kevin was part of the package. Andy has always accepted my friendship with Kevin and loved the fact that there was someone looking out for me. Now, I've put Kevin back into that role of taking care of me once again! Another plus is that a few of my friends from play group have either lived in Utah or spent a good bit of time there and have shared a lot of info with me as well. We are actually getting together for a girls night out so they can answer any and all questions about Provo and Salt Lake. One friend may actually be making a trip out there in August to visit a relative so if I'm there by then, I could potentially have my first visitor! How cool would that be?
Okay...this has been a novel. Usually I just post some pics and give a short summary of what we've been up to, but it hasn't been "normal" around here in quite some time...Hope that if you've read all the way to the end, you have a better understanding of what's been going on in the Chunko household. Some days are good and some are a struggle, but we'll get through them one at a time.
