Moving and a Park City Weekend

It’s been a couple of crazy, but of course good weeks!

We’re set to close on our little condo on June 4, that’s this coming Friday! I can’t believe it! It’s working out so well. Our friend and neighbor, Debbie Stephenson is buying our place. She lives in our condo complex and has been renting here for 5 years. A couple of months ago, she asked me some questions about the Home Owner’s Association and fees and living at the Meadows and things like that. We answered her questions, and then she told us that her landlord’s decided to put her condo on the market to sell it. She loves it here and doesn’t want to move, so she said she was looking into buying another condo. After our conversation that night, I had a good feeling she was wanting to buy our condo. I told Dave I thought it was meant to be, but he wasn’t so sure. We posted our house for sell on KSL Homes a few days later, and got a couple of calls from people or realtors who were interested. A few days after that, she was asking more questions, and I jokingly asked her “Why? You want to buy our condo?” to which she replied, “Yes, I actually do!” It is such good timing for both of us, and such a blessing. I’m grateful the process has gone relatively smooth.

We’ve been taking loads of stuff down to Bountiful for the last several weeks. We are going to live in Dave’s parents home for a while, until we find a place to live up in Spokane. Lots of packing and cleaning going on around here. It’s pretty hard work, especially with the kids. They get bored that I’m not playing with them like normally, and are kind of acting up because of it. We even had a “flood”! Dave was in the shower, after moving a bunch of big things, and I was out playing with Emma, she asked me to play Barbies with her, and I said yes. So I was playing with her, and Cal went into his room, or at least that’s what I thought. We were just playing and Dave was in the shower, when he got out and said “OH MY GOSH! HONEY, GET IN HERE!” Cal had the sink plugged up and the drawers were full of water and the carpet was sopping wet everywhere! We soaked towel after towel, rung them out, and repeated the process several times, and then put fans on the carpet to dry it out. It was crazy! We’ve had messes like you wouldn’t believe and they’ve been pretty rowdy. Luckily, I’ve had some great help with neighbors and family to help. Moving is definitely not up there with my favorite things to do. We’re just storing everything in the in-laws garage, so hopefully when we move up to Spokane moving will be a breeze, as we’ll just back up the moving truck to the garage and everything will be right there ready to load.

Last weekend, we took a break from all of the moving bustle and went up to Park City. We went up and stayed at the Best Western Land Mark Inn, which we’ve been to a couple of other times. It’s a lot of fun. And, we got a $100 gift certificate for $40 to there, from citydeals.com. I love a good deal! As soon as we opened the car doors to get out and take our luggage in, we saw a squirrel, and of course the kids were delighted! It was a cute little guy. It looked like it was waiting for us to feed it. So Dave grabbed one of the cookies we got when we checked in, and he and Cal started throwing pieces to it. The little guy (or Emma thought it was a girl squirrel) knew exactly what he was doing and grabbed the cookie, started eating, and put his hands out and waited for some more cookie. The kids got a kick out of it!

Then we went to our room and got settled for a while, checked things out, jumped on the beds and had pillow fights.

Then we went out to dinner at Good Thymes. We got another gift certificate to there from restaurant.com, we paid $2 for a $25 gift certificate, not bad! The food was pretty tasty, too, it was kind of comfort food with a twist. I got chicken pot pie, the kids got burgers, and Dave got meatloaf. I really liked it. And I loved the décor! They had a chandelier made out of forks and spoons, and on the floor, it was that textured and painted cement style, with rusted forks and spoons in it. The bathrooms were even cool, after 3 trips there (one for myself and Emma, and two with Cal) I would know. They were very kid friendly, also, which was nice. After we ate there, we went to go feed Lucy in the car. Emma was sitting with me while Dave and Cal went to a store. We saw a bunch of ladies come out of Café Rio, which was near the restaurant we ate at, and Emma commented “I bet those ladies just went out to dinner and are going to go shopping now and blah blah blah.” I just had to laugh. Yep, she’s got us women figured out. We like to get together to eat, shop, and talk! (: After that, we went for a little walk along this walking path and the string of stores they had around.

Then we went back to our hotel and got ready to go swimming. The kids love to swim! We raced, threw the beach ball around, worked on our swimming skills, Daddy threw the kids up in the air, and we sat in the hot tub, which wasn’t very hot, so the kids could get in too. They were giggling in delight and loved every minute, as they do each time we swim! We took Lucy in for her first swim in a swimming pool for a while. She actually was okay with it and did really well until she got cold, so we took her out and bundled her up.

Then it was back to our room to bathe and shower and get ready for bed. Then we made some hot chocolate and popcorn and watched “How to Train Your Dragon”. Dave was the only one of us who made it through the entire movie, the rest of us fell asleep!

Saturday, we woke up whenever we wanted to, went to breakfast down at the restaurant inside the motel. It was called the Hungry Miner breakfast, and it was a buffet-style, so you could get what you wanted. So we tried a little bit of a lot of different things. I broke the glass I had my orange juice in, oops! Darn Chalula, I was reaching over to put that on my eggs, but it hit my glass and broke it. That was a first. I tell ya, it’s not the kids you have to worry about when you go out, it’s me! (: We got ready after that, the kids watched some videos on YouTube on our comp while we got ready. Cal’s most recent favorite is Peanut Butter Jelly Time, and Emma loves watching Green Eggs and Ham.

Then we drove to the Utah Olympic Park. We went to the museum, which was actually really cool. We saw the ski part first, and they had a bunch of fun exhibits that even the kids thought were interesting. Then there was the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics portion, which brought back some great memories for me of when the Olympics came. I remember getting up super early with Amanda Richardson Rigby to see the torch run by my high school, watching the amazing Opening Ceremonies which featured the MoTab Choir (my favorite!) and incorporated beautiful art, dancing, music, and our culture and heritage here in Utah, going to a hockey game with a bunch of good friends, and watching all I could on TV. Then we went outside to see where the athletes train year round. Unfortunately, no one was training that day, due to the rainy and windy weather, because that’s really cool to see.

Finally, we went to the Tanger Outlet Mall to go shopping, the kids played on the playground there, and got to pick two of their little rides to go on.

It was a great break from all of this moving, I just love being with my family. We have so much fun together! Next time I blog, we'll probably be out of our home and on to the next thing! So crazy!