The long, long car ride

The week leading up to our road trip, Calder and I prepared a lot!  So by the time we were ready to go, Calder could hardly wait for our "long, long car ride" as he called it.  Score one for Mom!

We picked up lots of snacks, and several little games/new toys from the dollar store, and wrapped them up with wrapping paper.  Every hour or so, I was able to hand back a present for him to open.  He loved it!  I will definitely do this on all of our road trips in the future! Mix in a couple of movies, and we were good to go!

We were finally able to get on the road Friday around lunch time. We made it 9 hours that day. It looked a lot like this:

The DVD player was a huge hit

and this:

I was really so impressed with how well Calder did! I was expecting the worst, and it ended up going really smoothly. 

We made it to Limon, CO that night, about an hour outside of Denver.  

The next morning, we drove through a lot of this:

Endless flat fields.  Just what I expected Kansas to be.

It was interesting driving east and watching the landscapes change, leaving the mountains/desert of Utah and Wyoming, into eastern Colorado and Kansas where everything was just flat.  As we passed through Witchita, things began to be more green, and the landscape was a lot more interesting - a lot of rolling hills, and more trees.

But then as we came into Missouri and Arkansas, I think it got even more beautiful.  I was going to take more pictures, but I was nervous the GPS on my phone would stop working if I did.  It was being a little finicky.  There were lots of trees, everything was really green, some fields, and some rolling hills. It was interesting to see even the roadkill changed...as we got closer to Arkansas, we started seeing armadillos and turtles on the side of the road.

We actually had a great time all together in the car for 19 hours!  We made it in Saturday night.  Things like "Eat my sandwich!" became hilarious to all three of us...I think we were ready to be home.  

House Hunting

The first weekend in June, Calder got to spend the weekend with Grandma and Grandpa while Craig and I flew out to Arkansas to find a place for us to live.

We had been emailing back and forth with a Realtor, who had been setting up a schedule/list of homes for us to see on Saturday.  Saturday morning rolled around, and she showed us several homes that matched what we were looking for on paper, but we didn't like anything we were seeing.  We began to wonder if it really was a normal thing for people to not take care of their yards, for neighborhoods to not be kept up really well, and for trucks to be parked on the grass out front.

We finally saw a couple options that were a little better, but we still weren't really comfortable with them for various reasons.  But by the end of the day, we felt a little pressure to just pick one.  We were on a tight time schedule - Craig was supposed to be starting his new job in one week. We really did need to find a place to live.  So we applied for the best option that we had seen all day.

But when we separated from our Realtor, we talked about how neither of us loved the house, or even felt really comfortable with it.  So we decided to take matters into our own hands.  (The Realtor was only contracted to us for a day...which was over)  We started looking on Craigslist for homes, and ended up seeing a couple more that evening that were definitely better options than what we had seen all day.  There were still things about them, though, that weren't ideal.

We got back to our hotel, and at the same time both of us realized that once again, we needed to trust in the Lord and let Him take care of us. It is the exact same thing that we have been learning through this whole process - that when we really rely on Him, things just work perfectly.  We realized that once again, we had been trying to do too much on our own.

The next morning, we decided to take a different approach, and just drive around town identifying neighborhoods that we really liked, and would be comfortable living in.  Turns out, there are several really nice, well-kept neighborhoods in the area...we just hadn't see any of them the day before!  By the time we went to church, we had identified several areas that we would be happy living in.

After church, we had a couple of hours left before we had to head to the airport.  We looked at the neighborhoods right by Craig's work, and loved them!  Thinking we would be returning to Salt Lake without a place to live lined up, we at least knew of specific areas that we could keep looking in, and felt confident that things would work out.

We started heading on a road that we thought lead out of the neighborhood, and it actually didn't lead out, but onto another street in the neighborhood.  We saw a house that had a "For Lease" sign out front.  There were cars parked outside, and the front door was open.  Craig stopped the car, and spoke to the lady that was outside. (She happened to be the girlfriend of the Realtor who was showing this particular house).  She told us to stick around, and he'd show it to us.  So, we ended up being able to see the house, and it was perfect! I just remember standing in the entryway with Craig and the Realtor, and he was listing off the info about the house.  In the first two minutes of hearing him talk, he listed off EVERYTHING that was on our list of what we needed and wanted.  The house was perfect!

To finish the story, we applied, and were accepted!  The price was a little high, but they ended up coming down on the price for us, so now it is right where we were thinking.

I am so excited for our beautiful home!  It is just the size we were looking for (3 bed, 2 bath) with a fenced yard, in a nice neighborhood, and is literally 3 minutes from Craig's work.  Hooray!!

What a miracle/blessing/tender mercy!!  I am amazed at how when we put our faith and trust in the Lord, everything works out perfectly.  Maybe we'll be quicker to remember the lesson next time.